Female Employment and Marital Instability: Evidence from Thailand

A link between employment outside the home and instability in the marriages of married women has long been suspected. However two decades of empirical research have produced mixed findings and have yielded few firm conclusions about how wives employment increases marital instability. The present study provides further evidence on the employment-instability linkage examining the direct and indirect effects employment may have. Using data from a study of intact marriages in Bangkok Thailand the analyses indicate that the effects of employment per se and the number of hours worked are class-linked and where present tend to be mediated by various marital processes....The findings in general lend strong support to a process model of marital instability a model previously found to largely account for instability among American couples. (EXCERPT)