Gender Perspectives on Job Satisfaction and Motivation Among Librarians: A Survey of National Library Services of Kenya

Abstract

Job satisfaction is simply how a person feels regarding their work r job High sense of job satisfaction among librarians always results to higher productivity in Public libraries (Yaya, 2019). The study’s aim was to relate extensiveness of job satisfaction in Kenyan public libraries based on gender of the librarian. The study aims at finding out the gender perspectives on job satisfaction of librarians at Kenya National Library Service (KNLS). The study  establish how pay, promotion, supervision and working conditions and gender affects job satisfaction and motivation between female and male librarians. Descriptive survey design method was adopted allow for an extensive review of the study phenomenon. Cluster sampling was used to select 8 KNLS branch libraries from the 8 regions in Kenya namely; Eastern, Western, Nairobi, Rift valley, Nyanza, North Eastern, Costal and Central region. Simple random sampling was applied to pick one library in regions with more than one KNLS branch libraries. The Sample size studied was made of 120 librarians; 69 female librarians and 51 male librarians. Primary data was collected using questionnaires from both female and male librarians at KNLS. Collected data was processed and analysed using descriptive and Pearson chi square was used to test the difference between female and male librarians’ perspectives on job satisfaction and motivation. The mean of job satisfaction on pay, promotion, supervision as well as working conditions were higher among the females (3.733, 3.9533, 39533 3.6286 respectively) than the males (3.6963, 3.8711, 3.9181 and 4.0357 respectively). The research findings indicate that there was no significant difference on job satisfaction between female and male librarians at Kenya National Library Service. The study also concluded that there is no significant difference in the overall job satisfaction. It is however essential that librarian are treated equally irrespective of their gender.