Does commitment matter? A comparative gender analysis of work commitment and labor market outcomes in Western-capitalist and former-socialist countries

A wealth of research attests to women's inferior position in the labor market when compared to men. Human capital theorists have argued that women choose to accumulate less human capital than men because of their domestic obligations, which in turn leads to lower pay and lower levels of authority in the workplace. With the historically recent changes in the political sphere of Eastern Europe countries, many gender scholars have become interested in the impact that socialist regimes had on women's work, their commitment to paid work and their position in the labor market relative to their male counterparts. A lack of sociological consensus exists over the argument that socialist regimes may have been more successful than western-capitalist systems in encouraging women's commitment to paid work and their success in the labor market. This dissertation examines the impact of several dimensions of work commitment---including work ethic, job involvement and organizational commitment---on the labor market outcomes of women and men in western-capitalist and former-socialist countries. Two goals of this research were to shed more light on the extent to which arguments derived from the human capital theory are universally applicable and to examine the influence of state ideology on women's work motivations and their position in the labor market. Results indicate that state ideology is a major factor in shaping women's work motivations and their labor market results. While western women may be more committed to their work than former-socialist women, they still derive fewer benefits from this commitment than their male counterparts. By comparison, former-socialist women have had more to gain from their commitment to paid work, particularly in terms of occupational attainment and work authority, but not in terms of income. Although there are clear differences in western and former-socialist women's successes in the labor markets, women in both regions continue to derive fewer benefits from their commitment to paid work when compared to similarly committed men.