“Happiness of Women at Work and at Home”
Influence of the Family Situation on Job
Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction of Women
Master Thesis, MSc Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics & Business
June 2013 Katharina Schneider Student ID: s1942131 Bilitonstraat 24a 9715ES Groningen E-Mail: schneider.katharina19@gmail.com Supervisor: P.H. van der Meer
Acknowledgment: I would like to thank my supervisor dr. P.H. van der Meer for his helpful comments during the preparation of my master thesis and especially during the complex statistical analysis.
2 ABSTRACT
Women face worse working conditions than men, but they are more satisfied with their jobs as well as with their life in general. This research focuses on the effects of the family situation on job satisfaction and family satisfaction. It is hypothesized that job satisfaction and family satisfaction, which both determine the overall subjective well-being of women, are positively and reciprocally related to each other. The family life is represented by having children and having a stable relationship. Referring to the work-family conflict literature and social support theory, it is hypothesized that children have a negative effect on job satisfaction and consequently family satisfaction while having a relationship has positive effects on family satisfaction and thus on job satisfaction. Several job characteristics, such as compensation and career opportunities, as well as personal characteristics, for example the age and the education, are also included within the study. The analysis, using the “European Quality of Life Survey 2007”, reveals that job and family satisfaction are in fact positively related to each other. For employed women, however, it is found that children do not have any effect on the job satisfaction. The positive impact of having a partner onto family satisfaction is supported, but the effect of partner on job satisfaction is highly controversial.
Keywords: subjective well-being; women; job satisfaction; family satisfaction; children;
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ... 4 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 7 2.1 Subjective well-being ... 7 2.2 Job Satisfaction ... 8 2.3 Family Satisfaction ... 11
2.4 Interaction between Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction... 12
2.5 Family situation ... 13
2.5.1 Work-Family Conflict: ... 14
2.5.2 Social Support Theory: ... 16
3. METHODOLOGY ... 18
4. FINDINGS ... 21
4.1 Basic Description of the Data ... 21
4.2 Model 1: Job Satisfaction ... 23
4.3 Model 2: Family Satisfaction ... 25
4.4 Model 3: Determining Subjective Well-Being ... 27
4.5 Summary of the Findings ... 28
5. DISCUSSION ... 29
6. CONCLUSION ... 33
4
1. INTRODUCTION
Women at work- They get paid less, there is an inevitable glass ceiling which prevents them from moving up the career ladder beyond a certain hierarchical level and they often have worse jobs than men (Clark, 1997). Nevertheless, an increasing body of literature confirms that women still report a higher level of job satisfaction. The question why this is the case becomes obvious. The paradox between happiness and differences in gender will become more important because gender roles are changing and a growing body of women pursue a professional career and escape the conventional role of being a mother.
Happiness is crucial in everybody’s life. Happiness, or often labeled subjective well-being, is determined by seven broad categories of influences, including income, personality, socially developed characteristics, relationship and how people spend their time (Dolan, Peasgood & White, 2007). One aspect that is often mentioned to be positively related to subjective well-being is the job. It is often argued that working, and in particular the satisfaction with the job, increases the subjective well-being of a person. The rise of positive psychology has increased the attention towards studying the importance of happiness and the effects on productivity and job satisfaction, but happiness as a concept is more than job satisfaction (Fisher, 2010). Job satisfaction is only one component of the overall subjective well-being of a person since life is more than just the job. Nevertheless, it is necessary to fully understand how the job can contribute to the well-being of an employee.
It is essential to distinguish clearly between happiness at home and happiness at the job, as well as subjective well-being. The concept subjective well-being was developed as a self-reported measure of utility and presents “an umbrella term for how we think and feel about our lives” (Dolan, Peasgood & White, 2007). The subjective well-being takes the individual well-being to the overall assessment of the life. The distinction made in this paper is that subjective well-being is determined by family satisfaction (which represents the happiness of a women at home in her non-professional life) and the job satisfaction (which represents the happiness of a women with her job, so her professional life).
5 perceived happiness which determines increased productivity and more effective work. Many researchers have already focused on the impacts of factors such as payment, flexibility at work and part-time jobs. However, for managers as well as researchers it will be beneficial to cover also personal factors and influences that increase the job satisfaction because higher job satisfaction leads to higher productivity.
This paper will take a different approach in assessing how job satisfaction and subjective well-being are related to each other. It will be argued that the happier a women is in her non-professional life, the happier she will be with her job and vice versa. One important aspect to consider within this setting is the impact of the family situation on both job satisfaction as well as family satisfaction. The family situation is characterized by the presence of a partner and the presence of children. This is different from existing research in the sense that most researchers argue that the higher the job satisfaction, the higher the general subjective well-being. Often, the satisfaction with the private life is not used within a study of the relation between job satisfaction and subjective well-being. Nevertheless, the relation between work and family is a highly crucial issue to research (Booth & Van Ours, 2008).
The family situation is used to explain whether a family provides social support to the working women, thereby increasing the satisfaction levels, or whether the often prevalent work-family-conflict will decrease the happiness, both at work and at home. It is distinguished between the impact of children and the impact of a stable relationship. An important notion by Clark (1997) is that marriage has a strong positive effect on the job satisfaction of women. However, it is unclear whether single women report a lower job satisfaction than married women. Several statements will be tested within this study. All of them are outlined below:
1. Job satisfaction and family satisfaction of employed women are related to one another.
2. The family situation, measured by the presence of children and the presence of a partner, has an impact on the job satisfaction as well as on the family satisfaction of employed women.
3. Job satisfaction and family satisfaction are both part of the overall subjective well-being of employed women.
7
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Subjective well-being
Happiness is one of the most valued goals in almost every society and it is of crucial importance to most people (Fisher, 2010). Happiness can be defined as “pleasant moods and emotions, well-being and positive attitudes” (Fisher, 2010: 384). In general, happiness has been defined in various ways but two views should receive considerable attention. On the one hand, there is the hedonic view which defines pleasing feelings and satisfactory judgments and is demonstrated by studies involving subjective well-being (Fisher, 2010). Within this approach, subjective well-being includes two components which are (1) “judgments of life satisfaction” and (2) “affect balance” (Fisher, 2010: 385). The judgments of life satisfaction are assessed on various levels as health, relationship, work etc. and the affect balance is determined as “having preponderance of positive feelings and relatively few or rare negative feelings” (Fisher, 2010: 385). On the other hand, the second view is called eudaimonic view of happiness. This view includes an ethical approach to happiness and measures the extent to which actions are “morally right, true to one’s self, meaningful, and/or growth producing” (Fisher, 2010: 385). For the purpose of this study, the hedonic view of happiness and subjective well-being is chosen as the basic definition of the concepts.
Previous researchers argued that subjective well-being is a “general area of scientific interests rather than a single specific construct” (Diener et al., 1999). Further, Diener (1999) and his colleagues argue that subjective well-being includes several domain satisfactions, as for example work, family, leisure, health, finances and self (Diener et al., 1999). This clearly indicates that subjective well-being is the sum of different satisfaction levels. In this paper, the aspects job satisfaction and family satisfaction are used to explain the subjective well-being of women. It was assessed by other authors that “[w]ork and family are the two most significant constituents of an individual’s life”(Rathi & Barath, 2013). Thus, subjective well-being can be divided into on the one hand the happiness at the job (labeled job satisfaction) and on the other hand the happiness at home (labeled family satisfaction).
8 As stated above, subjective well-being is an umbrella term for several distinct domains where happiness can occur. Taking the same assumption, it will be argued throughout this study that family satisfaction deals with the happiness outside the work, with the most important area being the family, while job satisfaction deals solely with the work of the women, and subjective well-being represents the sum of both aspects. The following formula results:
SWB= f (JS, FS)
Where SWB refers to subjective well-being, JS to job satisfaction and FS refers to family satisfaction.
As mentioned earlier, women are said to have higher job satisfaction than men (Clark, 1997). However, women are also perceived to experience positive as well as negative emotions more intensively (Clark, 1997). Nevertheless, just focusing on the gender is not enough to explain the differences in subjective well-being (Dolan et al., 2007). This is indicated by another stream of research which states that there are no measurable differences in subjective well-being between men and women (Joshi, 2010). This research, developed by Joshi (2010) used data from the IT sector. Taking into account that other factors could have an impact, besides the gender, the results could be linked to another characteristic that all participants showed, for example in this case a relatively high level of education.
Since there are different views on the gender differences concerning subjective well-being, this study solely focuses on job satisfaction and family satisfaction of employed women without providing any gender comparisons.
2.2 Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction has long been argued to have a substantial effect on the overall happiness of people in general. It is often used as one of the most important predictors of the overall well-being of employees and is strongly related to the behavior at the workplace (Clark, 1996). In general, job satisfaction is defined as “pleasant judgments (positive attitudes) or pleasant experiences (positive feelings, moods, emotions, flow states) at work” (Fisher, 2010: 385). It is further referred to as the “overall summary evaluation a person makes regarding his/her work environment” (Scandura & Lankau, 1997: 379).
9 concepts such as “dispositional affectivity, job satisfaction, affective commitment, and typical mood at work” (Fisher, 2010: 386). Job satisfaction is said to be an attitude and this contains affective as well as cognitive components (Fisher, 2010). The satisfaction at work is highly important because job satisfaction was strongly negatively related to depression, anxiety and burnout and positively to physical health in previous studies (e.g. Fisher, 2010). Further, job satisfaction seems to be a relatively stable trait, so it does not vary dramatically from day-to-day (Fisher, 2010). Job satisfaction is an “emotional state” (Ilies, Wilson & Wagner, 2009: 87) representing the evaluation of one’s job in general in the experiences associated with it.
An interesting notion is that people are more satisfied than normally at times when they perceive to be more productive (Fisher, 2010). Past experience with relevant outcomes clearly influence how an employee perceives current outcomes (Judge et al., 1993). Thus, when an employee expected to perform worse, based on former experiences, she will be more satisfied when she performs better. However, it can also be interpreted that the more productive a person is, the happier she is with the job. The increased productivity will then lead to a higher job satisfaction.
In order to grasp the influence of job satisfaction on the overall subjective well-being, it is important to identify which factors have an influence on job satisfaction. It can be argued that job satisfaction is the “function of the balance between work-role inputs, or what the individual invests in the work role (e.g. education, time, and effort), in comparison to the work-role outcomes, or what is received (e.g. pay, status, working conditions, or intrinsic factors)” (Judge & Watanabe, 1993: 941). According to Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza, if “work-role outputs (“pleasures”) increase relative to work-role inputs (“pains”), then job satisfaction will increase” (Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza, 2000:519). Several work role inputs can be identified, as years of education, working time per week, having an exhausting job, working in physically demanding jobs and having a dangerous job (Sousa-Poza et al., 2010). In contrast to that are the work role outputs, which are compensation, job security, advancement opportunities, having an interesting job, having an independent job, helping people, usefulness to society, and good relations with the management and other colleagues (Sousa-Poza et al., 2010).
10 identity, feedback from job and autonomy (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). These aspects represent the intrinsic rewards of working. Interestingly, Hackman and Oldham (1976) do not include “factors like (monetary) compensation and hours of work or effort level” (Van der Meer & Wielers, 2013: 358). Due to this lack, other classifications include also supervision, pay and career issues (Fisher, 2010). Factors tested in this study include compensation, autonomy, having a dangerous or stressful job, job security and career opportunities.
