Municipal middle managers: psychosocial work environment in a gender-based division of labor

Abstract

The purpose of the reported study was to explore how 245 municipal middle managers perceived their psychosocial and physical work environments, and to examine psychosomatic reactions and job satisfaction in departments engaged in different types of activity, also to compare male and female managers in these respects. The way in which psychosomatic reactions and job satisfaction were related to the psychosocial and physical work environments was also investigated. The results indicated a difference between departments depending on the type of activity. Departments concerned with care and education, i.e. care of the elderly, child care and schools showed a tendency to lower values for psychosocial work environment factors and more psychosomatic reactions than the departments geared more towards maintenance and production, i.e. street maintenance, the power plant department and the recreation office. In the departments concerned with children female managers were in a majority. In the street maintenance department, the recreation office and the power plant department, male managers predominated. Compared to the men, the women had a higher level of education, lower salaries, more reactions of a psychosomatic nature, lower job satisfaction and a less satisfying psychosocial work environment. The only department with an equal number of male and female managers was the schools department. Here there were no differences between men and women in the factors studied. Two partial correlations were computed in order to separate the importance of type of activity and sex to the work environment factors and outcome variables. This indicated that the type of activity was more important than biological sex. The gendering of work activities is therefore also discussed and further investigations are suggested.