Gender and its impact on business owner satisfaction in family farms

This paper examines the relationship between role satisfaction of farm family business owners and gender. Specifically, this paper investigates how role satisfaction is different for male and female farm family business owners. Previous literature has suggested that male and female owners might have a different level of satisfaction when faced with similar profits. The hypothesis is that female owners will have higher levels of role satisfaction than male owners. The sustainable family business model is adapted to form the theoretical framework. It helps identify family and business resources and constraints, processes, and transactions that are most likely to lead to business and family achievement. Gender and profit are two important factors in the model. The data used for the empirical analysis come from the 2012 Intergenerational Farm and Non-Farm Family Business Survey, which was a 30-minutes telephone survey of rural family businesses in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The sample consists of 736 small and medium size farms from the four states. Preliminary results indicate that gender has significant impact on the perceived role satisfaction of owners when they face the same profits.