The Effect of Gender Identity on Job Satisfaction of Employers

Introduction The importance and the role of gender identity in constituting the mental and personal structure of people within the society has caused this variable to be analyzed as one of the key elements in subjects and researches of the social and cultural sciences. This variable implicates as an index for evaluation of the femininity and masculinity on learned social roles and formed gender priorities. In recent years, job satisfaction and its related subjects have been introduced as one of the important research areas in the sociology of occupations. Job satisfaction is the pleasure and joy that an individual gains from his or her work. Several studies have been performed relating to job satisfaction of employers and managers. In some of them, researchers have studied the motivating factors of job satisfaction for masculine and feminine employers. The results show that the motivating factors in females are different from the motivating factors in males and this difference is related to gender (being men or women). But perusing results show that we cannot prioritize job satisfaction factors by considering people's gender. For example, some of the results show that feminine employers (in comparison with masculine employers) emphasize job satisfaction factors based on situation derived from increasing economic advantages, trade development and business growth, although they merely emphasize social â internal job satisfaction factors derived from the relationship with costumers and perusing social goals . On the other hand, other surveys show that some feminine employers put more emphasis on job satisfaction factors based on situation and some masculine employers put more emphasis on socialâinternal job satisfaction factors. Thus we cannot determine which job satisfaction factor has the highest priority for a masculine or a feminine employer. So, the gender controversy and important discrepancies coming out of it lead sociologists to study sex and the gender. The term sex implies the biological and physical differences between men and women, but gender implies personal and mental characteristics and cultural, psychological and social acquisitive differences between men and women that society determines. So we need to study the relationship between masculinity and femininity (gender identity) and job satisfaction factors. This study concerns the effects of masculinity and femininity dimensions of gender identity on determining the priorities of job satisfaction factors among employers. Materials & Methods The data of this study is gathered by quantitative method, survey technique and questionnaire. Statistical population is composed of the employers of NajafAbad industrial city, Isfahan. Sample size is 180 individuals, selected by cluster sampling method with probability proportional to the sample. In the part related to the evaluation of the gender identity, Bem Sex-Role Inventory was used for the evaluation of the male and female dimensions of gender identity. Discussion of Results & Conclusions After surveying the results using Bem tool and computation of the results, four main groups of the employer's gender identities were determined in underlying statistical sample. It showed that in masculine sample % 26.7 with high scores in masculine scale have a masculine identity, %16.8 with high scores in feminine scale have a feminine identity, %34.7 with high scores in two masculine and feminine scales have a both-gender identity (hermaphrodite) and %21.8 with low scores in both masculine and feminine scales have an indifferent identity. Also, in feminine sample, %35.5 have a feminine identity, %10.1 have a masculine identity, %40.5 have a both-gender identity and % 13.9 have an indifferent identity. There is a meaningful difference in X2 TEST between belonging to both-gender identity groups (masculine and feminine) and the rate of importance rendered to job satisfaction situation factors (X2 = 10.542 , df=1. sig= 0.000 ) . It means there are differences between employers with masculine identity and employers with feminine identity in the rate of the importance they render to the situation factors. In addition, the evaluation rank average for situation factors is higher between the employers with masculine gender identity. The results of the X2 test show that the employers in feminine gender identity group in statistical sample (compared to masculine identity employers) put more emphasis on participation in society, assistance to others and having good relationship with employees. The X2 test shows no meaningful difference for the evaluation of the relationship among employers gender identity and the rate of the importance they render to corresponding with the costumers. (X2 = 0.352, df= 1, sig= 0.553). So the results show that the employers with stronger masculine gender identity dimension , pay more attention to satisfaction factors associated with situation development (e.g. increasing salary , trade development , having leadership role and guiding a great company with rapid growth ), compared to employers with stronger feminine gender identity dimension. Moreover, employers with stronger feminine gender identity dimension prefer satisfaction factors based on having good relations with employees, participation in society and association with others to situation factors. Totally, the results show that gender identity is a proper anticipator for determining the priorities of job satisfaction factors of the employers, because masculine gender identity is related to satisfaction factors based on situation and feminine gender identity is related to satisfaction factors based on relationship with employees and participation in society