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SHORT PAPER Evidence of

gender
Job satisfaction: empirical differences
evidence of gender differences
279
Javier Garcı́a-Bernal, Ana Gargallo-Castel,
Mercedes Marzo-Navarro and Pilar Rivera-Torres Received January 2005
Department of Economics and Business Management, Revised February 2005
Accepted February 2005
Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

Abstract
Purpose – Human resources management directed at improving job satisfaction has become a
subject of growing interest in both the professional world and the academic world, and is justified by
the impact that satisfaction has on business performance. The main objective of this work is to
determine empirically the factors that have an impact on the satisfaction of Spanish workers, as well
as to compare the existence of differences in the key dimensions of satisfaction according to workers’
gender.
Design/methodology/approach – Of the study sample, only information pertaining to Spain was
selected. Of 413 specific cases, 66.8 per cent were male and 33.2 per cent female. A factor analysis was
conducted on those variables which could impact on an individual’s job satisfaction. These aspects
were considered through an 11-item questionnaire.
Findings – The results obtained in this research show that the job satisfaction of Spanish workers is
an element that is susceptible to improvement. Moreover, it is observed that the level of job satisfaction
is determined by four factors: “economic aspects”, “interpersonal relations”, “working conditions”, and
“personal fulfilment”. A subsequent analysis according to workers’ gender shows that although men
and women take into account the same dimensions, the degree to which each dimension has an impact
is different for each sub-sample.
Research limitations/implications – The sample used refers to a Spanish case. In the future it
would be interesting to extend this to include other countries.
Practical implications – The main results of this study are a knowledge of the variables that affect
the level of employee satisfaction, which should be useful to the management of companies, and those
that should be considered in order to take better advantage of the competitive opportunities that can
provide a company with motivated to committed staff.
Originality/value – This study analyzes factors that determine job satisfaction according to the
worker’s gender.
Keywords Job satisfaction, Human resource management, Factor analysis, Gender
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Employee satisfaction has become one of the main corporate objectives in recent years.
Organisations cannot reach competitive levels of quality, either at a product level or a

This paper was written within the context of the “Market, Reputation and Marketing” group.
Women in Management Review
The authors would like to express their thanks for financial support received under the Vol. 20 No. 4, 2005
MCYT-FEDER Research Project, BEC grant 2002-04546-C02-02, and the MCYT-FEDER pp. 279-288
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Research Project SEC2002-00835. Database contribution by the Zentralarchive für Empirische 0964-9425
Sozialforschung (ZA) is also acknowledged. DOI 10.1108/09649420510599098
WIMR customer service level, if their personnel do not feel satisfied or do not identify with the
20,4 company (Stewart, 1996). As a converse example, motivated and committed staff can
be a determining factor in the success of an organisation.
An approximation of the definition of job satisfaction first requires a general
definition of the concept of satisfaction. Numerous attempts have been made by
researchers to define the concept of satisfaction, and they all acknowledge that
280 satisfaction is the final state of a psychological process. Most of the existing definitions
have been reviewed and compared by Giese and Cote (1999). In accordance with this
review, satisfaction could be defined as “a summary and affective response of variable
intensity that is centred on the specific aspects of the acquisition and/or the
consumption and that takes place at the exact moment when an individual evaluates
the object”.
In the case of job satisfaction, although there is no universal definition of the
concept of job satisfaction (Mumford, 1991), it can be conceived of as a
multi-dimensional concept that includes a set of favourable or unfavourable feelings
by which employees perceive their job (Davis and Newstrom, 1999).
Specifically, Churchill et al. (1974) define job satisfaction according to all the
characteristics of the job itself and of the work environment in which employees may
find rewards, fulfilment and satisfaction, or conversely, sentiments of frustration
and/or dissatisfaction. In contrast, Locke (1976) conceptualises job satisfaction as the
emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job. Subsequently, Price and
Muller (1986) identify job satisfaction by the degree to which individuals like their
job.
Expressed more simply, Spector (1997), Judge and Hulin (1993) and Judge and
Watanabe (1993) present job satisfaction as the degree to which a person feels satisfied
by their job, which has an impact on personal wellbeing and even on the life
satisfaction of the employee.
It is therefore necessary to determine the factors that define this satisfaction,
thereby allowing suitable updates to be made in order to prevent the deterioration of
job conditions in an organisation.
Studies performed by authors such as Reiner and Zhao (1999), directed at analysing
the level of job satisfaction, look for differences around diverse variables, which can be
grouped together into two categories:
(1) the personal characteristics of employees; and
(2) the characteristics of the job position itself.
In the opinion of Clark (1998), the first group of characteristics – personal
characteristics – causes variations in the determinants of job satisfaction according to
the personal characteristics themselves. The relevance of these characteristics leads to
the selection of one of them, specifically the gender of the worker. The justification for
this choice stems from the considerable rise in the increasing numbers of women who
have been joining the labour force in recent years. Then, it is of interest to study the
relationship between gender and job satisfaction (Oshagbemi, 2000).
For example, in Spain the National Institute of Statistics says that about 38.4 per
cent of new joiners to the labour force are women (INE, 2003). This generates a need for
better understanding of job satisfaction, particularly using a gendered perspective, an
issue that has been underscored by researchers.
Objective Evidence of
The objective of this paper is, on the one hand, to identify the variables that affect the
level of an individual’s satisfaction with their job in the Spanish case, as well as to
gender
analyse the level of the impact of this satisfaction. On the other hand, the second differences
objective of this study is also to analyse the differences between the factors that have
an impact on satisfaction as perceived by men and women.
281
Description of the sample
The sample used in this study was obtained from the 1997 ISSP-Work Orientations II
database “Attitudes towards work”, which includes homogeneous information about
the labour and socioeconomic aspects of various European countries and the United
States, to complement traditional measures of job quality with worker-supplied
information regarding a wide variety of characteristics of the current job. This
information was obtained through a survey.
Of all the available observations, only the information referring to Spain was
selected. Out of these observations, 413 cases were selected, which corresponded to
individuals who were working at a paid job at the time that the survey was taken. Of
these cases, 66.8 per cent corresponded to males, and the remaining 33.2 per cent
corresponded to females.
The women’s mean age was slightly younger than the men’s. The percentage of
women under 45 years was 73.1 percent, as against 68.9 per cent for men. Perhaps this
occurs because there are more young women joining the labour force than men (see
Table I).
As regards the working environment, 26.3 per cent of individuals work in the public
or government sector, 53.3 per cent are in the private sector and the rest are

