In modern industrial societies, the majority of both sexes enter the workforce; however, even in gender egalitarian societies, sex disparities remain in pay as well as in representation in various occupations and elite positions. One explanatory factor may be differences in what men and women value most in a job. However, one limitation of previous research is that, given the opportunity to rate multiple job attributes, people rate many of them as very important. Using samples of college students (N= 513), online survey workers (N= 492), and UWEC alumni (N= 1404), we addressed this issue of restricted range by giving participants a limited budget of 40 “importance points” to allocate among 10 desirable job characteristics. In the college student and alumni samples, three primary hypotheses were supported: Men allocated more importance points to having an above-average salary and opportunity for advancement than women did, and women allocated more importance points to being able to directly help others than men did. We found partial support for the hypothesis that women would allocate more importance points to having friendly coworkers than men would. We discuss the strengths and limitations of our samples and chosen method.
