Patriarchal dominance, employment anxiety and subjective career success among career widows in Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore how patriarchal dominance relates to employment anxiety and subjective career success among career women, with a specific focus on the understudied marginalized career widows in Nigerian work settings. Further, the moderating roles of family economic condition and social support in the relationship between patriarchal dominance and employment anxiety were investigated. We collected primary quantitative data from 491 career widows employed in Nigerian organizations using a structured questionnaire. We used descriptive analysis to analyze the respondents’ demographic profile and deployed partial least squares structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. The findings suggest that patriarchal dominance significantly relates to employment anxiety among Nigerian career widows. Contrary to expectations, patriarchal dominance does not significantly relate to subjective career success. The outcomes from the moderation analysis suggest that while economic conditions significantly moderate the relationship between patriarchal dominance and employment anxiety, the relationship varies in strength and direction. For widows from low economic backgrounds, employment anxiety was found to decrease as patriarchal dominance increases. But for widows from medium economic backgrounds, the result suggests that as patriarchal dominance increases, employment anxiety increases. The positive relationship between patriarchal dominance and employment anxiety is strongest among working widows from high economic backgrounds. Conversely, no moderating role was found in patriarchal dominance’s negative relationship with employment anxiety, indicating that employment anxiety is not weaker for career widows with high social support. The study is the first to provide insights into how patriarchal dominance relates to employment anxiety and subjective career success and the moderating roles of family economic conditions and social support in such links among Nigerian career widows using PLS-SEM. The outcomes suggest that patriarchal dominance significantly relates to employment anxiety, with family economic conditions playing moderating roles among Nigerian career widows. The outcomes have vital implications for African governments, organizations, and practitioners, as they can be motivated to activate appropriate actions that will help emancipate career widows from the yoke of patriarchal dominance.