Gender
Men Women
Age (years) n Percentage n Percentage

18-24 years 31 11.3 18 13.0

25-34 years 81 29.4 41 30.3
35-44 years 78 28.2 41 29.8
45-54 years 53 19.1 24 17.5
55-64 years 32 11.7 13 9.5
65-74 years 1 0.4 – – Table I.
Total 276 66.0 137 33.0 Description of the sample
Mean 38.8 37.0 by gender and age

Men Women Total

Government sector 12.1 11.6 11.5

Public sector 13.9 16.7 14.9
Private sector 53.8 53.6 53.8 Table II.
Self-employed 20.1 18.2 19.6 Description of the sample
Note: Figures given are percentages by gender and sector
WIMR self-employed (see Table II). The percentage of women in the public sector is slightly
higher than the percentage of men (28.3 and 24.4 per cent, respectively).
20,4 The items used to analyse the job satisfaction of employees have been collected
through five-point interval scales, except for the socio-demographic variables, which
had their own scales.

282 Methodology and definition of the variables

In order to reach the objective of the study, a factor analysis has been performed on the
variables that, in accordance with the specialised literature, could have an impact on
the level of an individual’s satisfaction with their job[1].
Among the variables that have an impact on employee satisfaction, according to the
classic model of Hackman and Oldham (1980), the “job characteristics model”, the
potential motivator of a job position is affected by various, key dimensions such as the
variety of skills used, the social impact of the job on other people, the identity of the
products or services generated, the perceptions of autonomy and the sources of
feedback about the quality of the results.
The specialised literature on managing the human factor highlights wages,
relationships with superiors and with co-workers, and promotion opportunities (Leal
et al., 1999), interpersonal relationships, the nature and physical conditions of the job,
promotion and improvement possibilities, retribution and security (Puchol, 1997), and
questions relating to the impact on society, interest in the job, etc. (Hay Group, 2002).
These aspects were considered through 11 items in the questionnaire:
.
helping people;
.
helping society;
.
independence;
.
interest in the job;
.
job security;
.
wage;
.
advancement opportunities and conditions relating to the level of physical effort;
.
dangerous conditions;
.
stress and exhaustion;
.
relationships with superiors; and
.
relationships with co-workers.

