To read this content please select one of the options below:

Do men and women experience work engagement and job satisfaction to the same extent in collectivistic, patriarchal societies?

Piyali Ghosh (OB/HR Area, Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, Ranchi, India)
I.M. Jawahar (Department of Management and Quantitative Methods, College of Business, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, USA)
Alka Rai (NTPC School of Business, Noida, India)

International Journal of Manpower

ISSN: 0143-7720

Article publication date: 25 September 2019

Issue publication date: 23 March 2020

1296

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how cognitive and emotional job demands interact with job resources to influence work engagement, and whether work engagement mediates the association of job demands with job satisfaction. In collectivistic patriarchal societies women have fewer resources to devote to work; thus, based on Conservation of Resources theory, the authors have tested if job demands relate differently to work engagement for women than for men and if the mediation differs across genders.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data collected from 724 bank officers in India, the authors used the PROCESS macro developed for SPSS to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Gender interacted with job demands to influence work engagement, such that the relationship was stronger for men than for women. Moderated mediation analysis showed that men experience work engagement and through work engagement increased job satisfaction from challenging job demands, whereas these benefits do not accrue for women, and when they do, they are significantly less than for men.

Originality/value

Most models and theories of organizational behavior have been developed in the western world where, relatively speaking, men and women enjoy almost equal privileges at work and at home. In collectivistic patriarchal societies, women are responsible for the lion’s share of household chores (Rout et al., 1999) and thus have fewer resources to devote to work, affecting their work engagement and satisfaction. The results behoove researchers to consider gender as a study variable when designing studies on organizational phenomena.

Keywords

Citation

Ghosh, P., Jawahar, I.M. and Rai, A. (2020), "Do men and women experience work engagement and job satisfaction to the same extent in collectivistic, patriarchal societies?", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 52-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-11-2018-0378

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles