The Effect of Gender on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in Kuwait

The Effect of Gender on Job Satisfaction and

Organizational Commitment in Kuwait

Rastied Al-Ajmi

Kuwait University, Kuwait

This study explored the effect of gender on employees perception of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in Kuwait. The study was conducted on 436 employees (213 females and 223 males) in five Kuwaiti government ministries. The author wondered whether Kuwaiti females are, at least, as committed and satisfied with their jobs when compared with their male counterparts. The author notes that several researchers have examined the relationship between job satisfaction and gender, but the results of those studies have been contradictory.

Mean t-tests, correlation, and one-way analysis were employed to analyze the data. To carry out the research, a random sample of five government ministries was selected from Kuwaiti government organizations. Two research assistants distributed 500 questionnaires to government employees. 436 were returned, for a response rate of 87.2 percent. Fifty-one percent of respondents were male, and 49 percent were female. The job satisfaction instrument used in this study is the Hackman and Oldham (1974) scale, while the organizational commitment instrument was a measure by Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974).

To analyze the data, the author first looked at the size of the correlation between the independent variable (gender) and the dependent variables (job satisfaction and organizational commitment). The independent variable and dependent variables are correlated (r = .010 and .031 respectively, not significant). However, we can conclude that there are positive relationships between gender and job satisfaction and gender and organizational commitment, but these relationships are not significant. Therefore, the hypotheses which suggest that there are no significant relationships between gender and the two dependent variables are supported.

In order to determine if significant differences exist between the two genders in term

of their job satisfaction and organizational commitment, a t-test of the mean comparisons between the responses of the female subjects and the responses of the male subjects was conducted. The mean scores for male subjects for job satisfaction and organizational commitment were 3.4 and 3.46 while the mean scores for the female subjects were 3.32 and 3.41. The t-values were .58 for men and .64 for women. This meant that although male