Work Motivation in India: A Gendered Perspective

With regard to work motivation and job satisfaction, gender, owing to its presence in society inadvertently plays a part in bringing up specific issues to the organisational workplace in terms of discrimination, societal judgement, stereotypes, especially towards women, who were traditionally seemed as subordinates to men. Patriarchy has caused certain professions to be gendered and led to men and women being actively discouraged/encouraged to go into a field that is traditionally seen as ‘made for them’. Working mothers and women bear the brunt of the discrimination given the low pay, the glass ceiling effect and the judgement that entails both from men and women in an organisational workplace. They are over scrutinised and often scorned as if they do not balance their personal and professional life more so than men and this in turn affects their work life balance as well as their mental health, leading to burnout, adopting a masculine attitude to fit in, and lowering their productivity. The objective of this research was to understand do gender specific factors in the modern day and age still affect work motivation amongst men and women as well as looking into the discrepancies of their experience at work. A survey was conducted amongst working men and women and upon analysing the data it was found that there are gender specific varying factors that affect employee work motivation as well as employee work life balance in light of the current pandemic.