The gender-job satisfaction paradox and the dual-earner society: Are women (still) making work-family trade-offs?

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Despite their disadvantaged labour market position, women consistently report higher levels of job satisfaction than men. Researchers have attributed women’s higher job satisfaction to their lower expectations, arguing that gender differences will fade away as women’s labour market prospects improve. Others, however, argue that women are more contented than men because their jobs satisfy a need for family adaptions.

OBJECTIVE:

In this article, we put the hypotheses of transitions and trade-offs to a strong test, by comparing men and women with comparable human capital investments living in a country where women’s employment is strongly supported by policies, practices and social norms.

METHODS:

The relationship between gender and job satisfaction is analysed with stepwise OLS regressions. The analysis is based on a survey to newly graduated highly educated men and women in five occupations in Sweden (n ≈ 2 450).

RESULTS:

First, we show that, after controlling for a range of job characteristics, women report a higher level of job satisfaction than men. Second, although the paradox appears to be surprisingly persistent, it cannot be attributed to work-family trade-offs.

CONCLUSIONS:

Future research should consider job satisfaction more broadly in the light of gender role socialization and persistent gender inequalities.

Keywords

Job satisfaction gender preferences work-family Sweden

1 Introduction

In research on job satisfaction, the role of gender has intrigued scholars for several decades. The fact that women, despite their disadvantaged labour market position, consistently report higher levels of job satisfaction than men, has been regarded as a paradox. To explain the paradox – described as the paradox of the contented female worker [1] – researchers have argued that women expect lower returns from work, at least in terms of pay and promotion [2 –4].

At a time when women are catching up with men in terms of labour force participation and surpassing them in educational investments [5] such assumptions appear problematic and, indeed, several researchers claim that the paradox will disappear as women’s position in the labour market is strengthened [2 , 7]. Others, however, point to gendered family roles and priorities as a mechanism sustaining and explaining the apparent paradox. In this perspective, women are more contented than men because their jobs satisfy a need for family adaptions [1, 3].

Interestingly, the latter perspective aligns with current debates on labour market gender inequalities. Here, a central assumption is that women make work-family trade-offs as they prioritize family-friendly work conditions over wage and career development and such trade-offs are invoked to explain gender gaps in wages and authority, as well as occupational gender segregation [e.g., 8–11]. As women retain the main responsibility for childcare and housework, such trade-offs will persist in the modern dual-earner society. In fact, scholars argue they will be more prominent in countries offering extensive family policies to facilitate women’s employment, notably the Scandinavian countries, because more mothers are included in the labour force [e.g., 9, 11, 12]. Presumably, then, women’s need to balance work and family could also perpetuate the gender-job satisfaction paradox.

In this article, we put the hypotheses of transitions and trade-offs to a strong test by utilizing a new dataset comprising Swedish men and women who recently graduated from five higher educational programs, leading to occupations with different gender composition (n≈2 450). The sample was stratified such that an equal number of men and women were sampled from each occupation. By comparing men and women with comparable human capital investments living in a country where women’s employment is strongly supported by policies, practices and social norms, we will assess the extent to which the gender-job satisfaction paradox is a transitional phenomenon related to women’s lower expectations, or an ongoing phenomenon related to women’s prioritization of ‘family-friendly’work.

2 Previous research and our contribution

Job satisfaction represents an employee’s subjective evaluation of his or her job and is discussed as an important indicator of workers’ well-being, health and behaviours [13 –17]. However, explorations of the gender-job satisfaction paradox can also shed new light on labour market gender inequalities and the mechanisms sustaining or counteracting such inequalites. In previous research, two main perspectives can be discerned. In the first perspective, it is argued that women have lower expectations about labour market outcomes. In this perspective, the gender-job satisfaction paradox is considered a transitory phenomenon because differences can be expected to diminish as women’s employment opportunities become more similar to those of men. In the second perspective, however, it is argued that women aspire to ‘family-friendly’ jobs with lower demands and/or more flexibility, and that these job characteristics can compensate for lower earnings and career attainment. Thus, work-family trade-offs are presented as a vital mechanism that sustains the relationship between women’s lower attainment and higher job satisfaction, and explains the allegedparadox.

A prominent representative of the first perspective is Clark [2]. Using the 1991 British Household Panel Study, Clark found that after controlling for a range of job characteristics, women report higher levels of job satisfaction than men. According to Clark, this difference cannot be attributed to differences in work values or orientations. Although men put a higher value on extrinsic rewards (pay and promotion) and women valued instrinsic aspects of work (relations at the workplace and actual work tasks), such differences in values did not explain the gender difference in overall job satisfaction or in specific measures of satisfaction with pay or with work. Also, Clark did not find selection of women in/out of the labour force to account for the gender differential in satisfaction. Instead, Clark argued that the gender-job satisfaction paradox can be explained by the fact that women generally expect lower rewards from work than do men. The argument is supported by the finding that the gender difference in satisfaction disappears in groups where men and women are less likely to differ in their job expectations, namely for workers who are young, highly-educated, in professional roles, and those in male-dominated workplaces. The gender difference in reported job satisfaction ‘represents a real difference in utility from working [although] objectively women’s jobs are worse than men’s’ [2; p. 342]. Women’s higher satisfaction is likely a historic and transitory phenomenon, reflecting the poorer labour market position that women have held in the past. ‘As the differences between men’s and women’s job is eroded’, Clark argues, ‘so will be the gender difference in expectations and job satisfaction’[2; p. 342].

The idea that the gender-job satisfaction paradox is a transitional phenomenon that will fade away as women’s positions in the labour market is strengthed is advanced by Kaiser [6]. Kaiser argued that objective employment conditions and individuals’ perceptions of job satisfaction are mutually interdependent and that the more restrictive the labour market access is for women, the more likely a gender-job satisfaction paradox is to emerge. Specifically, he claimed that the gender-job satisfaction differential is a proxy for labour market modernization and that an important feature of advanced modernization is a new gender contract based on the rising labour market orientation of women. Using the European Household Community Panel 1994–2001, Kaiser showed that in 10 out of the 14 European countries included in the study, women reported higher overall job satisfaction than men. However, no gender difference was found in Scandinavian countries (represented by Denmark and Finland) that are defined as the most modernized due to their policies supporting female employment. Women’s higher levels of satisfaction in the other countries was discussed as an ‘adaptive position’, reflecting how disadvantaged labour market opportunities restrain women’s expectations. However, Kaiser argued that the gender differential in satisfaction will diminish as institutions promoting equal opportunities are introduced in these countries, and concluded that there is ‘no universal ‘female’ attitude towards employment’. Instead, ‘female labour market participation and gender-job satisfaction differences are due to different employment oppotunities that are offered by different welfare state and labour market regimes’ [6; p. 17].

In another comparative study, comprising 22 countries and utilizing the International Social Survey Programme of 1997, Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza [18] noted that large differentials in women’s favour were found only in Great Britain and the United States (US). Thus, the gender-job satisfaction paradox, appeared to be primarily ‘an Anglo-Saxon paradox’ [18; p. 149]. The authors did not relate the differences across contexts to women’s labour market prospects or discuss the permanence of the paradox. However, in a later study based on the British Household Panel Survey, they found that between 1991 and 2000 women’s levels of job satisfaction decreased while men’s levels remained stable. As a result, the gender differential was halved and the findings were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that the paradox will disappear as women’s labour market expectations increase [7].

As a contrast, the second perspective presents women’s work-family adaptions as a mechanism by which the paradox is sustained and reproduced. Hakim [3] stated that the alleged paradox appears because ‘women’s priorities differ from men, with paid work accorded less importance than domestic activities and family life’ (3; p. 104). Because their efforts and aspirations are focused elsewhere, Hakim argued that women’s higher satisfaction with jobs that are less advantageous in terms of pay and promotion becomes rational. More specifically, women’ssatisfaction is more determined by factors such as flexible work hours that allow them to accommodate family demands. However, according to Hakim, gender differences will vary between occupational categories. In higher-grade, male-dominated professional occupations where women and men commit strongly to work and career, the difference in satisfaction will fade or disappear.

Using US data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, Bender et al. [1] explored how gender differences in job satisfaction relate to gender segregation in the labour maket. In line with Clark’s [2] British study, Bender et al. found that the gender difference in job satisfaction was related to the gender composition of the workplace. However, both the gender difference in satisfaction and the impact of workplace gender composition disappeared once flexibility was accounted for. The researchers concluded that the notion that the paradox is rooted in women’s historic situation is precipitate. Instead, the paradox arises from women sorting into jobs that provide a flexibility which allows them to accommodate family responsibilities.

More recently, Zou [4] revisited the notion that the paradox is related to gender differences in work values or orientations. Using the British Skills Survey of 2006, Zou found that work oritentations differ between men and women, and between women employed full-time and part-time. In line with previous studies, Zou found that women, in particular women working part-time, were more satisfied with their jobs than men, even after controlling for a wide range of individual and job related factors. The gender coefficient became non-significant when including interaction terms between female employment status and work orientations in regression analyses on job satisfaction, and variation in work orientations accounted for the gender differences in job satisfaction [4]. Zou did not discuss why work orientations would differ between men and women, or between women employed full-time and part-time. Presumably, however, differences in valuations of career development versus convenient work and flexible work hours are likely to reflect trade-offs or work-family priorities; while differences relating to interpersonal relationships at work may also reflect personality traits.

Beyond the job satisfaction literature, the notion that women aspire to family-friendly jobs is well established in labour market research. Human capital theory [8, 19] suggests that women accommodate their family responsibilities in their labour market strategies. Thus, women trade off their wage and career prospects by choosing jobs that require less skill investments, less time commitment, and less effort than men’s jobs. Based on such reasoning, it has been argued that women prioritize flexible work arrangements over wage prospects [e.g., 10, 20, 21] and that women’s choice of educational and occupational tracks reflect their quest for ‘family-friendly’ work [e.g., 10, 20, 21]. In summary, gendered work-family strategies are presented as a driver behind occupational gender segregation and gender wage gaps, and the gender-job satisfaction paradox may reflect such trade-offs.

In this article, we explore the arguments presented above by studying gender differences in job satisfaction among recently graduated individuals in five occupations (civil engineers, police officers, lawyers, psychologists, and social workers). The study was set in Sweden, a country known for its well-entreched policies promoting gender equality and dual-earner families [e.g., 22]. As a result of these policies, which date back to the early 1970’s, female and maternal labour force participation rates have been high by international standards. In 2010, the gender gap in employment was about five per cent in Sweden, as compared to 18 per cent on average for the OECD [23]. Moreover, in Sweden, about 80 per cent of mothers with children under the age of three years are employed, as compared to about 52 per cent in the OECD [23]. Also, the dual-earner/dual-carer family is evident as a widespread social norm andideal [24].

Using this particular sample, this study expands on previous research that was based to a large extent on Anglo-Saxon data from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Also, the sampling strategy allows for a closer examination of mechanisms assumed to connect gender and job satisfaction. Because men and women in this sample are unlikely to have different work expectations, it provides a strong test to the notion that the gender-job satisfaction paradox is a transitory phenomenon resulting from a general difference in the utility from working. At the same time, however, work-family trade-offs may present a contemporary mechanism producing gender differences in job satisfaction also in this sample. Although Swedish women have gained a firm foothold in the labour market, they are still primarily responsible for completing household chores and caring for children [25] and face persistent disadvantages in the labour market. Many of these disadvantages can be related to occupational gender segregation [e.g., 26, 27] that is commonly regarded as an expression of women’s prioritization of ‘family-friendly work’. Below, we explore the idea that a gender paradox in job satisfaction will appear as we consider the central factors assumed to reflect such priorities. Here we look at, first, the choice of female- versus male-dominated occupations; second, the importance of family responsibilities and work-family strategies; and third, the actual ‘family-friendliness’ of work conditions, defined as lower demands for time and effort and more employee control and flexibility. We argue that if these factors produce gender differences in job satisfaction in this select sample, work-family trade-offs can be regarded as a valid and important mechanism producing gender differences in job satisfaction even in modern, dual-earner societies.

