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

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.