The link between gender discrimination and work satisfaction between female journalists in Chile: Comparing data from 2016 and 2022

Abstract

We conducted two surveys (in 2016 and 2022) to measure the work satisfaction of Chilean female journalists and applied a face-to-face version of the questionnaire to 146 male journalists. Conducting t-tests to compare means, we found that during these 6 years, work satisfaction by Chilean female journalists decreased soundly and was significantly smaller than that of male journalists. We also found that female journalists are more willing than men to quote sources of their gender and feature them as newsmakers in the news media. Conducting a regression analysis, we found that three independent variables were highly significant as they had a clear effect on the work satisfaction declared by female journalists. They were “perceived autonomy,” “gender equality at work” “and having enough female editors or supervisors in their newsrooms.” On the contrary, annual wage, work promotion, marital status, age and job status did not appear as relevant variables for women to assess their work satisfaction. Our results confirm that women are more satisfied when they work in an equal workplace, with a low perception of gender discrimination and having enough female editors or supervisors in their newsrooms.