The Two Factors that Most Determine Women’s Happiness at Work

Breaking news: Women report higher job satisfaction at workplaces that are friendly toward women. That’s what Fairygodboss, the website that aggregates people of the female persuasion’s anonymous reviews of their employers, found when it analyzed its data. The factors that seem to correlate most sharply with women’s sense of professional well-being can be loosely lumped into two categories: Women appreciate pro-family policies, and women want to see other women in positions of leadership.

Fairygodboss, which launched in March 2015, has been called the “Glassdoor for women” and the “Yelp for maternity leave policies.” Its data set skews “young and affluent”: nearly 65 percent of respondents to the site’s polls are under 35, and 73 percent report earning more than $50,000 a year; the quotes highlighted in the newest report are from employees at companies such as American Express, Prudential, and Johnson & Johnson. Still, with more than 5,000 anonymous job reviews to sort through, Fairygodboss has insight into a fairly broad swathe of female experiences—and its new report shows some striking commonalities. For one thing, women who believe their workplaces treat both genders equally are far more satisfied at work than women who report the opposite. Fairygodboss asks respondents to rank their job satisfaction on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. Eighty-two percent of the “ones” said they worked in unequal companies, while 86 percent of the “fives” gave their employers credit for fostering gender equality. And while questions remain about how much women in leadership positions actually do to advance feminist policies, Fairygodboss’s data suggests that seeing gender diversity in the upper echelons of management at least gives women a higher opinion of their employers.

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