Results
Of the initial 11 variables available, four factors were obtained that include the
following aspects: “personal development on the job” (helping people, a useful job to
society, working independently, interesting work), “interpersonal relationships”
(relationships with superiors and relationships with co-workers), “economic aspects”
(wages, advancement opportunities and job security) and “job conditions” (dangerous
conditions, physical effort, stressful work and exhausting work), with latent roots
greater than the unit, which include 63 per cent of the variance. The first factor
includes the variables pertaining to the personal development of the employee at their
job position, which groups together two of the three factors proposed by the Hay Group
(2002): emotional wage (intrinsic motives) and social wage (extrinsic motives). The Evidence of
second factor, “interpersonal relationships”, includes relationships with colleagues and gender
superiors. The next factor includes economic aspects and coincides with the third of the
factors proposed by Hay Group (2002), which is designated the economic wage. The differences
last of the factors detected, “job conditions”, makes reference to the physical and
environmental conditions of the job (see Table III).
Reliability analysis of the underlying scales of each component detected, measured 283
through Cronbach’s alpha values (Cronbach, 1951), allows their reliability to be
accepted (Nunnally, 1987). The reliability analysis performed to assess the internal
consistency of “interpersonal relationships” gives a coefficient correlation with a value
of 0.57, usually considered to be an acceptable value.
After establishing the existence of the four components and after verifying the
reliability of the four underlying scales, their potential effects on the satisfaction of
employees with their job position were determined. To do so, various hypotheses have
been proposed in this regard:
H1. Job satisfaction is positively related to the conditions that correspond to
personal development on the job.
H2. Job satisfaction is positively related to the economic aspects of the job.
H3. Job satisfaction is positively related to the interpersonal relationships on the
job.
H4. Job satisfaction is positively related to the job conditions.
In order to verify the proposed hypotheses, the previously obtained factors – “personal
development on the job”, “job conditions”, “interpersonal relationships” and “economic
aspects” – have been used as independent variables in order to perform the

Personal
development Interpersonal Economic
on the job relationships aspects Job conditions

Helping people 0.888 – – –

Helping society 0.773 – – –
Independence 0.511 – – –
Interest in the job 0.596 – – –
Relationships with superiors – 0.886 – –
Relationships with co-workers – 0.865 – –
Advancement opportunities – – 0.811 –
Wage – – 0.756 –
Job security – – 0.613 –
Physical conditions relating to
effort – – – 0.787
No exhaustion – – – 0.771
No dangerous conditions – – – 0.674 Table III.
No stress – – – 0.532 Results of the principal
Accumulated variance (per cent) 23.893 10.619 9.155 15.659 components analysis
WIMR corresponding regression analysis (Hair et al., 1998). The dependent variable, job
20,4 satisfaction, was collected directly in the survey through one item (see Table IV).
The variables “personal development on the job”, “interpersonal relationships” and
“economic aspects” present a positive and statistically significant influence, at 1 per
cent, on job satisfaction. Therefore, H1, H2 and H3 can be accepted. However, the “job
conditions” such as stress, physical effort, dangerous conditions and exhaustion, do
284 not show a significant effect on the dependent variable. This result prevents H4 (which
positively related job satisfaction and the physical and environmental conditions of the
job) from being accepted. This may be justified based on various arguments:
.
the physical and environmental conditions of the job tend to be known
beforehand by the employee;
.
they are aspects that are scarcely susceptible to unilateral change by the
employee, which means an attitude of resignation/acceptance; and
.
they are aspects that are frequently compensated by economic variables.
The results obtained are consistent with the grouping proposed by Hay Group (2002).
The importance of the emotional wage or the intrinsic motives, of the social wage or the
extrinsic motives – both of which are included in the factors designated “personal
development on the job” and “interpersonal relationships” – and of the economic wage
included in the factor designated “economic aspects” is confirmed. Moreover, it is
verified that the factor related to “job conditions”, which did not appear in the Hay
Group (2002) study, is not significant.
As regards the differences in job satisfaction according to the gender of the survey
respondent, and in accordance with the contributions by Oshagbemi (2000), McDuff
(2001), DeVaney and Chen (2003), Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (2003), in which no
differences between men and women were detected, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H5. There are no differences in the composition of the factors that determine the
level of satisfaction of men and women.
For this hypothesis, as in the preceding case, a factor analysis was performed, first
dividing the sample according to the gender of the survey respondent.
In the men’s case, four factors are obtained that explain 57.522 per cent of the
variance. The items are grouped together in each factor in the same way as in the total
sample, i.e. “personal development on the job”, “interpersonal relationships”,
“economic aspects” and “job conditions”. For the sub-sample of women, four factors
are also obtained that explain 63.686 per cent of the variance, but the composition of
one of the factors is different. As can be observed in Table V, the items of the second of

Constant Standardized beta coefficient

Personal development on the job 0.196***

Interpersonal relationships 0.221***
Table IV. Economic aspects 0.215***
Results of the regression Job conditions 0.064
analysis: satisfaction Adjusted R 2 0.185
dependent variable Note: ***p , 0:001
 Personal
Evidence of
development on Economic Interpersonal gender
the job aspects relationships Job conditions differences
Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

