Women's Attitudes Toward Their Jobs: Some Longitudinal Data on a National Sample1

This study examines a number of aspects of job satisfaction among women in their thirties and forties over the 1967–1972 period using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys. The data presented suggest that black women were less satisfied with their jobs than whites, and that levels of job satisfaction declined between 1967 and 1972. When asked which aspects of their jobs they liked best, these women were most likely to mention a dimension of their work which stemmed from the job content. Also of particular importance were the socio‐emotional aspects of their jobs. There were remarkably few changes in the pattern of responses over the 5‐year period. Furthermore, there is evidence that women whose skills were underutilized tended to be more dissatisfied than women for whom this was not the case. Conflicting demands between responsibilities at home and at work also appear to result in lower‐than‐average levels of job satisfaction. The greatest conflict in this regard appeared to result from an unfavorable attitude of the woman's husband toward her working, indeed more so than by the presence of young children or by her own attitude toward the propriety of women working. The lack of certain straightforward relationships between job satisfaction and such dimensions as family circumstances, skills and labor market characteristics is interpreted in the context of the conceptual framework of Lawler (1973).