Paradox lost

Colin Green (), John Heywood, Parvinder Kler () and Gareth Leeves ()

No 107134075, Working Papers from Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department

Abstract: The greater job satisfaction reported by female workers represents a puzzle given, on average, their worse labour market outcomes. Using the original data source of Clark (1997), we show that over the last two decades the female satisfaction gap has largely vanished. This reflects a strong secular decline in female job satisfaction. This decline happened for younger women in the 1990s as they aged and because of new female workers in more recent years that have lower job satisfaction than their early 1990s peers. Decompositions make clear that the decline does not reflect deteriorating job characteristics for women but rather their increasingly harsh evaluation of jobs characteristics. These findings fit with the suggestion that women in the early 1990s had a gap between their labour market expectations and actual experience that has since closed and that the gender satisfaction gap has vanished as a consequence.

Keywords: Job Satisfaction; Gender; Expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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