Compensation represents an important work-role output. The relative income/ pay is said to have the most influential role for the job satisfaction (Van der Meer et al., 2013). In other words “[e]arning a higher income than one’s neighbor positively affects happiness” (Van der Meer et al., 2013).
Another important job characteristic is the autonomy in the job (Van der Meer et al., 2013; Lennon, 1994). Clark (1997) found that intrinsic returns to work are most valued by women (Clark, 1997). Autonomy and the related control at work are highly influential “for psychological functioning and well-being” (Lennon, 1994). Autonomy is one of the most important dimensions predicting job satisfaction (Lennon, 1994; Van der Meer et al., 2013). It is defined as “the opportunity to use discretion in one’s work activities” (Lennon, 1994:237) and involves aspects such as “freedom of physical movement, freedom to establish plan for one’s own task performance and freedom from close supervision” (Lennon, 1994:237).
Further aspects that have an impact on job satisfaction are having a dangerous job, having a stressful job and job security (Sousa-Poza et al., 2000). Having stress at the job should have strong negative effects on the job satisfaction because it represents an imbalance between work role inputs and work role outputs (Van der Meer et al., 2013). A dangerous job constitutes a slightly negative effect on job satisfaction (Sousa-Poza et al., 2000). Job security, on the other hand has positive effects on job satisfaction which is in line with the notion that individualistic interests are much more important than “altruistic characteristics of a job” (Sousa-Poza et al., 2000).
11 2.3 Family Satisfaction
Next to job satisfaction, the family satisfaction of women is a major part in determining the overall subjective well-being. To assess the satisfaction at home, the terminology life satisfaction is frequently used by previous researchers. Reviewing a study of Judge and Watanabe (1993), it appears that life satisfaction is distinct, but related to job satisfaction. Life satisfaction is “an individual’s overall well-being” (Qu & Zhao, 2012: 23) and further “reflects an individual’s quality of life including physical and material well-being, interpersonal relations, social activities, personal development, and fulfillment and recreation” (Qu & Zhao, 2012: 23). The most crucial aspects of the definition of life satisfaction above are interpersonal relations, social activities and fulfillment. All these aspects are all related to the family of the employed women. Therefore, in order to be explicit in measuring the private life of women, the variable satisfaction with the family is used. Further, it was found by other researchers that “life satisfaction for some workers may be partially the result of having a good job” (Adams et al., 1996: 417) and thus a clear cut between job and life satisfaction might be difficult to achieve. Life satisfaction in this sense might therefore relate more directly to the concept of subjective well-being than to the private life. In order to account for the difficulty of separating the different constructs, the private life satisfaction of employed women will be assessed using the family satisfaction, which can be obviously distinguished from the job satisfaction.
Some personal characteristics are also included in this study as control variables, such as the health, the level of education and the age.
According to Diener (1984), satisfaction also increases with age (Diener, 1984). However, other authors indicate that age represents a “U-shaped curve with higher levels at the younger and older age points” (Dolan et al., 2008). This shape however only results when other variables that might have an impact are controlled for and therefore it might be misleading (Dolan et al., 2008).
Further factors impacting happiness are the level of education and how time is spend apart from hours worked (Dolan et al., 2008). The health also seems to have an influence (Judge et al., 1993). Here it is important to focus on subjective health (Judge et al, 1993). Subjective health is positively related to the happiness (Judge et al., 1993).
12 Other crucial predictors of the satisfaction of women are the relationship status and the presence of children, which is discussed more detailed later.
2.4 Interaction between Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction
The connection between job satisfaction and other satisfaction areas has been intensively researched in the last decades. However, the direction of influence is still questionable. Some researchers have found that job satisfaction is positively related to satisfaction with the private life (Adams, Kings and Kings, 1996) whereas others found the reverse relation (Judge et al., 1993). Chacko (1993) concluded that job satisfaction causes the general happiness in life whereas Schmitt and Mellon (1980) stated that subjective well-being causes job satisfaction. These contradicting and ambiguous results show that the causal direction of the relation between subjective well-being and job satisfaction is difficult to assess (Diener et al., 1999; Judge et al., 1993). In this study, it is assumed that job satisfaction is influencing subjective well-being.
In general, job satisfaction and private-life satisfaction are positively correlated which is supported by the so-called spillover hypothesis (Georgellis & Lange, 2012). The spillover hypothesis states that attitudes and practices developed in one domain can spillover to another domain and vice versa (Georgellis et al., 2012). This strengthens the notion that being satisfied with the job also facilitates being satisfied with the rest of the life and vice versa. It has been argued that there are indirect influences of the work to the life at home, such as behaviors, emotions at work which are carried into the home situation, as well as direct effects, which are represented by job demands, which directly hinders to be involved in the family life (Georgellis et al., 2012). A study by Ford, Heinen and Langkamer (2007) also suggests that “a considerable amount of variability in job satisfaction is explained by family domain-specific variables” (Ford, Heinen & Langkamer, 2007). The authors indeed found a reciprocal relationship between job satisfaction and family satisfaction (Ford et al., 2007). Due to the spillover effects, which can of course be interpreted in both directions, it will be argued that job satisfaction and family satisfaction are positively and reciprocally related, which is also confirmed by several other researchers (Judge & Watanabe, 1993; Georgellis et al., 2012). Therefore, the first set of hypotheses in this paper is:
H1: Job satisfaction has a positive effect on family satisfaction.
13 2.5 Family situation
The relationship between work and family can have important effects on the job satisfaction as well as on the family satisfaction (Adams et al., 1996). Especially for women, an enormous body of literature exists concerning the interconnection of work and family with job satisfaction and life satisfaction.
