Research on work and family issues has burgeoned over the last two decades as evidence of the negative outcomes of work-family conflict has become apparent. While empirical literature is replete with studies examining the effect of several work and family related factors on conflict, the effect of culture as a variable in the conflict model has not been sufficiently investigated.

India and Taiwan are two economically developing countries in the Asian continent. They share some cultural values, such as high collectivism and a traditional life style. However, the gender representation in the workforce of these two countries is different. In Taiwan, about half of women and two thirds of men are in the workforce. The distribution of gender across industries shows that women are mostly in the service industry and men in industries such as manufacturing, agriculture and farming.

This paper presents preliminary findings of a study that forms part of a larger cross-cultural investigation on work-family conflict across nine countries. The paper examines the effect of work and family antecedents such as control, involvement, overload, hours spent and support, on work-family conflict. It also explores the antecedent effect of contextual / socio-psychological and cultural variables such as vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism, gender role ideology and monochronic or polychronic time orientation on work-family conflict.

This paper examines the relationship between social support and work-family conflict for working women and men in the Indian context. Based on qualitative data gathered from focus group discussions in India, the nature of social support from the family is described. Next, statistical analysis of survey results is conducted to examine whether the relationship between social support and work-family conflict gives support to the data as well as traditional theory-driven hypotheses between the two variables.

Based on a review of literature pertaining to governmental policies affecting the work-family context, and data gathered from focus group discussions, this paper highlights how the Indian context is marked by high non-institutional and low-institutional support for working women.