Do men and women experience work engagement and job satisfaction to the same extent in collectivistic, patriarchal societies?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how cognitive and emotional job demands interact with job resources to influence work engagement, and whether work engagement mediates the association of job demands with job satisfaction. In collectivistic patriarchal societies women have fewer resources to devote to work; thus, based on Conservation of Resources theory, the authors have tested if job demands relate differently to work engagement for women than for men and if the mediation differs across genders.

Design/methodology/approach Using data collected from 724 bank officers in India, the authors used the PROCESS macro developed for SPSS to test the hypotheses.

Findings Gender interacted with job demands to influence work engagement, such that the relationship was stronger for men than for women. Moderated mediation analysis showed that men experience work engagement and through work engagement increased job satisfaction from challenging job demands, whereas these benefits do not accrue for women, and when they do, they are significantly less than for men.

Originality/value Most models and theories of organizational behavior have been developed in the western world where, relatively speaking, men and women enjoy almost equal privileges at work and at home. In collectivistic patriarchal societies, women are responsible for the lion’s share of household chores (Rout et al., 1999) and thus have fewer resources to devote to work, affecting their work engagement and satisfaction. The results behoove researchers to consider gender as a study variable when designing studies on organizational phenomena.