Working women face well-documented conflicts resulting from the continuing role as primary caretakers for their children and have more difficulties in balancing work and family roles (Saltzstein et al., 2001). Due to the still apparent stereotype, men are working and women take care of the children and the household, it is argued that there are significant gender differences in the family satisfaction of employees (Parker, Watson and Webb; 2011). Women face ever-greater family demands, but also the total working hours increase while the job gets more demanding and less secure (Saltzstein et al., 2001). Especially the interaction between the work and family life has been studied heavily and created an enormous body of literature (Georgellis et al., 2012). The findings of the literature are highly diverse and sometimes highly contradicting.
14
2.5.1 Work-Family Conflict: The work-family-conflict literature states that work and family
domains can be a source of stress that influences important physical and psychological outcomes (Adams et al., 1996). Most research focus on the negative work-family conflicts (Kossek et al., 1998). Work-family conflicts as well as family-to-work conflicts both have negative effects on work outcomes such as job satisfaction (Kossek et al., 1998) and are also related to burn-out and “psychological distress” (Netemeyer, Boles & McMurrian, 1996). Work can interfere with family roles while the other direction is also possible (Kinnunen, Feldt, Mauno & Rantanen, 2010). Within this study, work-family conflicts as well as family-to-work-conflicts will be included. People with high levels of such conflicts tend to be less satisfied with their jobs (Kossek et al., 1998). There is also a negative relation between work-family-conflict and life satisfaction which is strongest for women (Kossek et al, 1998). A conflict arises when the demands of participation in one domain are incompatible with the demands of participation in the other domain (Adams et al., 1996; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). The conflict between work and family roles diminish an employee’s perception of quality of working life and quality of family life which can have impacts on organizational outcomes (Scandura et al., 1997). Higher levels of this conflict lead to lower levels of satisfaction (Kossek et al., 1998). It was found by Adams et al. (1996) that work interfering with family related significantly to burnout syndromes which are in turn immediately connected to lower job satisfaction (Adams et al., 1996). Next to job satisfaction, these syndromes were also related to lower quality of family life which consequently lead to lower family satisfaction in general and lower levels of subjective well-being (Adams et al., 1996). On the other hand, family interfering with work was negatively related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment and subjective well-being (Adams et al., 1996). There is a
15 consistent negative relation between all forms of work-family-conflict and job-life satisfaction (Kossek et al., 1998) and also with family satisfaction (Rathi & Barath, 2013).
An interesting notion however, is that even though the level of job involvement is positively related to job satisfaction, it may well lead to an increasing work-family conflict, which in turn may affect job satisfaction (Adams et al., 1996). Thus, the more involved an employee is in her job, the happier she is with her job, but the less she is satisfied with her family life in general. This is because the women cannot spend as much time with her family as she might like. However, the other extreme, high family involvement, may positively impact family satisfaction, but will ultimately lead to family interfering with work (Adams et al., 1996). Work interfering with family has a substantial negative effect on family satisfaction but family interfering with work is not so strongly related to job satisfaction (Adams et al, 1996).
Family demands can be represented by the number of children aged 13 or younger living at home (Saltzstein et al., 2001). Children might present a difficulty for employed women as they lead to multiple social roles that might be in conflict (Pearson, 2008). Reviewing the literature on the effects of young children on job satisfaction, outcomes are highly inconclusive (Hanson and Sloan, 1992). It was found that children aged 13 and younger have positive direct effects on job satisfaction (Saltzstein et al., 2001) as well as on private-life satisfaction (Dolan et al., 2008). Evolutionary psychologists say that “parenting [is] at the top of the pyramid of human needs” (Nelson et al., 2013: 3). It is suggested that parents reported higher levels of happiness and thoughts about meaning in life than non-parents did (Nelson et al., 2013). Having even more children was related to greater happiness (Nelson et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the authors claim that these results only hold true for men (Nelson et al., 2013). Additionally, women with young children “tend to be less psychologically committed to work than women with older children or no children” (Hanson et al., 1992: 801).Women are said to have more difficulties in reconciling work and home (Saltzstein et al., 2001). When family and work demands are not balanced, it will lead to a reduction in job satisfaction (Saltzstein et al., 2001).
16 work-family conflict literature, it will be argued that children younger than 13 years have negative effect on job satisfaction and consequently on family satisfaction. Thus, the third hypothesis is:
H3: Having children (aged 13 or younger living at home) decreases job satisfaction and consequently family satisfaction.
2.5.2 Social Support Theory: Another view on the relationship between family life and
subjective well-being is characterized by the social support theory (Adams et al., 1996). The social support provided by members of the work and/or family domain can have positive influence on workers general health and well-being (Adams et al., 1996). The support can take the form of both emotional as well as instrumental support (Adams et al., 1996). The support from family members is essential because they possess the unique opportunity to provide both emotional and instrumental support to the worker outside the working environment (Adams et al, 1996). It seems that “family involvement may afford the family with better opportunities to provide supportive emotional behaviors” (Adams et al., 1996: 416). The support from family members is more strongly related to better subjective well-being than work-related support (Adams et al., 1996). However, social support from family members was not predicting work outcomes, such as job satisfaction, but the general subjective well-being (Adams et al., 1996).
17 (Saltzstein et al., 2001). However, in general, one can assume that a stable relationship is beneficial for well-being while divorce is damaging. Therefore the third hypothesis is:
H4: Women in a relationship have higher levels of family satisfaction and consequently job satisfaction.
