Analyzing Change Trajectory and Determinants of Life Satisfaction of Self-Employment Women in Korea Focusing on Work-Family Management Strategies: An Application of Latent Growth Modeling

Background/Purpose: Recently marginalized women from labor market tended to choose the self-employment to overcome their status and adjust the balance of work and family. But the survival of self-employment is the great challenge for married women due to suffer the intensive competition in industry and take care of home life at the same time. So, the self-employment women’s well-being could never be secure. This study examined for two reasons. The first, what is maintaining business really for women's life mean? That is whether self-employment women’s life satisfaction increased or not. The second, what are the factors which affect life satisfaction of self-employment women? I focused on work-family management strategies.

Methods: The data used in this study came from the Korean Labor Panel Survey that is a longitudinal research for about 5000 households all over country from 1988 to 2016. This study used 5 waves (2012-2016) including 307 self-employment married women who continued their businesses for 5years. For latent growth model (LGM), M-plus 7.0 was used and the dependent variable was 5 wavea of life satisfaction. The independent variables through the previous reviews included the number of family workers, weekly work time, weekly work day, task focusing or not and network satisfaction of family, relative & social. Finally, demographic factors (age, education, marital status, the number of children) were controlled.

Results: First, the results showed self-employment married women’s initial life satisfactions levels (intercepts) as well as their rates of increase for 5 waves’ life satisfaction(slopes). The linear model appeared goodness of fit as χ²(df)=5.2026(10), CFI >.09, RMSEA <.06. The life satisfaction of self-employment women has increased as 0.021 per 1 year based on initial levels, 3.366. And each covariance of intercepts and slopes has significant, that showed the different rates of increase between individual. Second, the work-family management strategies’ factors affecting on the life satisfaction showed as follows. 1) Family worker as the role-shared strategy has significant positive effects on rates of increase for life satisfaction (β=.033 p<0.05). That means the more family worker, the higher life satisfaction. 2) Weekly work time as the task-focused strategy has significant positive effects on rates of increase for life satisfaction (β=.001 p<0.05). Namely, when self-employment women get more time to focus on works, their life satisfactions have increased. 3) Social network satisfaction as the network strategy has significant negative effects on rates of increase (β=-.048 p<0.05). In other words, the higher social network satisfaction, the rates of increase for life satisfaction have steadily decreased.

Conclusions and Implications: The life satisfaction of self-employment women has increased steadily for 5years. The number of children and family workers and weekly working times have positive effects, but social closeness satisfaction has a negative effect. Based on the research, family factors are positive interactions, not conflict factors during maintaining their businesses. Therefore, the work and life balance policies should be improved focusing on the conditions of self-employment women. Considering the negative effects of social closeness satisfaction, we had better think about facilitating the support system of their networks.