Helping people 0.867 0.934 – – – – – –

Helping society 0.754 0.826 – – – – – – 285
Independence 0.612 0.515 – – – – – –
Interest in the job 0.521 0.666 – – – – – –
Relationships with
superiors – – 0.850 20.780 – – – –
Relationships with
co-workers – – 0.844 20.892 – – – –
Advancement opportunities – – – – 0.810 0.758 – –
Wage – – – – 0.808 0.714 – –
Job security – – – – 0.526 0.759 – –
Physical conditions relating
to effort – – – – – – 0.798 0.750
No exhaustion – – – – – – 0.748 0.830 Table V.
No dangerous conditions – – – – – – 0.693 0.581 Results of the principal
No stress – – – – – – 0.428 0.690 components analysis by
Accumulated variance (per cent) 22.649 26.867 11.435 10.541 9.080 8.928 14.358 17.350 gender

the components detected, which explains 10.541 per cent of the variance, take negative
values.
Although there are differences in the values of the items of this factor, positive for
men and negative for women, the items that make up each factor are the same,
independent of the gender analysed. This forces H5 to be accepted.
Once the composition of the factors is detected for both cases, i.e. men and women,
the influence of each of them on job satisfaction is analysed. To do so, a set of
hypotheses is proposed:
H6. The factors detected for men have a positive influence on satisfaction.
H7. The factors “personal development on the job”, “job conditions” and
“economic aspects” have a positive influence on women’s satisfaction, but the
“interpersonal relationships” factor has a negative impact.
The reliability analysis of the underlying scales of each component of each of the
sub-samples (men and women) – analysed through Cronbach’s alpha values for
components with more than two items (Cronbach, 1951), and the correlation
coefficients for components with two items – allows us to accept their reliability
(Nunnally, 1987).
In order to confirm these hypotheses, regression analysis was performed through
the application of the Enter method for each of the sub-samples, whereby the
dependent variable was the “degree of overall satisfaction with the job” and the
explanatory variables were each of the previously defined components.
The results obtained, which are shown in Table VI, indicate that for both cases, the
factors “personal development on the job” and “economic aspects” show a positive and
statistically significant influence, at 1 per cent, on job satisfaction. In contrast, the
WIMR “interpersonal relationships” component was not statistically significant influence in
20,4 the case of women. Thus, the “job conditions” factor was not significant in the case of
men. Therefore, H6 and H7 cannot be totally accepted. Only three of the four factors
detected have an impact on the level of men’s satisfaction, and, in the case of women,
“interpersonal relationships” has no statistically significant influence, although the
other three factors have a positive and significant influence.
286
Conclusions
Looking ahead to the results, and as a first estimate of the results of a broader work, as
its main contribution to the management of companies this study provides knowledge
of the variables that affect the level of employee satisfaction, and which variables
should be considered in order to take better advantage of the competitive opportunities
that can provide a company with motivated and committed staff.
The results obtained show that the level of worker job satisfaction reaches
intermediate levels in the Spanish case, regardless of worker gender. As a result, there
is room for improvement. Therefore, the first business implication that is derived from
this result is the need to implement business policies directed at obtaining greater
personnel satisfaction, which may result in both an improvement in worker
productivity as well as a reduction in the cost of hiring and training workers, among
other things.
Moreover, this work contributes new empirical evidence about the various
determinants of job satisfaction. Specifically, four factors have been identified:
(1) “personal development on the job”;
(2) “interpersonal relationships”;
(3) “economic aspects”; and
(4) “job conditions”.
However, not all dimensions have a similar impact. Furthermore, these factors have
different impacts on men and women.
These results provide better knowledge of the variables that comprise each one of
the factors that determine the satisfaction of their employees, a subject that should be
considered within the scope of business management in order to make better use of the
opportunities that a motivated and committed staff can contribute to an organisation.
Even though the results of the work show that there are no differences in the
perceptions of men and women as regards the dimensions that make up job
satisfaction, a more in-depth analysis of these dimensions does show differences in the

Standardized beta coefficient

Constant Men Women

Personal development on the job 0.220*** 0.234**

Interpersonal relationships 0.272*** 2 0.127
Table VI. Economic aspects 0.193** 0.211**
Results of the regression Job conditions 0.011 0.156*
analysis: satisfaction Adjusted R 2 0.200 0.164
dependent variable Notes: *p , 0:1; **p , 0:05; ***p , 0:001
impact that they have on the level of satisfaction according to gender. While the Evidence of
“interpersonal relations” factor has the greatest impact on job satisfaction for men, this gender
dimension is not significant in determining the job satisfaction of female workers.
Conversely, the “work conditions” factor conditions the level of job satisfaction with differences
respect to women, while it is not statistically significant with respect to men.
These differences in the determinants of job satisfaction between men and women
justify the need to adapt human resources policies to take into account the 287
discrepancies that exist according to the gender of the worker.
The different impacts on job satisfaction for men and women are a consequence of
the non-comparison, both social and labour, between the sexes. It would be interesting
to initiate a path of research in this direction.

Note
1. Specifically, the method used was the direct oblimin criterion, which does not presuppose
independence between the factors (Ferrán, 2001). This statistical technique allows the
dimensionality of the problem to be reduced, thereby obtaining greater manageability of the
data.

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