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.

Well-Being in Life and Well-Being at Work: Which Comes First? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study

“…It has been empirically shown that relationship between well-being and job attitudes may be different depending on gender, age, and education (19,(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64)(65) and together with job tenure, these variables are among the most commonly used as control variables in the organizational research (59). There is also evidence that marital status or having a family in general, especially in combination with a necessity of raising a child, is a discriminatory factor for happiness (66) and job attitudes (67)(68)(69)(70).…”

Gender Difference in the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) among School Adolescents

“…Hence many researchers (Dawson & O'Connor, 1991;Dom & Yi, 2018;van der Vleuten Jaspers, Maas, & van der Lippe, 2016) have delved into the place of gender in students' choice of certain school subjects to determine whether performance is gender-based interestingly, many of these researchers have shown results in the direction of sex-aggregated education. In reality, what is known about gender difference comes from meta-analysis and some researchers have given reports on gender difference from investigations through meta-analysis (Batz- Barbarich, Tay, Kuykendall & Cheung, 2018;Heintz, Kramm & Ruch, 2017;Petersen, 2018;Nazareth, Huang, Voyer, & Newcombe, 2019).…”

How Stable is Leisure Satisfaction over Time? A Latent Trait-State-Occasion Analysis of Dutch Panel Data

“…In an overview study of determinants of SWB, Diener, Suh, Lucas, and Smith (1999) concluded that life satisfaction and SWB had been found to remain relatively stable across the lifespan. and Batz-Barbarich, Tay, Kuykendall, and Cheung (2018) show that effects of gender on SWB are generally inconclusive, which may be the result of the SWB construct consisting of different types and components. They report positive, although small, effects of education and income across studies.…”