A Meta-Analysis of Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being: Estimating Effect Sizes and Associations With Gender Inequality

Abstract

Despite global gender inequalities, findings on gender differences in subjective well-being have been inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis on gender differences in subjective well-being to account for the type of subjective-well-being measure, sampling variability, and levels of national gender inequality from which samples are gathered. Based on 281 effect sizes for life satisfaction (N = 1,001,802) and 264 for job satisfaction (N = 341,949), results showed no significant gender differences in both types of subjective well-being. Supplementary meta-analyses found significantly lower job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction, in women for studies that used both life-satisfaction and job-satisfaction measures, and studies that relied on measures that previously demonstrated measurement equivalence. Using the Gender Inequality Index, we found that greater national gender inequality significantly predicts greater gender differences in job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction. We discuss the implications of these findings and the use of subjective well-being as a measure of societal progress.

Keywords

gender differences subjective well-being life satisfaction job satisfaction inequality

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beutel

A. M.

Marini

M. M.

(1995). Gender and values. American Sociological Review, 60, 436–448.

Borenstein

Hedges

L. V.

Higgins

J. P. T.

Rothstein

H. R.

(2009). Introduction to meta-analysis. Chichester, England: Wiley.

Brooke

P. P.

Russell

D. W.

Price

J. L.

(1988). Discriminant validation of measures of job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 139–145.

Central Intelligence Agency. (2014). The world factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/wfbExt/region_afr.html

Cohen

(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cotter

D. A.

Hermsen

J. M.

Vanneman

(2004). Gender inequality at work. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Diener

Seligman

M. E. P.

(2004). Beyond money: Toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 1–31.

Eagly

A. H.

Wood

(1999). The origins of sex differences in human behavior: Evolved dispositions versus social roles. American Psychologist, 54, 408–423.

Egger

Smith

G. D.

Schneider

Minder

(1997). Bias in meta-analysis detected by a simple, graphical test. British Medical Journal, 315, 629–634.

10.

Guimond

Branscombe

N. R.

Brunot

Buunk

A. P.

Chatard

Désert

. . . Yzerbyt

(2007). Culture, gender, and the self: Variations and impact of social comparison processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1118–1134.

11.

Hagerty

M. R.

(2000). Social comparisons of income in one’s community: Evidence from national surveys of income and happiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 764–771.

12.

Haring

M. J.

Stock

W. A.

Okun

M. A.

(1984). A research synthesis of gender and social class as correlates of subjective well-being. Human Relations, 37, 645–657.

13.

Hedges

L. V.

Olkin

(1985). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

14.

Hedges

L. V.

Vevea

J. L.

(1996). Estimating effect size under publication bias: Small sample properties and robustness of a random effects selection model. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 21, 299–332.

15.

Henrich

Heine

Norenzayan

(2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83.

16.

Higgins

Thompson

S. G.

Deeks

J. J.

Altman

D. G.

(2003). Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses. British Medical Journal, 327, 557–560.

17.

Hyde

J. S.

(2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581–592.

18.

Inglehart

Foa

Peterson

Welzel

(2008). Development, freedom, and rising happiness: A global perspective (1981–2007). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 264–285.

19.

Lipsey

M. W.

Wilson

(2001). Practical meta-analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

20.

Oishi

(2006). The concept of life satisfaction across cultures: An IRT analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 411–423.

21.

Oishi

Diener

Suh

Lucas

R. E.

(1999). Value as a moderator in subjective well-being. Journal of Personality, 67, 157–184.

22.

Orwin

R. G.

Vevea

J. L.

(2009). Evaluating coding decisions. In Cooper

Hedges

L. V.

Valentine

J. C.

(Eds.), The handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis (pp. 177–204). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

23.

Pinquart

Sörensen

(2001). Gender differences in self-concept and psychological well-being in old age: A meta-analysis. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 56, 195–213.

24.

Rosenthal

(1994). Statistically describing and combining studies. In Cooper

Hedges

L. V.

(Eds.), The handbook of research synthesis (pp. 231–244). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

25.

Ryan

R. M.

Deci

E. L.

(2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.

26.

Shevlin

Brunsden

Miles

J. N. V.

(1998). Satisfaction With Life Scale: Analysis of factorial invariance, mean structures and reliability. Personality and Individual Differences, 25, 911–916.

27.

Stanley

T. D.

Doucouliagos

(2014). Meta-regression approximations to reduce publication selection bias. Research Synthesis Methods, 5, 60–78.

28.

Tay

Diener

(2011). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 354–365.

29.

Tay

Kuykendall

Diener

(2014). Demographic factors and worker well-being: An empirical review using representative data from the United States and across the world. Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being, 12, 235–283.

30.

Tesch-Römer

Motel-Klingebiel

Tomasik

M. J.

(2008). Gender differences in subjective well-being: Comparing societies with respect to gender equality. Social Indicators Research, 85, 329–349.

31.

United Nations Development Programme. (2015). Human development report 2015. New York, NY: Author.

32.

United Nations Development Programme. (2016). Human development report 2016. New York, NY: Author.

33.

Vandenberg

R. J.

Lance

C. E.

(2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 4–70.

34.

Veenhoven

Ehrhardt

(1995). The cross-national pattern of happiness: Test of predictions implied in three theories of happiness. Social Indicators Research, 34, 33–68.

35.

Wang

Russell

S. S.

(2005). Measurement equivalence of the Job Descriptive Index across Chinese and American workers: Results from confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65, 709–732.

36.

Whitaker

B. G.

(2007). Internet-based attitude assessment: Does gender affect measurement equivalence? Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 1183–1194.

37.

Wood

Rhodes

Whelan

(1989). Sex differences in positive well-being: A consideration of emotional style and marital status. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 249–264.

38.

The World Bank. (2016). GDP per capita (current US$). Retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

39.

Zuckerman

Diener

E. F.

(2017). Societal conditions and the gender difference in well-being: Testing a three-stage model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43, 329–336.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.19 MB