Korean Women in America: Gender -Role Attitude and Depression
This study explored the relationship between gender role attitude and Korean-American wives' levels of depression. Given the fact that Korean-American wives suffer from psychological distress and multiple burdens due to extremely conservative traditional culture and subsequent adhesive adaptation pattern, the significance of husbands' influences including husbands' gender role attitudes and other socioeconomic characteristics on wives' mental well-being is discussed. The mail survey was adopted to access data on 158 Korean-American wives' levels of depression in San Jose, CA using the Korean version of CES-D and the Attitude Toward Women Scale were used to measure gender role attitude and gender role attitude incongruence. In this research, results indicate that Korean-American wives suffer from significantly higher levels of depression than the national norm and that their symptoms are more likely to be correlated with their husbands' attributes, including gender role attitudes, income, and education, than with their own attributes in these areas. Findings from this study do not support the theories of previous studies on gender role attitude and mental well-being that suggest liberal gender role attitudes lead to greater psychological well-being. Issues of ethnic sensitive practice and the need for mental health services to Korean-American wives are discussed.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign