Influences of gender and locale on teachers’ job satisfaction: An intersectional study in Nepal

How to cite Shrestha, M. (2019). Influences of gender and locale on teachers’ job satisfaction: An intersectional study in Nepal. Research in Educational Policy and Management, 1(1), 17-32. ABSTRACT The personal attributes like gender and locale were associated with the job satisfaction (JS) of teachers. This research examined the relationship between gender and JS across locale in school settings. This study followed a post-positivist paradigm with a cross-sectional survey as the research design. The researcher used the survey questionnaire among 345 respondents by using cluster sampling and analyzed data with t-test. Meanwhile, social capital theory was incorporated to discuss the findings. The female teachers from urban schools expressed higher satisfaction in a job than their male colleagues. In contrary, there is no difference in JS between male and female counterparts regarding rural schools except pay, incentive and benefits. However, the job satisfied teachers contribute more job effectiveness, high performances, and achievements.


INTRODUCTION
The job satisfaction (JS) has received increased attention of teachers and school managements for delivering quality education in the classroom. Due to its vitality in educational quality, JS in school is crucial to divulge the confirmatory emotional stipulation among teachers. These affirmative emotional expressions are originated from evaluation from their own experiences in the work (Nawarini, 2019). It is associated with the work related pleasurable attitude (Arif & Chohan, 2012;Huang & Gamble, 2015;Itiola, Odebiyi, & Alibi, 2014;Newland, 2012) and it motivate the teachers in their work (Anwer, Jamil, Farooqi, Akram, & Mehmood, 2015). This gratify is arisen from the excellent work, sound work place, smart payment, fair supervision and well recognition in the organization. So, the JS is the combined form of pay, incentive, and benefits (PIB), work environment, supervision, work itself and recognition (Barusman & Mihdar, 2014;Khadka, 2010).
Moreover, JS is also associated with the social capital of the teachers (Lange, 2016;Shin & Lee, 2016). The social capital is the most prominent factor which plays contributory role for determining the gender discrimination in Nepal (e.g. Pokharel, 2013a). For instance, patrilocality, dowry system, trends of old age supporting from son, patrilineality, roles of son in religious rituals and desire to protect female safety and purity are all the variables within sociocultural factors which contribute to putting gender discrimination. Likewise, these socio-cultural phenomena create such values, beliefs and practices (social capital) which were always against the women's equality towards the male counterparts in every organization even schools (Pokharel, 2013b). As a result, these entire social capital related values, roles, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding gender influence on JS (Djordjevic, Ivanovic-Djukic, & Lepojevic, 2017).
The JS is the pertaining issues in the school setting in terms of academic performances. The academic performances of students are associated with the JS of teachers (e.g. Ekpenyong & Joseph, 2017). Furthermore, Ekpenyong and Joseph (2017) claims that the satisfactory level of JS promotes the working environment in school. Conversely, without JS, there is no more working environment in school. As a result, it obtains a low educational achievement in schools which is clearly seen in the context of Nepal (e.g. Ministry of Education [MOE], 2015; Ministry of Education, Science and Technology [MOEST], 2017). There was majority of students who only achieved C and D grade in the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) in school (MOEST, 2017). There are numerous causes of these low performances in the school. One of them is exhibiting low JS from the employees (Banerjee, Stearns, Moller, & Mickelson, 2017). The presence of these low JS reduces the quality of the education provided in school. Thus, it is a burning issue in the school leadership and becomes pertinent concern to study in it.

Job Satisfaction across Gender
The JS of school teachers are related to the gender (Batol, 2018;Jenaabadi, Okati, & Sarhadi, 2013). The gender is that a subjective as well as objective experience of individuals which helps to determining the individual is either male or female. In addition, the gender is the set of socio-culturally constructed features and relations which differentiate masculinity and femininity (Pokharel, 2001). So, the gender role does not always remain same in all regions due to differences in socio-cultural contexts. These differences in socio-cultural contexts rise gender discrimination and it affects in teacher's attitude, behavior and cognition towards their job.

Job Satisfaction across Locale
The attitude towards job among teachers also influences through the locale (Batol, 2018). The locale refers to the milieu of people where they inhabit (e.g. urban or rural). Every inhabitant's place carries the particular culture, lifestyle and livelihood which contribute to make differences among people via locale. In addition, there is also dissimilarity in distribution of facilities, infrastructures and technology in locale. These variations regarding locale make a contrast in teacher's perceptions towards their work.

Job Satisfaction via Gender cum Locale
JS is associated with both the personal attributes; gender (Demirtas, 2010;Huang & Gamble, 2015;Okpara, Squillace, & Erondu, 2015;Vladisavljevic & Perugini, 2018) and locale (Batol, 2018) of school teachers. Generally, the gender and locale individually influence JS in a school setting. However, they (gender and locale) both also jointly contribute on JS in academia. For instance, the differences in socio-cultural capital regarding the rural and urban locale teachers via gender plays vital role in determining JS.

Hypothesis of the Study
In the ground of the above literature reviews, the researcher constructed the following research hypothesis to examine the discrete as well as a joint contribution of gender and locale on JS as: H 1 : Gender differs JS among teachers. H 2 : Locale differs JS among teachers. H 3 : JS is influenced via gender cum locale among teachers.

METHODS
The research design of this study was based on field survey and it was cross-sectional in nature at one point in time. The field survey was employed in the schools of Dhading District and declared school teachers as the research subjects and every individual teacher as the unit of analysis in this study. Then, the sample size was calculated at 95 percent confidence limit (0.05 level of significance) by using Yamane (1967) formula, and it derived the number of sample size (n = 345) from cluster while the number of the entire population (N) of the school teachers was 2487 (e.g. District Education Office [DEO], 2016).
Then the researcher developed the Likert scale and it incorporated 26 numbers of items. These all items consisted of five response options: never, rarely, some-times, often and always respectively. After this, the researcher contextualized and administered the construct in pilot testing. From pilot testing, researcher got the high Cronbach's alpha coefficient value (< 0.7) of entire scale and its dimensions. These values indicated the high internal consistency among entire JS which means that this research is highly reliable (Santos, 1999). Thus, the researcher moved ahead data collection with the questionnaire.
After collecting data, researcher employed inferential statistics for analyzing purposes. For instance, the inferential statistics like t-test was computed to examine the significant effects of gender in JS across locale of school teachers. For employing t-test, the researcher ensured some statistical assumptions (e.g. normality test, interval scale, randomization of sampling, and equal variance test) of parametric test in this study.

Personal Attributes of School Teachers
The gender and locale were stated as their personal characteristics of respondents. The researcher categorized the gender into male and female whereas locale in urban and rural in Table 1.  (CBS, 2014), the majority of people make their resident in rural parts of Nepal which is, thus, reflected in the respondent's characteristics in this study. The differences between these locales across gender show the trends of engagement of male and female teachers in the teaching profession. There is increasing number of female teachers in school due to the provision for reservation quota for female in the teaching profession (Awasthi & Adhikary, 2012). These increasing numbers of female teachers are probably due to their increasing opportunity in attending education as well as access to the job opportunity. Nonetheless, the percentage of male teachers is 56.52 (N = 195) and the percentage of female teachers is 43.48 (N = 150). This figure is similar to the Department of Education (DOE, 2014) which maintains that the male teachers were in the majority (62.68 %) in Dhading District. There are altogether 65 percent male teachers and remaining 35 percent were female teachers in Nepal (MOE, 2015).

Testing the assumptions for t-test
The researcher ensured four statistical assumptions for computing the t-test in this study. Firstly, the researcher established a normal distribution of data by operating normality test, particularly Kurtosis and Skewness. The researcher, derived the values of Z Kurt (-.54 to 0.35) and Z Skew (-.04 to -.98) in relation to JS and its entire dimensions between -1 and +1 respectively. Thus, the data are normally distributed (Garson, 2012). Secondly, the researcher randomly selected one cluster (RC) by adopting lottery process. As a result, this procedure of selecting sample ensured the random sampling process and satisfied the second assumption for operating t-test. Thirdly, researcher performed Levene's equal variance test and derived results as in Table 2. Among the test statistics, if the p value is more than 0.05, it signifies that the constructed null hypothesis is accepted (Subedi, 2017). However, the derived test statistics from Levene's test of equal variance reveals that all the variables pose the p value > 0.05 which means the school teachers have equal variance and it allows the researcher to perform t-test in majority of the variables. Furthermore, the JS and supervision were not satisfied in case of locale. In this context, the researcher found Ehiwario, Osemeke, and Nnaemeka (2013) who suggested that the moderate violation of equality of variances did not critically affect the parametric test. Thus, it was robust to this criterion. It is considerable to this study. So, the researcher decided to perform independent t-test in this case.
The researcher is aware about the occurrence of any different results while operating parametric test instead of non-parametric test in that constructs which violated the equal variances. The researcher compared all significant results of parametric test with the nonparametric test. In this context, if the parametric test provides significant result, but it differs from the result of non-parametric tests, particularly to a high extent (more than 0.1 p value), the researcher considered the results to be insignificant.

Job Satisfaction and Gender of Teachers
The researcher examines the influence of gender (male and female) in JS by operating the independent t-test and it contributes to derive statistical results. This statistical procedure contributes to assert the JS (PIB, work itself, working environment, supervision and recognition) among school teachers through calculating the values of mean and standard deviation (Table  3).  Table 3 statistically explains JS of school teachers by their gender. The results presented in the table above were obtained through the independent t-test. This section deals with the Levene's test for equality of variances and derived the t and p values. The derived p value was observed to be greater than the alpha (0.05) in relation to all dimensions of JS. This statistical impression shows that there is no significant difference in dimensions of JS (PIB, work itself, working environment, supervision and recognition) across gender of teachers. In addition, Table 3 also shows that there is no significance difference in JS (t = -.46, p = .64) across gender.
This impression is similar to Demirtas (2010) and the researcher conveys that the gender of the teachers did not make meaningful differences (t = 1.68, p = .09) in JS. Female (Mean = 3.54, SD = .897) and male (Mean = 3.39, SD = .909) scores in terms of gender depict that the level of JS among female teachers is slightly higher than that of their male counterparts (Demirtas, 2010). In addition to this, Rao (2015) also expressed that there is no significant difference on teachers' JS in relation to their gender (t = 1.07*). These both statistical inferences show that gender plays important roles to determine significant changes in JS among school teachers. Both male and female teachers got equal challenges, opportunities, benefits and workloads in school. The school leadership was not biased to the teachers based on their gender. Thus, gender of the teachers did not influence to determine JS. In other words, it is claimed that the gender of school teacher did not make any change in entire JS along with its dimensions.

Job Satisfaction and Locale of Teachers
By their locale, this study categorized the entire respondents into two groups: rural and urban to examine its significance differences in their JS. The significant differences were determined by obtaining the mean score and standard deviation from collected data. In addition, the operated statistical test (independent t-test) provided the 't' score and 'p' value and these values contribute to decide whether there is a significance difference in JS (PIB, work itself, working environment, supervision and recognition) across the locale of the sample teachers (Table 4). Table 4 provides a guide for presenting and explaining the statistical results based on the derived t and p values through operating Levene's Test for equality of variances. This statistical test contributes to derive the mean, standard deviation, t score and p value in relation to each dimension of JS across the locale of school teachers. Among the derived values (t = 1.96, p = 0.05), supervision only consists of lower values than alpha (0.05). But in this case, the assumption of equality of variances was violated. So, the researcher also performed Mann-Whitney U test as a parametric test and found no significant result (p > 0.05). Thus, the researcher makes a decision that the null hypothesis is accepted which means that the supervision is not significantly different due to the locale of the teachers.
Hence, the entire JS as well as its all dimensions does not seem to be different with each other, particularly between the teachers from rural and urban area. In other words, the locale of teachers does not make influential changes in JS.

Gender and Job Satisfaction across Locale of Teachers
By their locale, the entire respondents were categorized into two groups: rural and urban to examine its significance differences of gender in their JS. The significant differences were determined by obtaining the mean score and standard deviation from collected data. In addition, the operated statistical test (independent t-test) provided the 't' score and 'p' value and these values contribute to decide whether there is a significant difference in JS (PIB, work itself, working environment, supervision and recognition) across the locale with the gender of the sample teachers (Table 5).
The Levene's Test for equality of variances derived the statistical results (t = 2.03, p = .04) which explain that there were significant differences in PIB across gender among rural locale teachers. In addition, the obtained statistical values of male (Mean = 3.29, SD = .82) and female (Mean = 3.05, SD = .86) teachers respectively. These scores show that the male teachers belonging to the rural locality consist of higher JS in terms of PIB than those who were from urban locality. Moreover, the entire JS as well as its all dimensions (except PIB) does not seem to be different with each other, particularly between the teachers from rural locale. In other words, the gender does not make influential changes in JS among rural resident teachers. In side of urban resident teachers, the work itself (t = -2.64, p = .01) and working environment (t = -2.11, p = .03) seems significantly different across gender. In addition, statistical computation also derived the mean score and standard deviation of male and female groups of teachers in relation to their JS. Among them, in case of work itself, the female teachers (Mean = 4.27, SD = .56) poses more satisfaction in the job than the male (Mean = 4.00, SD = .57) teachers. It is also similar to the work environment, where the male teachers got low satisfaction (Mean = 3.83, SD = .65) levels than female (Mean = 4.07, SD = .60) teachers. Furthermore, JS seems significantly influenced by gender (t = -2.62, p = .01) regard to urban locale teachers. Besides this, all the components of JS are not seen significantly different in respective components of JS across gender of urban school teachers.

DISCUSSION
This study investigated the contribution of gender in JS across the locale of the teachers. The gender and locale are influenced by the capitals of school teachers. However, in overall, the gender and locale both individually didn't make significant differences in determining JS among the study groups. This finding is similar to the research done by Anwer et al. (2015) and Bala (2015). Contrary it, when the researcher employed the intersectional study in JS by seeing the combined influence of the gender cum locale among school teachers, they contributed their JS and its some components. More specifically, the findings revealed that the female teachers from urban residency consists little higher level of the JS than their male counterparts and rural locale teachers in this study. Similarly, the male teachers from rural areas expressed slightly high JS than their female colleagues in terms of pay, incentive and their salaries.
Generally, in context of rural scenario, the female experienced subtler discrimination in family and society (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2018). They were traditionally limited in the household chores and deprive from access to the education and job opportunity. In this decade, the engagement of female in the teaching profession is in increasing trends, but still their involvement is less than the male in schools as a teacher (MOEST, 2017). These results are due to the strong societal believes which advocates the traditional gender role and socialization. Eventually, this tradition puts the females in isolation lacking the opportunity in their career advancement. Likewise, these female teachers hold more workload than the male teachers. For instance, the female teachers carry the dual responsibility of household work (Huang & Gamble, 2015) and school work. So, they have not got the profuse time to engage in their profession than their male colleagues. Due to this, the rural inhabited female teachers did not show more willingness to exhibit extra work in school than the male teachers so they are deprived from extra benefits and incentives than male colleagues. Subsequently, they expressed low JS in relation to PIB than male teachers as the pertinent milieu of Nepal particularly in rural areas.
This disparate result is the outcome of gender pay gap (Kanel, 2017) in Nepal, where the rural locale female faces more disparity (e.g. Baral, 2017) in comparison to the urban inhabitant. For instance, the teaching profession in Nepal is also not excluding from this situation (Bista, 2006) due to the existing socio-cultural value system. Thus, gender based disparity is deeply rooted in rural parts of Nepal as the form of social capital like: opportunity system, male preferences, roles of male teachers in school events, female safety and purity etc. (e.g. Pokharel, 2013a;Pokharel, 2013b). These practices of gender disparity ultimately contribute the low female satisfaction with pay considering rural locale.
On other hand, the urban female teacher merely expressed more satisfaction in their job compare to their male counterparts. Whatsoever, this result is similar to many previous studies (e.g. Demirtas, 2010;Murage & Kibera, 2014;Rao, 2015). More specifically, the urban females were more satisfied than male teachers in nature of work, and working environment. Huang and Gamble (2015) gave a reason that the male and female employees had their different individual expectations. More specifically, female compare their job with other female's job not with male counterparts (Huang & Gamble, 2015). Thus, the urban female teachers were more satisfied in their job.
Furthermore, the teaching profession is recognized as a highly intellectual job and it needs continuous rigorous study for facilitating the class. For this purpose, it requires an extra labor at home, particularly beyond the office time for preparing the teaching-learning activities in the classroom. However, the Nepalese urban male teachers took more extra classes than their female counterparts in or out of the school as the name of coaching or tuition classes (Rijal, Dahal, Katwal, Nepal, & Luitel, 2014). Likewise, the male teachers also engage more in sociopolitical activities than their female contemporaries. Considering it, the urban male teachers become busier than urban female teachers. So, they do not have sufficient time to prepare their lecture (e.g. Rijal et al., 2014) than female teachers. As a result, the urban male teachers suffer from workload, job stress, busy schedules, and improper working conditions. Due to these jobs related hazard influences the teacher to express low satisfaction (Chaplin, 2006). In addition, the society also gives preferences to the foreign returnee than homeland employees (Poudel, 2017) particularly in males. Among these ex-overseas employees, the males were considerably more in number than females. These socio-cultural trends of foreign employment make an immense pressure on male youth for abroad migration. Thus, these constant worries associated with abroad migration drives urban male teachers towards job dissatisfaction.
Conversely, the teaching job (work itself and environment) is more convenient to the urban females because they can enjoy a long vacation and perform their household chores (Rijal et al., 2014) beyond the school time. Likewise, their involvement in job makes them economically stronger than other females who solely depended on their spouse and families. Subsequently, the economical independency made the female teachers get appreciation and recognition from their society. As well as, there are also differences in male and female teachers in terms of their culture, resources, social life and norms of behavior. These things refer to as the capital of teachers. In Bourdieu's theory, the capital is achieved through cultural values, social interaction as well as facilities to signify the positive social relationship (Bakhtiari et al., 2014). Thus, the differences in the capitals vary the field (school) and habitus (JS) of the teachers. Overall, the social capital, favorable job nature, and working condition contributes urban female to willing more satisfaction in job than male school teachers.
However, in this decade, the globalization, modernization, democracy, migration and easy access to education as well as information have made a cultural transformation (Gellner, Pfaff-Czarnecka, & Whelpton, 1997). Many people are willing to accept the humanitarian values and respects to the gender equality and regionalism. These changes contribute to gradually wiping down the demarcation in gender and locale. Consequently, it is blurring the stratification among teachers (e.g. Gellner et al., 1997). Thus the gender and locale, individually did not make any significant differences in overall JS among school teachers in relation to their social capital. The social capital is positively associated to the JS (Lange, 2016;Shin & Lee, 2016) and it creates the highest quality of life (Requena, 2003) and working environment in the schools. It gives a sense that the presence of good social capital and high JS among teachers are associated with the high performance, work effectiveness and achievement in schools.

