Justice and the Paradox of the Contented Female Worker

Abstract

Studies have shown that women are as satisfied with their jobs as are their male counterparts. This finding is viewed as suggesting a paradox because women's rewards and work conditions are usually less favorable than men's. Phelan (1994) evaluated five explanations for the paradox but could not evaluate the possibility that perceived justice accounts for the paradox. We evaluate the same explanations, but also examine the importance of perceived justice. We find, for a sample of female and male lawyers, that no paradox exists for job satisfaction when the model is specified properly. For pay satisfaction, however, perceived justice is critically important in explaining gender satisfaction differences, but even this does not account entirely for the paradox. The use of same-gender reference groups in evaluating justice may be responsible for the gap that remains, although supplemental data suggest that this is not the case for these lawyers.