Effects of Gender and Age on Pride in Work, and Job Satisfaction

Abstract

Job pride can be elicited by successful praiseworthy action, such as working to overcome obstacles to reach a desired work-related outcome. In contrast, job satisfaction may be elicited by receipt of job-related resources even in the absence of effort. Thus one difference between job pride and job satisfaction is that pride is likely to reflect wellbeing that flows from doing, while job satisfaction may be more strongly linked to having. Gender and age are also associated with what one does and has in a job, and orientations towards extrinsic rewards (i.e., having) and intrinsic rewards (i.e., the action is its own reward) vary with gender and age. Thus, there are reasons to expect effects of gender and age on job pride to differ from effects on job satisfaction. In this study data from a cross-sectional telephone survey of adults living and working in Toronto, Canada are used to investigate how gender differences in job pride and satisfaction vary with age. Analyses reveal that among workers under age thirty, there is a tendency for women to report less pride in their work than men. This gender difference reverses with age. From midlife to retirement age, women report more pride in work than do men. The age-graded gender difference in job satisfaction is in the opposite direction to the trend for job pride. These divergent patterns are interpreted as resulting from a conjunction of processes that structure job opportunities and job orientations by age and gender.