CONCLUSION
The gender and locale plays a remarkable role to promote JS and cultivate effective leadership in school settings. Beyond it, the social capital also influences the JS due to creating distinctness in the gender and locale among each teacher. That is why; the intersection between gender and locale on basis of social capital reveal the significant differences in JS at school settings. For instance, the urban residency female teachers expressed high JS than their male colleagues, particularly in job nature and working environment. In contrary to it, due to the pay gap based on gender makes the low satisfaction in PIB among rural female than male teachers. This contrasting outcome is due to the result of deeply rooted gender based disparity in Nepalese society especially in rural areas. However, the changes in social capital contribute to demarcate the disparity regarding gender and locale. Thus, there is no significant difference in JS across gender and locale among teachers in school settings. Overall, the teachers with JS perform better job, work effectiveness and high achievements.

IMPLICATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This research envisions the influences of gender cum locale in JS as the inter-sectional study among school setting. However, due to adopting quantitative approaches, this study didn't explore why the socio-cultural factors associating gender and locale brings differences in JS? For acquiring the answer of above the question, there is need of employing qualitative or mixed methods approaches. So, this research will be useful for other imminent scholars to find a research gap while reviewing JS across the gender cum locale beyond the conventional approaches. More specifically, this study divulges that gender and locale, separately makes no differences in JS. However, the intersection between locale and gender brings differences on JS among urban school teachers. Thus, this study provides following issues which need to in-depth study for upcoming researchers as; a. Why gender brings differences on JS among urban school teachers? b. JS among teachers from rural schools: Why gender did not contribute differences among them?