Although women in general are aware of and concerned about the 'gender wage gap,' individual women do not report significantly greater dissatisfaction with their pay. Crosby (1982) termed this phenomenon, 'the paradox of the contented female worker.' The current study focused on the reasons for women's satisfaction with lower pay, and proposed a model of the factors leading to pay satisfaction that were expected to account for this difference Specifically, men and women were expected to have different motives for making social comparisons, which would lead to differences in the direction of comparison. The direction of comparison, in turn, was hypothesized to affect pay expectations, which, along with actual pay, should impact entitlement. Finally, entitlement was expected to lead to satisfaction, with value of pay moderating this relationship These hypotheses were tested using a sample of male and female attorneys employed in public and private sector organizations. Limited support was found for the hypothesized relationships. There were no significant gender differences in motives for comparison, and the only motive for comparison significantly related to comparison direction was self-improvement. Comparison direction was not significantly related to pay expectations, and pay expectations was, unexpectedly, negatively related to feelings of entitlement. However, lower actual pay was related to greater feelings of entitlement for both men and women. Higher entitlement, higher value of pay, and lower actual pay all were associated with lower pay level satisfaction. Value of pay moderated the relationship between entitlement and benefit satisfaction, but only feelings of entitlement was predictive of raise satisfaction and administration satisfaction The results of this study suggest that although women have lower pay, they also have lower pay expectations, and thus men and women did not differ significantly in terms of their feelings of entitlement or satisfaction. Based on these findings, researchers interested in pay satisfaction are encouraged to investigate additional personal and situational characteristics that affect pay expectations / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_26832 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Contributors | Davison, Heather Kristl (Author), Burke, Michael J (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
Page generated in 0.008 seconds