Finally, we consider the importance of personality traits. Previous research has pointed to consistent gender differences in self-esteem [e.g., 28] and in personality traits. Regarding the Big Five personality traits [29], the largest and most consistent gender differences are reported for agreeableness, on which women score higher than men, and emotional stability, on which they tend to score lower [30 –32]. Gender differences in the other three Big Five traits – extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness – are smaller and not always significant but when they are, women tend to score higher than men [30 –32]. In labour market research, self-esteem and personality traits have been related to job performance and wages [e.g., 33–35], occupational choices [36], and gender wage gaps [37]. Dispositions have also received increasing attention in research on job satisfaction [35 , 39]. However, to our knowledge dispositions have not been considered in studies focusing on gender differences in job satisfaction. Here, predictions are not straightforward. Meta-analyses suggest that self-esteem and emotional stability – traits on which women tend to score lower than men – are positively related to job satisfaction, but positive effects were found also for agreeableness and extraversion, on which women tend to score higher [35 , 39]. Nevertheless, failing to account for dispositions can be an oversight in previous research on gender differences in job satisfaction. It can be argued that the permanence of the paradox is underestimated if self-esteem and personaly traits are not accounted for. Also, this can inform the discussion on gendered work orientations. As previously mentioned, such differences may derive from family roles and also from gendered socialization that is expressed in different personality traits.

3 Method

The questionnaire was distributed in 2013 to Swedish men and women that recently graduated from five higher education programs: Degree of Master of Science in Engineering (hereafter: engineers), Degree of Master of Laws (lawyers), Degree of Master of Science in Psychology (psychologists), Degree of Bachelor of Science in Social Work (social workers), and the Police Programme (police officers). The first four programs are all university-based although they differ somewhat in length (engineers and psychologists study for five years; lawyers for 4.5 years; social workers for 3.5 years). The engineering programme has several branches or specializations and the sample was drawn from the five largest of these. The Police Programme, provided by the Swedish National Police Academy, is a post-secondary education (but not university) program. The program comprises 1.5 years of studies and the basic training for police officers includes six months of trainee service.

The rationale for choosing these programs was to obtain a close-up picture of gender and occupational choice. First, the programs are similar in the sense that they all lead to a specific professional title. Thus, in contrast to more general academic programs, individuals applying for these programs have already made an occupational choice. Second, the programs display clear differences in their gender-mix. According to the Swedish occupational register, women constitute 26 per cent of police officers, 20 per cent of civil engineers, 50 per cent of lawyers, 72 per cent of the psychologists and 84 percent of the social workers. Thus, two of the occupations can be classified as male-dominated, two as female-dominated and one as gender-mixed. Finally, the sample was stratified such that 500 men and 500 women were sampled from each educational program. In this stratified sample, women and men that have made gender-atypical occupational choices have been oversampled to minimize the influence of factors other than gender. However, to give the reader a more complete understanding of the results we will also present regressions that use weights to adjust for the oversampling of individuals in gender-atypical occupations as well as for differences in non-response across the different strata. Thus, in the weighted regressions, the share of men and women in each occupation corresponds to the actual share in the population (i.e., all individuals graduating from these programs2007–2010).

The sample was drawn from the National Register of Higher Education and The Swedish Register of Education and comprised individuals that had obtained a degree from the programs in the years 2007–2010. The timespan was necessary in order to obtain a large enough sample of the under-represented gender in all educational programs. Sampling, distribution, and coding were administered by Statistics Sweden. The response rate was 55 per cent. In this article, we used a subsample comprising employed individuals who work in the occupation for which they were trained (n ≈ 2 450).

Below, we analyse the relationship between gender and job satisfaction with stepwise OLS regressions. While many previous studies used a single item to measure job satisfaction, our dependent variable is an additive index comprising five questions asking how satisfied the respondents are with five dimensions of their current job: tasks, salary, working hours, physical work environment, and psychological work environment (scale 5–25). Higher values indicate greater satisfisfation. A composite measure allowed us to capture the most central aspects of job satisfaction. i

In the first step, we controlled for gender and occupation and compared results from the stratified sample with results from weighted regressions.

In the second step, we controlled for parenthood – regarded as a proxy for gendered family responsibilities – and for work-family strategies. The measures of strategies were retrieved from a factor analysis of seven statements concerning the respondent’s motivation for his/her occupational choice and his/her priorities in the job search process after graduation from post-secondary education. In the analysis, two separate factors or dimensions were extracted. One factor showed high scores for items related to wages and career prospects, while the other had high scores for statements related to work-family reconciliation. Based on these results, we constructed two additive indexes labeled career focus and family focus. Career focus comprises four statements: good intial wages in occupation and in job; possibilities for career advancement and/or good wage development in occupation and in job (scale 4–16). The higher the value, the more important are these aspects, as reported by the respondent. Family focus comprises three statements: the occupation provides work hours that can be adapted to family/partner/private life; the job provides work hours that can be adapted to family/partner/private life; the job does not require moving or long-distance commuting (scale 3–12). Higher values represent greater importance.