It can therefore further be stated that the family situation is a determinant for both family satisfaction and job satisfaction. Consequently, the subjective well-being formula will have two conditions:
SWB= JS + FS+ JS*FS
JS= JC+ Family Situation+ FS
FS=PC+ Family Situation+ JS
18
3. METHODOLOGY
The data set used in this study is called „Second European Quality of Life Survey 2007“, created by the European Foundation for the Improvement of living and working conditions. This data set can be downloaded freely after a registration procedure at the UK Data Archive on the website http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue?sn=6299. In total, more than 35.000 participants were interviewed in 31 European Countries. At least 1000 respondents, aged older than 18, per country participated in the study. The interview included 75 questions with four questions specified at identifying the household composition. Several questions within this survey are directly linked to the purpose of this study.
The study will only focus on women and the gender is checked for in the survey (HH2a). Hence only female respondents are included in this analysis. Furthermore, only those who are employed are tested (HH2d). In order to achieve this goal, only selected respondents that satisfy the condition of being female and employed (either at work as an employee or an employer or on child leave) are included. At this point, the sample consisted of 8605 respondents. To account for possible country-specific differences, multilevel modeling was used.
Job Satisfaction is explicitly measured with the question “Could you please tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied you are with each of the following items, where 1 means you are very dissatisfied and 10 means you are very satisfied?” and the second item represents “your present job” (Q.40.2). Job Satisfaction is used as the dependent variable for the first two analyses. The first analysis is used to determine the impact of job characteristics, personal characteristics and the family situation on the dependent variable job satisfaction.
19 demanding and stressful” (Q.10a). The career opportunities were measured in the same question by statement five. This variable was again recoded. Job security is measured by answering the question “Using this card, how likely do you think it is that you might lose your job in the next 6 months?” (Q.9) using a five-point scale, which was re-coded.
Several personal characteristics are also included. The age of the respondent (HH2b) is used next to the variable Age2, which is the squaring of the age. The subjective health was assessed (“In general would you say your health is….” (Q.43) using a five-point scale, ranging from 1 (very good) to 5 (very bad)). This variable was also recoded. The education is accounted for by the question “what is the highest level of education you completed? Is it… (Q.49) and the respondents were able to indicate their education on eight different answers.
The family situation is assessed by using two aspects of the presented household grid. A dummy variable was created to account for the presence of children. Another dummy variable was created to specify whether the woman is in a relationship.
In the next stage of the analysis, I conducted an analysis for the dependent variable Family Satisfaction, measured by the question “Could you please tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied you are with each of the following items, where 1 means you are very dissatisfied and 10 means you are very satisfied?” “Your Family Life” (Q.40.5). In this third model, I included the above mentioned personal characteristics as well as some additional influences on the life satisfaction. One additional factor is the income of the household. The income of the household is represented by question Q.57 ((“A household may have different sources of income and more than one household member may contribute to it. Thinking of your household’s total monthly income: is your household able to make ends meet….?”) and answers ranged from “very easily” (1) to “with great difficulty” (6). This variable was recoded to suit the others in the analysis.
20 respondents are provided with five statements and eight different people or groups of people from which they think they should receive support. In order to determine the social support provided by the partner, the occurrences of the value representing the spouse was counted and the resulting variable was labeled “SocialSupport”.
In the next model, I introduced the variable job satisfaction to the third model to see the effect of job satisfaction on family satisfaction. .
21
4. FINDINGS
This section will present the results from the data analysis. I will start with some basic descriptive analysis of the dataset and then provide different models, each aiming at determining different parts of the hypotheses presented in the literature review. All models are specified using multilevel modeling with a random intercept for the responding country. The first three models represent the dependent variable job satisfaction. The next three models assess the family satisfaction. The last step is to combine the family satisfaction and the job satisfaction to determine the overall subjective well-being.
4.1 Basic Description of the Data
The first step in the analysis is to provide a basic description of the data. The table below outlines the means and standard deviations of the variables in use.
TABLE 4.1 Descriptive Statistics N Mean Std. Deviation Age 7751 2.88 .87 JobSecurity 7751 1.87 1.10 Stress 7751 3.13 1.22 Compens 7751 2.83 1.11 Autonomy 7751 3.47 1.17 CareerOpp 7751 2.72 1.19 Danger 7751 2.06 1.12 FamWorkConf 7751 2.03 1.10 JobSat 7751 7.19 2.14 FamilySat 7751 7.87 2.03 SocLifeSat 7751 7.20 2.05 SubjHealth 7751 3.93 .82 SWB 7751 7.66 1.68 Educat 7666 4.52 1.21 HousehIncome 7751 3.91 1.21 WFC 7751 3.01 1.18 chldh 7751 .43 .50 partner 7751 .67 .47 Valid N (listwise) 7666
22 It can be seen that the analysis contains 7666 valid cases after adjusting for missing values. The mean scores of the three dependent variables, namely Subjective Well-Being, Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction, are fairly high.
The correlations of the most important variables of this study are provided below. The only correlations which are not significant are highlighted. These are actually between social life satisfaction and the presence of children and between job satisfaction and children. Interesting to notice are the correlations between job satisfaction, family satisfaction and subjective well-being. The correlation between job satisfaction and family satisfaction is .346 and significantly positive. The correlation between Subjective Well-Being and family Satisfaction is significantly positive (.563) and the correlation between Subjective Well-Being and Job Satisfaction is significant and positive as well (.382). Additionally, it is interesting to note that there is a significant correlation between family satisfaction and the variables children and partner, .104 and .329.
TABLE 4.2 Correlations
FamilySat SocLifeSat JobSat SWB chldh partner
FamilySat 1 SocLifeSat ,504** 1 JobSat ,346** ,409** 1 ,382** SWB ,563** ,489** ,382** 1 chldh ,104** -.008 .011 ,082** 1 partner ,329** ,068** ,033** ,215** ,252** 1
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
23 4.2 Model 1: Job Satisfaction
The findings concerning the first dependent variable job satisfaction can be found in Table 4.3. The unconditional model represents job satisfaction without any predictors. It shows that the intercept differs significantly with an estimate of 7.15 (p<.05).
TABLE 4.3
Effects of children, partnership and family satisfaction on job satisfaction Unconditional Model Job
Satisfaction Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction with Family Satisfaction
Parameter Estimate
Std.
Error Sig. Estimate
Std.
Error Sig. Estimate Std. Error Sig. Intercept 7.15 .09 .00 4.29 .25 .00 2.38 .25 .00 age2 .06 .02 .02 .02 .02 .51 Age -.08 .14 .57 .17 .13 .19 chldh .01 .05 .85 -.01 .05 .81 partner .06 .05 .19 -.33 .05 .00 Compens .27 .02 .00 .26 .02 .00 Autonomy .25 .02 .00 .24 .02 .00 Stress -.19 .02 .00 -.17 .02 .00 Danger -.19 .02 .00 -.16 .02 .00 JobSecurity -.27 .02 .00 -.23 .02 .00 CareerOpp .35 .02 .00 .33 .02 .00 Educat .13 .02 .00 .12 .02 .00 SubjHealth .23 .03 .00 .13 .03 .00 FamilySat .28 .01 .00 N 7751 7751 7751 -2 Log Likelihood 33462.84 31001.76 30390.33 Residual Variance 4.34 .07 .00 3.32 .05 .00 3.07 .05 .00 Intercept Variance .26 .07 .00 .08 .02 .00 .05 .02 .00
a. Dependent Variable: JobSat. b. p<.05
Source: Second European Quality of Life Survey 2007, UK Data Archive
24 analysis. The highlighted variables show a significant effect using the significance level threshold of p < .05.
As previous research has already concluded, the job characteristics included have a significant positive effect on Job Satisfaction. Compensation, Autonomy, Career Opportunities and the Subjective Health all show a significant effect. Job Security shows a negative effect which can be attributed to recoding. The variable actually measures job insecurity which is negatively related to job satisfaction. Having stress at the job and working in a dangerous environment show a significant negative relationship.
Concerning the impact of the children, the hypothesis H3 has to be rejected partially (H3: Having children (aged 13 or younger living at home) decreases job satisfaction and consequently family satisfaction). The analysis above shows that children do not show a significant effect on job satisfaction (p= .85). The same is true for having a partner, which also do not show any significant effects (p= .19).
The lower part of Table 4.3 also shows that by including the above mentioned variables, a large part of the residual variance can be explained. This shows that the explanatory power of the model has increased. Also the between-country variation has reduced remarkably.
The next step in my analysis is to determine the impact of Family Satisfaction on Job Satisfaction. To serve this purpose, I ran another multilevel modeling and added, everything else included equally, the variable Family Satisfaction. The results of this model are presented under the heading Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction in Table 4.3.
Having a partner now shows a significant negative effect on job satisfaction (p = .00), which is a highly unexpected finding. However, the effect of children does not change and remains statistically insignificant. Therefore, I can fully reject the hypothesis 3 (“Having children (aged 13 or younger living at home) decreases job satisfaction and consequently family satisfaction”).
25 4.3 Model 2: Family Satisfaction
After having specified two models to determine the Job Satisfaction of employed women, a third multilevel modeling was used to assess the Family Satisfaction of employed women. Table 4.4 shows the results of the unconditional model, the model specifying family satisfaction and lastly the inclusion of job satisfaction.
TABLE 4.4
Effects of children, partnership and job satisfaction on family satisfaction Unconditional Model
Family Satisfaction Family Satisfaction
Family Satisfaction with Job Satisfaction
Parameter Estimate
Std.
Error Sig. Estimate
Std.
Error Sig. Estimate
Std. Error Sig. Intercept 7.86 .10 .00 4.23 .22 .00 3.88 .22 .00 age2 .08 .02 .00 .08 .02 .00 Age -.49 .12 .00 -.53 .12 .00 chldh .24 .04 .00 .22 .04 .00 partner .92 .05 .00 .94 .05 .00 Educat .00 .02 .96 -.03 .02 .10 SubjHealth .06 .03 .02 .05 .02 .04 WFC -.01 .02 .67 .01 .02 .46 FamWorkConf -.14 .02 .00 -.13 .02 .00 SocialSupport .12 .01 .00 .12 .01 .00 SocLifeSat .42 .01 .00 .37 .01 .00 HousehIncome .13 .02 .00 .09 .02 .00 JobSat .14 .01 .00 N 7751 7751 7751 -2 Log Likelihood 32570.53 28943.01 28748.29 Residual Variance 3.87 .06 .00 2.53 .04 .00 2.47 .04 .00 Intercept Variance .28 .07 .00 .11 .03 .00 .10 .03 .00
a. Dependent Variable: FamilySat. b. p<.05
Source: Second European Quality of Life Survey 2007, UK Data Archive
26 Using the unconditional model, the personal characteristics (age, education, subjective health) were included as well as the dummy variables to account for children and a relationship. Furthermore, other control variables were included, namely the work-family conflict (WFC), the family-to-work conflict, the social support from the partner, the satisfaction with the social life and the income of the household.
The first finding that can be seen within this table is that children do have a significant effect on the family satisfaction of employed women (p=.00). Positive significant effects can be found for the personal characteristics and control variables such as subjective health, the social support, the social life satisfaction and the household income, all with a significance level of p=.00. Significant negative effects are found for the family-to-work conflict and the age. Interestingly, the only variables that did not show any significant effect were the education (p=.96) and the work-family conflict (p=.67). Having a partner does show a significant relation to family satisfaction (p= .00). There is also a correlation indicated between those two variables (.329). This shows that the variables are in fact related to each other. Therefore, I can accept my hypothesis 4 partially (H4: Women in a relationship have higher levels of family satisfaction and consequently job satisfaction). I can only accept the hypothesis partially since there was no positive effect of having a partner onto the job satisfaction of women, in fact it was a negative relation in the final modeling.
Table 4.4 also indicates that again a small part of the residual and the country variance has been explained by the model, the residual changed from 3.16 to 2.13 and the intercept variance also decreased. Thus, the model does have some explanatory power.
Following the logic of determining the impact of family satisfaction on job satisfaction, another multilevel modeling was performed by adding the variable Job Satisfaction to the above mentioned model accounting for Family Satisfaction. All other variables were used in the exact same arrangement as previously mentioned. The results are indicated in Table 4.4, in the column labeled “Family Satisfaction with Job Satisfaction”. The impact of the personal characteristics and the control variables did not change substantially by including job satisfaction in the model. Both variables, children and partner, do still show a positive significant effect.
27 4.4 Model 3: Determining Subjective Well-Being
In order to provide a full analysis of the subjective well-being of employed women, the last multilevel modeling aims at determining the relation between Family Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction to the dependent variable Subjective Well-Being. The model is controlled for the age, the education and the household income. Table 4.5 outlines the results of the unconditional model and the complete model representing Subjective Well-Being.
TABLE 4.5
Effects of family satisfaction, job satisfaction and the interaction between them on Subjective Well-Being
Unconditional Model
Subjective Well-Being Subjective Well-Being
Parameter Estimate Std. Error Sig. Estimate Std. Error Sig.
Intercept 7.61 .09 .00 2.29 .21 .00 age2 -.01 .02 .55 Age -.01 .09 .88 JobSat * FamilySat .00 .00 .07 FamilySat .33 .02 .00 JobSat .09 .02 .00 Educat .01 .01 .65 SubjHealth .33 .02 .00 HousehIncome .17 .01 .00 N 7751 7751 -2 Log Likelihood 29599.30 25644.10 Residual Variance 2.63 .04 .00 2.53 .04 .00 Intercept Variance .23 .06 .00 .11 .03 .00 a. Dependent Variable: SWB. b. p<.05
Source: Second European Quality of Life Survey 2007, UK Data Archive
28 subjective well-being, but an interaction between the two variables is not important. The covariates parameters reveal, nevertheless, that the explanatory power of the model concerning the dependent variable representing subjective well-being has increased.
4.5 Summary of the Findings
Overall, I was able to fully accept two of the previously developed hypothesis. The most crucial finding of this study is that Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction have a positive significant effect onto the other. All models revealed statistically significant estimates. Also the correlation matrix revealed that there is a statistically significant relation between these two. In sum, I can support hypothesis 1 (H1:“Job satisfaction has a positive effect on family satisfaction”) and hypothesis 2 (H2: “Family satisfaction has a positive effect on job satisfaction”).
Additionally, I was able to proof that there is a positive impact of having a partner on the family satisfaction. Also, the social support provided by the partner has a positive significant effect on the family satisfaction of employed women. A very strange effect was found in determining the effect of a partner onto job satisfaction: Only when I included the variable family satisfaction in the model accounting for job satisfaction, the former insignificant effect of having a partner changed to a statistically significant negative impact. Nevertheless, I was able to support my fourth hypothesis partially (H4: Women in a relationship have higher levels of family satisfaction and consequently job satisfaction). I was able to show a positive effect of the partner on the family satisfaction. A full acceptance was not reached because of the above mentioned unexpected effect on job satisfaction.
The third hypothesis (H3: “Having children (aged 13 or younger living at home) decreases job satisfaction and consequently family satisfaction”) had to be rejected. In fact, I found no evidence that having children increase the job satisfaction of employed women. None of the models showed a statistically significant effect. The only instance where a positive effect was found for having a partner and having children was in determining the family satisfaction of employed women. Thus, in this study the effect of children was only visible when women were asked for the satisfaction with their family. Children, thus, seem to have an effect on family satisfaction, but not on job satisfaction.
29
5. DISCUSSION
An increasing body of literature has focused on gender differences in perceiving job satisfaction and subjective well-being. These past findings often reveal that women report higher levels of job satisfaction while facing worse job conditions than their male counterparts.
The goal of this analysis was to determine specifically the impact of the family life on job satisfaction and family satisfaction of employed women. To achieve this goal, I tried to find the interaction between the satisfaction at home, measured by the variable family satisfaction, and the satisfaction with the work, the job satisfaction. My argumentation, that both factors are positively related to each other, was supported by the statistical analysis which revealed positive significant effect of family satisfaction on job satisfaction and vice versa. It has to be kept in mind however, that there are strong methodological problems in studying the happiness of people. Subjective well-being includes aspects of fulfillment which is clearly related to having a good job (Qu et al., 2012) as well as being related to having a family. Another problem could be that happiness as well as general satisfaction and subjective well-being are used interchangeably which causes major problems in determining the range of the specific construct (Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul, 2004). Since the use of secondary data in this study did not entail the author to customize the data for this specific purpose, it is possible that the respondents were not able to clearly differentiate between the different constructs.
It was further found that having children is not significantly related to job satisfaction but it does show a significant effect on family satisfaction. This result is in direct contrast to existing literature, which states that women are directly influenced by young children (Lambert, 1991). Thus it should be assumed that the job satisfaction should decrease when a woman is a working mother. The finding of the current study can be partially explained by the fact that this study was only focusing on one point in time. It could be true that the job satisfaction might only decrease when a woman becomes a mother, since children then might increase the stress if the working environment is not adjusted for the new need for flextime, for example. If longitudinal data is used, it might appear that when a woman becomes a mother, the job satisfaction decreases as a result of the changed priorities.
30 unexpected. Overall, I found a positive correlation of having a partner to all dependent variables studied. I can only assume a possible explanation for these diverse indications. It might be that having a partner increases the stress for the employed women because the household responsibilities increase. Another possible explanation might be that being in a relation changes the expectations a woman has towards her job, in terms of flexible working hours as an example. If a woman wants more private time to spend with her partner, the job satisfaction decreases if the job is not adjusted to the new situation. However, a clear answer to the question why this effect was found cannot be given at this point.
The results of this study strongly contradict some prior findings. A study by Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn and Lyubomirsky (2012) revealed that the positive effects of parenting hold only true for father and not for mothers (Nelson et al., 2012). Further these authors found that there is no difference in happiness between mothers and non-mothers (Nelson et al., 2012). It was also found earlier that the only relevant factor for women predicting the overall satisfaction is whether they live as a single parent, which reduces the complete probability of subjective well-being (Parker, Watson & Webb, 2011). These previous two studies reveal that there might actually be no effect of children and a partner on the overall well-being of women. The findings in this study actually show a direct effect of children and having a partner on job satisfaction and life satisfaction.
The differing findings in happiness literature might be explained by the importance of personality factors. Some people are just said to have the genetic predisposition to be happy (Diener et al., 1999). For example, optimism, which “represents a generalized tendency to expect favorable outcomes in life” (Diener at al., 1999: 281), is a strong predictor of life satisfaction. Several lines of research suggest that the personality or temperament plays a crucial role in experiencing happiness (Diener et al., 1999). Common sense suggests that subjective well-being and the related perceived happiness will vary from person to person, since different things make different people happy. According to Judge and Watanabe (1993), it is relatively likely that some individuals are just born with the predisposition to be happy and satisfied with their lives (Judge & Watanabe; 1993: 942). Further, the personality factor might also have a major impact on the effect of children and having a partner because some women might just have a different opinion towards being married and having children, some women are striving for it while other women actually do not want to have kids or be in a relationship.
31 that autonomy, job security, absence of stress and danger at the job and the relative compensation have a significant positive effect on job satisfaction. However, the age of the respondents as well as the education did not reveal any significant effects on the family satisfaction of women. It should also be noted that the work-family conflict did not related to family satisfaction, while the family-to-work conflict was found to be negatively related. This notion indicates that it is far worse for women if the family interferes with the job than when the job interferes with the family life. It has been noted in previous studies that “women permit the demands of family life to intrude more into work life” (Lambert, 1991:343). Thus, women are more likely to be negatively affected if their family responsibilities conflict with their job responsibilities. However, other studies suggest that work interfering with family is a strong indicator for women’s job performance (Grandley, Cordeiro & Coruter, 2005).
I was also able to support the notion that “Subjective Well-Being is determined by Job Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction”. Thus it can be concluded that both the job and the private life of women have effects on the overall subjective well-being. Nevertheless, the interaction between family satisfaction and job satisfaction did not reveal any significant effect.
It appears that there is still a great deal of research to be done to be able to unravel the effects of family satisfaction and job satisfaction on each other and the role that children and a partner plays in this interplay. This study, however, makes a contribution to existing research by providing different models and viewpoints to reveal the hidden effects of Job Satisfaction, Family Satisfaction and Subjective Well-Being of women by focusing on two highly private factors, a relationship and the presence of children. As has been noted previously, for a company as well as for researchers it is beneficial to include personal factors in the analysis of job satisfaction in order to optimize the workplace satisfaction (Parker et al., 2011). The unique combination of these variables was not intensively researched before and might serve as a starting point for further analyses.
32 representing children under the age of seventeen. Therefore, the results of the study might be biased. This might be the reason why an effect of children has not been found. It would be highly interesting to test the effect of children again with data that distinguish between children in different ages and those who live with the parent. This might reveal different conclusions. Another limitation is that the personality was not adjusted for in the study. An implication for future research would therefore be to include personality measures in the analyses to account for possible effects of it. The last limitation to this study is that due to the statistical method used, multilevel modeling; the effects of family satisfaction on life satisfaction and vice versa, is overestimated. The statistical technique assumes that the residuals of each equation in the different models are independent, which however might not be true, since the residuals are most probably correlated. Another technique must be used in future research to overcome the endogeneity problem, which was not available to me.
33
6. CONCLUSION
To conclude, the analysis provided is a unique starting point for further research. It shows that it is highly difficult to draw conclusion about happiness and subjective well-being from an international data set. A central finding is that there is a reciprocal relation between family and job satisfaction. This finding represents a possible solution to the controversy in existing literature about this topic. It can also be seen in this study that being in a relation does have positive effects on the satisfaction with the family, but there seems to be a difficult connection to job satisfaction of employed women. Interestingly, children do not show any significant effect on job satisfaction. Even though there has been an enormous body of literature concerning the happiness of employees, a more elaborated study is needed to be able to find specific private factors that impact the well-being at work as well as at the private life. It is crucial for organizations and for researchers to understand the complex interconnection of job satisfaction, family satisfaction and subjective well-being in order to provide a working environment that is attractive to working women. The changing demographics and attitudes towards women in professional occupations will force companies and theoretical researchers to shift focus towards the growing participation of women in the workforce. Having a theoretical framework that indicates not only specific job characteristics and personal characteristics that contribute to the happiness of women at work, but also includes private life factors such as the satisfaction with the family, the presence of children and a partner will help organizations to grasp the positive outcomes of high job satisfaction levels.
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