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Women in non-traditional versus traditional occupations : social comparison, job satisfaction and career success

This research investigated the relationships between reference group choice and job satisfaction, and explored womens definitions of career success. Women working in traditional and non-traditional occupations (N = 52) in a mid-sized university in Western Canada participated in personal interviews. The results revealed that significantly more women compared themselves to others when assessing their job satisfaction than those who did not. No significant differences emerged when comparing levels of satisfaction of women in non-traditional occupations with male reference groups and women in traditional occupations with female reference groups. Similarly, no significant differences in levels of satisfaction emerged between women in non-traditional occupations with female reference groups and women in traditional occupations with female reference groups. However, low power may have accounted for the non-significant findings. Other factors, such as job characteristics, that may be influencing levels of job satisfaction are discussed. Content analysis of womens definitions of career success suggested that women in each type of occupations used similar subjective criteria when defining career success, with the two most frequent coded criteria being happy with work and achieving their goals. Organizational implications of the findings are discussed, including possible factors influencing womens levels of satisfaction, and the development of reward systems reflective of the interests of all employees. Future directions for research are proposed, such as continued investigation of the concept of similar comparison others for women, and womens perceptions of the importance of social comparisons in assessing levels of job satisfaction.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-06282006-112725
Date03 August 2006
CreatorsWoods, Debra Michelle
ContributorsFisher, Ronald, Alexitch, Louise R., Scissons, Ed
PublisherUniversity of Saskatchewan
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-06282006-112725/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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