In the third step, we controlled for work conditions in terms of demands; that is, explicit or implicit requirements from the organization, and employee control; that is, the individual’s possibilities to exert some influence over when and how to meet these requirements. Work demands are measured with three indicators: usual weekly work hours, workload, and employer flexibility. Workload is an index comprising two indicators, ‘My work is psychologically demanding and ‘Due to a high workload I often work under great time pressure’ (scale 2–8). Employer flexibility comprises three items, ‘The number of hours I work varies considerably as the workload varies’, ‘I often have to work overtime’, ‘I am expected to be available by phone or email during non-work hours’ (range 3–12, mean 6.60, std 2.34). Employee control is measured as job control and flexitime. Job control comprises four items, ‘I am able to influence which work tasks to perform’ ‘I can decide how to perform the work tasks’ ‘I can decide the pace at which I work’, ‘I can influence important decisions affecting the organization’ (scale 4–16). Flextime is captured with the statement ‘I have great freedom to decide over my work time’ (scale 1–4). It can be noted that the indicators of workload and job control correspond closely to the definitions used in the job demand-control model, which has dominated research on work and stress for several decades [40, 41].The other indicators capture working time flexibility from the point of view of both employer and employee. Both the job demand-control model and schedule flexibility have been related empirically to perceptions of work-family conflict [e.g., 42, 43].

In the final step, we controlled for self-esteem and Big Five personality traits [29]. Self-esteem is captured with the global question ‘How would you describe your self-esteem?’, with a response scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good). Global measures of self-esteem have been widely used in previous research [e.g., 28]. The Big Five personality traits are measured using the 10-item instrument (TIPI) developed by Gosling et al. [44]. Each personality trait is assessed by two items representing each pole of the five dimensions. The items measure the degree to which that particular characteristics represent the respondent’s personality, with responses scaled from 1 (low) to 7 (high). This brief measure of the Big Five personality dimensions has been shown to reach adequate levels in terms of convergence with widely used Big Five measures in self, observer, and peer reports, as well as test-retest reliability and patterns of predicted external correlates [44]. The extraversion index is measured with the two items ‘extraverted, enthusiastic’, and ‘reserved, quiet’ (reversed scored). Agreeableness comprises the items: ‘sympathetic, warm’ and ‘critical, quarrelsome’ (reversed scored). Conscientiousness includes the items ‘dependable, self-disciplined’ and ‘disorganized, careless’ (reversed scored). Emotional stability (neuroticism reversed) contains the items ‘calm, emotionally stable’ and ‘anxious, easily upset’ (reversed scored). Openness to experience is measured with the items ‘open to new experiences, complex’ and ‘conventional, uncreative’ (reversed scored).

4 Results

The descriptive statistics in Table 1 show that despite the sampling strategy aimed at maximum similarity, men and women differed significantly on several of the characteristics relating to preferences, work conditions, and self-valuations. However, not all differences aligned neatly with theoretical assumptions. Regarding preferences, we found that women in this sample were both more family-oriented and more career-oriented than men. Thus, they displayed dual commitments and did not appear to trade off career goals for ‘family-friendliness’. Also, women scored lower than men on both schedule flexibility and job control but did not have lower demands in terms of hours or workload. In this sample, women’s jobs could not be described as more ‘family-friendly’ than men’s jobs, although their lower level of employer flexibility may reflect an avoidance of ‘family-unfriendly’ work. Finally, we noted that men scored higher than women on self-esteem and that they were more emotionally stable but less agreeable, extraverted, and conscientious than women. Thus, even in this select sample traditional gender differences in personality could be discerned.

Table 1
Mean values on independent variables, controlling for occupation

Women Men

Workload 5.72 5.71

Job control^* 9.37 10.10

Flexitime^* 2.71 2.84

Employer flexibility^* 6.59 6.79

Work hours 41.56 41.95

<35 h/week 6.8% 5.1%

Family focus^* 9.11 8.59

Career focus^* 11.33 11.13

Self-esteem^* 3.86 4.03

Extraversion^* 5.49 4.95

Agreeableness^* 5.68 5.51

Conscientiality^* 5.69 5.46

Emotional stability^* 5.39 5.57

Openness 5.11 5.20

Children in household (%) 44% 46%

	Women	Men
Workload	5.72	5.71
Job control^*	9.37	10.10
Flexitime^*	2.71	2.84
Employer flexibility^*	6.59	6.79
Work hours	41.56	41.95
<35 h/week	6.8%	5.1%
Family focus^*	9.11	8.59
Career focus^*	11.33	11.13
Self-esteem^*	3.86	4.03
Extraversion^*	5.49	4.95
Agreeableness^*	5.68	5.51
Conscientiality^*	5.69	5.46
Emotional stability^*	5.39	5.57
Openness	5.11	5.20
Children in household (%)	44%	46%

Note: ^*gender difference is statistically significant at the 5% level.

Next, we performed OLS regressions on job satisfaction. In Table 2, model 1, we note that the gender coefficient is not statistically significant. Thus, women in this sample – where factors such as occupation, cohort and career phase were kept in check – did not report a higher level of job satisfaction than men. Now, it could be argued that gender differences were suppressed by the stratification of the sample. If the gender gap in job satisfaction appears because women (but not men) choose occupations that satisfy a need for family adaptions, the oversampling of individuals in gender-atypical occupations might camouflage such gender differences. However, we found the gender coefficient to be non-significant also in bivariate weighted regressions, which reflect the actual gender composition of the occupations (see Table 3). Further analyses (not displayed) did not show any systematic relation between the gender composition of the occupation and the level of job satisfaction, either for men or for women. Thus, in this sample, occupational choice was not related to gender differences in job satisfaction.

Table 2

Job satisfaction

	M1		M2		M3a		M3b		M4a		M4b
	b	s.e.	b	s.e.	b	s.e.	b	s.e.	b	s.e.	b	s.e.
Intercept	17.990	0.062	18.050	0.38	22.820	0.628	18.403	0.652	16.915	0.685	15.857	0.771
Sex
Men	–0.025	0.061	–0.039	0.062	–0.029	0.059	–0.189	0.057	–0.218	0.057	–0.190	0.061
Women	0.025	0.061	0.039	0.062	0.029	0.059	0.189	0.057	0.218	0.057	0.190	0.061
Occupation
Civil engineer	1.211	0.123	1.268	0.133	0.873	0.129	0.454	0.125	0.548	0.125	0.646	0.127
Lawyer	1.125	0.127	1.212	0.133	1.093	0.135	1.228	0.129	1.228	0.127	1.218	0.129
Psychologist	0.346	0.116	0.301	0.118	0.376	0.121	0.115	0.116	0.134	0.115	0.153	0.117
Social worker	–0.228	0.120	–0.245	0.127	–0.059	0.124	–0.240	0.118	–0.232	0.117	–0.328	0.119
Police officer	–2.454	0.126	–2.536	0.133	–2.283	0.133	–1.558	0.135	–1.677	0.135	–1.689	0.139
Family focus			0.009	0.035	–0.006	0.034	–0.016	0.032	–0.015	0.032	–0.035	0.032
Career focus			–0.009	0.028	0.019	0.027	–0.022	0.026	–0.032	0.026	–0.034	0.026
Children
No children			–0.176	0.067	–0.134	0.064	–0.056	0.061	–0.037	0.061	–0.037	0.061
Children			0.176	0.067	0.134	0.064	0.056	0.061	0.037	0.061	0.037	0.061
Work load					–0.720	0.048	–0.566	0.047	–0.559	0.046	–0.532	0.047
Employer flex					0.004	0.034	–0.073	0.033	–0.073	0.032	–0.069	0.033
Work hours					–0.020	0.014	–0.018	0.013	–0.024	0.013	–0.029	0.013
Flexitime							0.414	0.076	0.428	0.075	0.467	0.078
Job control							0.342	0.027	0.309	0.027	0.310	0.027
Self-esteem									0.528	0.076	0.426	0.084
Personality
Extraversion											0.089	0.051
Agreeableness											0.154	0.065
Conscientiousness											0.048	0.052
Emotional stability											0.130	0.053
Openness											–0.136	0.058
N	2411		2320		2270		2238		2232		2168
R² (%)	15.7		16.7		26.2		34.4		36.0		36.9

Notes: Multiple OLS regressions. Cell entries are unstandardized regression coefficients (b). Coefficients represent deviations from the grand mean. Bold coefficients = significantly different from zero (p < 0.05).

Table 3

Weighted gender difference in job satisfaction

	M1
	b	s.e.
Intercept	17.876	0.069
Sex
Men	0.032	0.069
Women	–0.032	0.069

Notes: Multiple OLS regressions. Cell entries are unstandardized regression coefficients (b). Bold coefficients = significantly different from zero (p < 0.05).

In model 2, we included parenthood – a proxy for gendered family responsibilities – as well as our indicators of work-family strategies, namely career- and family orientation. As shown, parents were more satisfied with their jobs than non-parents, while the level of career- or family orientation did not affect job satisfaction. More importantly, the gender coefficient remains non-significant after the inclusion of these indicators and further analyses confirmed that their effects did not vary by gender. Clearly, these findings speak against the notion that gender differences in work satisfaction emanate from women’s work-family trade-offs.

Next, we explored the importance of work conditions by controlling first for work demands, then for employee control. The presumption here is that women’s job satisfaction is more strongly related to the family-friendliness of jobs, defined as lower demands and/or more control. As displayed in model 3a, the gender coefficient remained non-significant after entering our indicators of work demands.As noted above, women in this sample have jobs that are similar to men’s in terms of workload and work hours but with lower employer flexibility, that is less demands for accessibility, overtime work, and variation in work hours due to organizational needs. However, if the lower level of employer flexibility reflects an adaption to family demands, this adaption is not related to gender differences in jobsatisfaction.

After entering schedule flexibility and job control in model 3b, the gender coefficient increased and reached statistical significance. Further analyses revealed that both factors increased the gender gap but that job control was more consequential. However, no significant interactions were found between gender and job control or schedule flexibility. In other words, there was no indication that control was more important to women than to men. Instead, women’s lower level of job control suppressed their level of job satisfaction relative to that of men. With a similar amount of job control, women were more satisfied with their jobs than men in the same occupation, even after accounting for a range of job and family demands and career-/family- orientations. In summary, actual work conditions affected men and women in much the same way, but after controlling for these conditions – particularly job control – the gender job satisfaction paradox appeared also in this select sample.

Finally, we explored how gender difference in job satisfaction was related to differences in personality. As displayed in model 4a, self-esteem was positively related to job satisfaction and the gender difference in satisfaction increased after controlling for self-esteem. Thus, over and above actual work conditions, self-esteem was a factor that surpressed gender differences in job satisfaction. After entering the Big Five personality traits in model 4b, however, the gender coefficient again decreased. Thus, self-esteem and personality traits seemed to balance each other out. Also, it can be noted that both emotional stability – on which women scored lower – and agreeableness – on which they scored higher – were positively related to job satisfaction. In summary, we found that the relationship between gender, personality, and job satisfaction was complex. Still, the results suggest that dispositional factors should be considered in studies of gender and job satisfaction.

5 Discussion

The thrust of this paper was to re-visit central hypotheses on the gender-job satisfaction paradox by utilizing a specific sample. With this sample, comprising younger and highly educated Swedish men and women working in the same professions, hypotheses of gender-specific expectations are put to a strong test. In previous research, researchers have attributed women’s higher job satisfaction to their lower expectations, arguing that gender differences will fade away as women’s labour market prospects improve. Others, however, argue that women are more contented than men because their jobs satisfy a need for family adaptions. Thus, work-family trade-offs are presented as a vital mechanism linking women’s lower career attainments to their higher satisfaction.

Our study presents two main findings. First, we show that, after controlling for a range of job characteristics, women report a higher level of job satisfaction than men. Certainly, the fact that traditional gender differential appears in this select sample, comprising women and men who are comparable in terms of cohort, career stage and occupational choice and who were brought up in a context where the gender gap in labour force participation was closed decades ago, casts some doubt on the notion that the paradox is transitory and will disappear as women’s work expectations increase [see e.g. 2, 6, 7]. Second, although the paradox appears to be surprisingly persistent, it cannot be attributed to work-family trade-offs.

