Relative Deprivation and the Gender Wage Gap

Abstract

Research on gender and pay satisfaction indicates that women are equally satisfied with less pay than men receive—the paradox of the contented working woman. Relative deprivation theory provides a framework for understanding how women's paradoxical contentment may contribute to the gender wage gap: Women may be content because they do not perceive a discrepancy between the pay they “want” and the pay they receive. A review of research on gender and the value of pay, and on gender and pay expectations, indicates that a value‐based explanation is needed to account for women's paradoxical contentment with their low pay. Research is described testing the hypothesis that gender differences in the meaning of money influence the value of pay and pay satisfaction, and a preliminary model of pay satisfaction is offered that integrates value‐based and comparative‐referent explanations of the paradoxically contented woman worker. Implications of gender differences in the value of pay for the issue of comparable worth are discussed.

Predicting women's job satisfaction with personal demographics: evidence from a Middle Eastern country

“…Hence, based on Tlaiss and Kauser's (2011a) argument, Lebanese women who succeeded in navigating through the discriminatory organizational attitudes and practices to crack the management walls of the organizations perceive their status as a triumph, take extreme pride in their achievement, as a positive feedback on their performance and as a challenge to the widespread stereotype that women are not suitable for management. Therefore, using the perspective of the theory of relative deprivation (Jackson 1989;Major 1989), women managers in this study were satisfied with the subjective aspects of their career because accessing management, to them, is a significant achievement. In other words, in comparison to the majority of women in the region who struggle to access managerial positions, the women who currently hold managerial position feel special.…”

Gender and leadership? Leadership and gender? A journey through the landscape of theories

“…. for example women achieving the same hierarchical levels as did men despite lower incomes'' (Kirchmeyer, 1998;Jackson, 1989). Accepting less may also signal a lack of self-confidence and may also ensure that women effectively get less in the …”

Does whom you work with matter? Effects of referent group gender and age composition on managers' compensation.

“…For example, much research (e.g., Bielby & Baron, 1986;Fields & Wolff, 1995;Reskin & Ross, 1992) has demonstrated industry and occupational segregation effects whereby women tend to be disproportionately concentrated in lower paying or lower skilled jobs, which explains, in part, the wage gap (although women continue to earn less than men within each industry or occupational sector). Further, even within gender-balanced occupations, men and women tend to work in different firms, to be assigned to different job categories within the firm, or to be given different job titles, even when performing similar jobs (Jackson, 1983;Reskin & Ross, 1992). Women are also more likely to hold lower level management positions than are men, particularly in firms where men dominate middle and upper management (Tharenou, 2001).…”