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Earlier on, the opinion of people think about what is important in job is compared among selected OECD countries. This time, it is interesting to have a brief look at the comparison between gender (male vs female) in their job selection criteria (what is important in job), again, from the 24 selected OECD countries.

How the data was extracted? In the World Values Survey, the participants were asked how important the criteria, e.g. good pay, in a job. The percentage of participants mentioned the criteria is compared between male and female, as the example below shown:

Important in Job: Good Pay

Australia [1995]   Male    Female
No Mentioned:      339        465
Mentioned:           670        574
——————————————-
% Mentioned:       66.40    55.25     (Difference Male – Female= “+11.15”)
——————————————-

Japan [2000]   Male    Female
No Mentioned:    114      117
Mentioned:           519    612
——————————————-
% Mentioned:    81.99    83.95   (Difference Male – Female= “-1.96”)
——————————————-

To make it a fair comparison between how male and female view each criteria is important in a job, the difference of “% mentioned” between male and female within the same country is used. “+” value means that there are higher % of male responded/affirmed to the question compared to female in that country, and “-” means the otherwise.

Next, the result of 18 job criteria conducted in the survey is listed in the table below. Mean value means the average number on “difference male – female %” of all 24 countries (some positive, some negative). Median shows the middle point of all the data points. As shown in the table below, the blue block arrow on the right means the male has higher % in mentioning such criteria in their survey, while the pink block arrow shows the otherwise.

Now, I am very tempted to explain the difference viewpoint between gender on the criteria which is important in a job by using evolutionary psychology EP (hehey, just my hobby, not my profession :P). Male will value more on good pay, good chances for promotion is quite consistent with EP outlook because earning livelihood and be ambitious translates into resourceful (?) and therefore good for survival and reproduction strategy. However, I am a bit surprise to note that good job security does not show significant difference between male and female because I am counting that male will be more anxious about losing their job (translation: losing their resources). The same would go to job that you can achieve something: male appears not to be much more ambitious than female.

On the other hand, the job criteria like meeting people and pleasant people to work with is consistent with female EP outlook: female emphasizes on people-orientated (?). A useful job for society is quite aligned with female/mother charity character-like (?). Lastly, good hours make perfect sense because female tend to spend their time with family/children instead of work.

Well, all the above mentioned theory is not exactly proven science or something like that. It is more like my pet theory 😛 But after typing these words out, I got the worry feeling: would it be politically incorrect to mention such thing? Well, of course there are other possible explaination for the results above and I would love to hear and learn more. 🙂