Women’s job satisfaction: evidence from Nepal

Increasing women’s employment is central to policy agendas in South Asia. Yet, a growing body of scholarship cautions that paid work may not be as beneficial as policy makers hope in part because the intrinsic rewards women derive from their work remain poorly understood. This paper addresses this issueby examining job satisfaction among a diverse group of women workers. Using survey data from Chitwan, Nepal we assess how situational and personal characteristics shape women’s satisfaction with their jobs. We find that job type is one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction such that women employed in agricultural wage labor had the lowest job satisfaction, even when controlling for differences in earnings, work intensity, and personal characteristics. Women working in salaried government or NGO office jobs and self-employed women working inside their homes were the most likely to be very satisfied. A sense of personal accomplishment is also influenced by job type and associated with higher satisfaction but does not explain the relationship between job type and satisfaction. Results provide evidence that most women in Chitwan have jobs they find unsatisfying, something that further undermines the overall benefits of paid work and creates another dimension of marginalization.