Several pieces of evidence underpin the conclusion that gender differences in satisfaction do not result from women trading off wage and career development for ‘family-friendly’ work conditions. First, these differences are not related to occupational choice. According to our analysis, gender gaps in satisfaction are neither suppressed nor mediated by occupational choice. The unadjusted gender coefficient is not significant either in the stratified sample, where individuals in gender-atypical occupations were oversampled, or in bivariate weighted regressions where the gender composition in each occupation resembles that in the actual population. Also, the gender composition of the occupation is not systematically related either to women’s or men’s level of satisfaction. Second, we do not find gender differences in satisfaction to be related to women’s larger family responsibilities or their stronger preferences for ‘family-friendly’ work. The analysis shows that women in this sample do not aim for trade-off, but express dual commitment to work and family to a larger extent than men. However, such differences in work-family strategies are not related to job satisfaction. Third, women’s jobs are not generally more ‘family-friendly’ than are men’s jobs and potential family adaptions – expressed in lower requirements for employer flexibility – do not contribute to women’s higher satisfaction. Instead we find that women’s lower level of job control suppresses their satisfaction relative to men. The demonstrated importance of job control is reasonable in the light of work environment research based on the well-established demand-control model [cf. 45]. According to this model, job control is the decisive factor distinguishing ‘high-strain jobs’ from ‘active jobs’, in which stressful demands can be efficiently coped with and which are optimal for learning and development. Our results suggest that research on gender and job satisfaction should consider more closely factors such as job control and schedule flexibility. However, judging by the lack of interaction effects, these factors do not appear to be more important to women than to men. In fact, none of the variables in our analysis shows gender-specific effects and therefore, the idea that men and women value the factors differently as argued by e.g. Hakim [3] and Zou [4], receives no support. Also, we do not find personality traits to explain the gender differential in job satisfaction.

All in all, then, the fact that women report more satisfaction than men with similar jobs is not explained by the comprehensive set of factors considered in our analysis – ranging from family responsibilities and work-family strategies to psychological dispositions. In fact, considering the select sample utilized in the analysis, the paradox could appear more paradoxical than ever. To resolve this paradox different roads could be taken in future research. The most obvious road would be to continue the search for factors that may compensate to some extent for the negative impact of factors such as low job control and explain women’s higher satisfaction. Here, we believe support from supervisors and co-workers would be one factor worth considering. In research on psychosocial work environment, workplace support is often considered as a third dimension of the job demand-control model [46]. Examining the importance of support is motivated also by findings in the job satisfaction literature. For example, Zou [4] suggests that women value relationships at the workplace more highly than men and the indicator of flexibility used by Bender et al. [1] in fact includes aspects of support. However, another approach would be to widen the lens and consider job satisfaction more broadly in the light of gender role socialization and persistent gender inequalities. For example, it may be time to problemize not just women’s higher satisfaction but also men’s lower satisfaction. From this perspective, new questions can be asked. For example, if men perceive a need to fulfil a traditional provider role in the family, their job satisfaction may also be related to the relative resources of spouses. Also, to assess the extent to which women’s higher satisfaction reflect an adaption to unequal opportunities, gender differences in job satisfaction could be explored in relation to opportunities for ‘exit’ and ‘voice’ [47]. To assess the price of such adaptions, satisfaction could also be further explored in relation to gender health differences.

The study presented here has several limitations, notably the cross-sectional design and the focus on certain occupations. The stratified sample comprising five occupations enabled a close-up view on men and women with similar endowments working in both gender-typical and gender-atypical occupations. However, the findings from this select sample cannot be generalized to the labour market as a whole. It is possible that gendered work-family trade-offs are related to class and therefore would appear more clearly in a broader sample. Nevertheless, according to the study presented here, such trade-offs cannot be described as the overarching mechanism perpetuating the gender-job satisfaction paradox in the modern dual-earner society.

Conflict of interest

None to report.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

For financial support we gratefully acknowledge the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) grant number 2011-0816.

i

As a test, we have run all analyses with an index where satisfaction with wages is excluded, with the same results throughout.

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