You can’t always get what you want: Gender Differences in Job Satisfaction of University Graduates

Werner Bönte () and Stefan Krabel
Additional contact information
Stefan Krabel: Institute of Economics, Economic Policy Research, University of Kassel

No SDP14007, Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library

Abstract: Previous literature stressed on the gender differences in job satisfaction and the factors influencing the job satisfaction of men and women. Two rationales are usually provided for the finding that women tend to be relatively more satisfied with their jobs than men although disadvantaged in labour markets: first, women may have relatively lower expectations of career and income, and second, they may attach relatively less importance to extrinsic rewards than men. In order to analyse whether substantial gender differences exist already at the beginning of the career, we employ information of over 20000 graduates collected through a large-scale survey of German university graduates who recently entered the labour market. We find that the job satisfaction of female graduates is on average slightly lower than the job satisfaction of male graduates, but our results do not point to substantial gender differences. In our sample of highly qualified individuals, men and women are very similar in what they want from their jobs and also in their perceptions of what they get. While our results point to substantial similarity of men and women in the early career stage, gender differences may emerge at later stages of the career life cycle.

Keywords: ob satisfaction; gender differences; working conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J28 J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://elekpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/ubwhsmig/down ... riginalFilename=true (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bwu:schdps:sdp14007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Frank Hoffmann ().