Abstract According to the Social Role Theory, people have higher expectations on men’s work role while have higher expectations on women’s family role. Under such expectations, men and women form different attitudes to work role as well as family role (i.e. male may be more work focused). Yet, the conclusion of previous researches about the gender differences in work-to-family conflict are not consistent, which is due largely to the improper controlling of the confounding variables, such as job categories, positions, spouses’ work status, number of babies, et al. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate: ⑴ the effect of gender on the work-to-family conflict in the background of Chinese culture, under the proper control of some key confounding variables. ⑵ the mediating effects of the work centrality (the importance of work relative to family ) and segmentation supplies (a series of boundary management practices provided by the organizations that encourage their staff to keep work away from non-work domain) between gender and work-to-family conflict based on the Social Role Theory. Participants were 261 managerial staff (mean age = 39.5 years old, 155 male) from Shanghai an eastern province in mainland China. They were requested to complete the work centrality scale, the segmentation supplies scale and the work-to-family conflict scale (the time based subscale and strain based subscale) on the spot. The Bias Corrected Bootstrap Method in the PROCESS (loaded to SPSS) was used to test the research hypotheses. Having controlled some key confounding variables (i.e. age, marital status, spouses’ work status, number of babies, positions and tenure), the research showed: ⑴ gender (0=female, 1=male) could predict the work-to-family conflict based on strain with the total effect of .27 whose 95% confidence interval was [.06, .48]. The mediating effect of segmentation supplies was .11 (accounting for 40.74% of the total effect) whose 95% confidence interval was [.05, .21], meanwhile the mediating effect of work centrality was .08 (accounting for 29.63% of the total effect) whose 95% confidence interval was [.02, .16]. ⑵ gender could predict the work-to-family conflict based on time with the total effect of .58 whose 95% confidence interval was [.36, .81]. The mediating effect of segmentation supplies was .13 (accounting for 22.41% of the total effect) whose 95% confidence interval was [.06, .24], meanwhile the mediating effect of work centrality was .11 (accounting for 18.97% of the total effect) whose 95% confidence interval was [.03, .22]. In conclusion, men experience more work-to-family conflict compared with women, and there are multiple mediating effects of work centrality and segmentation supplies between gender and work-to-family conflict. This study not only reveals the specific process and influence mechanism of how gender affects the work-to-family conflict, but also encourages organizations to provide their male staff with more understanding and support to help them handle the work-to-family conflict.