Work-family culture and job satisfaction: does gender and parenting status alter the relationship?

Abstract

Previous studies on work-family culture have examined its relationship with different employee outcomes (e.g., work-family conflict, job satisfaction, commitment) but neglected one important question; namely, who are most likely to benefit from a supportive work-family culture in terms of positive employee outcomes? The aim of this study was to shed new light on the work-family culture–job satisfaction linkage by examining the moderator effects of gender and parenting status in this relationship. Specifically, we asked whether gender and parenting status would alter the association between work-family culture and job satisfaction. We hypothesized – on the basis of traditional gender roles – that women, and especially mothers, would benefit most from a family supportive organizational culture. We utilized three divergent samples gathered from male (N=768) and female (N=1364) employees in Finland: (1) a female-dominated sample from social and health care; (2) a male-dominated sample from paper industry; and (3) more gender-mixed sample from the ICT company. Work-family culture was described through its positive (work-family support) and negative facets (work-family barriers), whereas job satisfaction was operationalized via a facet-based scale. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses performed separately for the three different organizations revealed that the results for mothers and fathers under the condition of high work-family support differed in the paper mill and the information and communication technology (ICT) company. Thus, in addition to gender, the type of organization also moderated the relationship. Specifically, in the paper mill, mothers benefited more from high work-family support than fathers, whereas in the ICT company the reverse situation held: fathers benefited more than mothers. Thus, high work-family support was associated with higher job satisfaction among mothers in the paper mill and among fathers in the ICT company.