Work locus of control and its relationship to health and job satisfaction from a gender perspective

With its focus on gender, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of work locus of control (WLC) for job satisfaction and health in the context of occupational stress. Data were collected from 281 women and men at both managerial and non-managerial level in a Swedish telecom company. As hypothesized, external WLC was positively related to stressors and symptoms of ill-health, whereas it was negatively related to job satisfaction. These results applied for both women and men. Even though ANOVAs did not show a gender difference in WLC, the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that WLC was a significant predictor of both symptoms of ill-health and job satisfaction, but only for women. Besides these main effects WLC also acted as a moderator in the stress-health relationship for women. This indicates that separate analyses for women and men are needed in order to investigate potential gender differences that might otherwise go unnoticed