Does My Boss's Gender Matter? Explaining Job Satisfaction and Employee Turnover in the Public Sector

Abstract

Substantial literatures exist examining public personnel turnover and the role of gender in public management. We bring these two strands of research together to test hypotheses concerning the impact of manager gender on the job satisfaction and turnover of public sector workers. In particular, we test whether manager gender influences satisfaction and turnover per se versus the competing claim that gender congruence between managers and employees, regardless of gender, is the relevant construct. Using data from a nationally representative sample of public school teachers and principals and employing a fixed effects design that implicitly compares male and female employees in the same school, we find evidence that supervisor gender matters for satisfaction and turnover. We also find important effects of gender congruence, which appear to be driven by lower satisfaction and greater turnover among male teachers with female principals.

Gender differences in participatory leadership: An examination of principals’ time spent working with others

“…This distinction allows for males to display female gender leadership qualities and vice-versa; still, most studies tend to equate the two and have focused primarily on differences between men and women leaders. Many studies examining gender based differences in leadership use the sex of the principal rather than measures reflecting gender as a social construction (Grissom, Nicholson-Crotty, & Keiser, 2012); this conflation is reflected in the review of relevant literature in the following sections.…”

In the Company of Women: The Well-Being Consequences of Working with (and for) Other Women

“…For example, Schaffer and Riordan ( 2013 ) found that gender similarity/dissimilarity within the supervisory dyad had no discernible effects on employee ratings of supervisory support, discrimination, or relationship quality. Grissom et al ( 2012 ) found that female teachers were equally satisfi ed, and equally likely to be retained, whether they reported to a female principal or a male one. Male teachers, in contrast, were less satisfi ed and more likely to leave when they were supervised by a female principal.…”

Employees’ relative deprivation for females and supervisory commitment: The mediating roles of interpersonal justice, informational justice, and perceived empathy

“…doi: 10.14687/ijhs.v11i2.3032 851 various justice types (i.e., interpersonal, informational, procedural, and distributive justice) (e.g., Cole, 2004) and the relationship between employees' gender and sensitivity towards different types of justice (e.g., Buttner, 2004). Although there is some empirical evidence that female supervisors or leaders are perceived as higher on interpersonal justice than their male counterparts by both female and male subordinates, the results are conflicting when findings of studies investigating the effects of gender-match between supervisors and employees on various outcomes such as preference to work with the supervisor and job satisfaction are taken into consideration (e.g., Grissom, Nicholson-Crotty, & Keiser, 2012;Wharton & Baron, 1991). To illustrate, the literature shows that interpersonal and informational justice are strongly associated with positive employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001).…”

“…Still, there are a number of recent studies which found that male employees reported significantly lower levels of job satisfaction and higher level of turnover intentions when they worked with female supervisors (e.g., Grissom et al, 2012).…”