How the breadwinning role and sex of employees influence beliefs about referent choice and job satisfaction

Abstract

This research starts from the premise that women's entry into, and substantial representation in, the workforce has changed the nature of the relationship between family and work roles. Specifically, the purpose is to show that the roles people play in their families significantly affects their determination of job satisfaction. Equity theory and relative deprivation theory suggest that a pivotal factor in determining job satisfaction is the selection and use of a referent. In practice, however, the research on referent use in job satisfaction has not considered family role effects because job satisfaction research has focused almost exclusively on the work domain. This research seeks to expand upon this literature by hypothesizing that family role will influence the choice of the referent and will be a meaningful explanatory variable in job satisfaction models. Analysis of the survey results reveals basic support for the inclusion of family role in models of job satisfaction in four job satisfaction contexts. The family role variable of breadwinning status is positively related to job satisfaction and emerges as a better explanatory variable for job satisfaction responses than respondent sex. The effects of family role on referent choice, however, are not consistent or strong. Instead, only respondent-referent similarity was found to have a robust effect on referent choice. Other referent choice decisions were explored on a post-hoc basis. Overall, the results of this study indicate that breadwinning status is a statistically significant factor in job satisfaction decisions. The data are supportive of a model in which beliefs about the relationship between work and family role obligations mediate the effects of breadwinning status on job satisfaction. Given the exploratory nature of this study, further research is suggested to replicate and expand the major findings.