Does gender make a difference in what motivates you?
Are men and women motivated by different things?
Depending on who you ask, you’ll likely get a variety of answers to this question that span from the stereotypical and traditional to the progressive and egalitarian. Moreover, most viewpoints on this topic are shaped by personal experiences, cultural norms, anecdotal evidence, and assumptions, rather than scientific analysis or hard data.
However, Attuned’s recently published The State of Motivation Report 2023 offers fresh data-driven insights on intrinsic motivation. Among them are differences and similarities in the motivational needs of people around the world—and between men and women—in the workplace.
United in Intrinsic Motivation
The State of Motivation Report 2023 data comes from tens of thousands of Intrinsic Motivation Assessments taken by Attuned users around the globe from 2018 to 2022. The results also provide a snapshot of how motivational needs have evolved throughout the pandemic.
Attuned measures intrinsic motivation across 11 core values:
Altruism: Supporting and maintaining the wellbeing of others
Autonomy: Developing and preserving personal freedom for endeavors such as time management and solving problems
Competition: Striving to compete with others toward external and internal rewards and goals
Feedback: Achieving a sense of growth through positive and negative evaluation and recognition
Financial Needs: Working for a sense of financial security
Innovation: Seeking opportunities for creativity and unconventional solutions
Progress: Endeavoring to continuously upskill for personal development and professional growth
Rationality: Focusing on logic, objectivity, and data for decision-making
Security: Prioritizing planning and predictability around rules and frameworks to create stability
Social Relationships: Striving for frequent group interactions and quality human interactions
Status: Desiring a continuous rise in rank, reputation, and social standing
Comparing the data behind the report, the first thing that jumps out is how alike male and female respondents are. All but three of the values—Security, Altruism, and Competition—rank in exactly the same positions for both male and female respondents.
Global average scores for female and male respondents across all 11 motivators (all time data).
Although there are some significant differences in the scores for some motivators (i.e. the relative importance placed on that motivator by each respondent expressed as a percentage from 0-100%), the overall value hierarchies for both men and women are remarkably similar. Rationality, for example, ranks dead last for both, followed in ascending order by Autonomy, Innovation, Progress, Social Relationships, and Feedback. Likewise, Status and Financial Needs occupy identical positions of fourth and second most important, respectively.
The only three motivators to rank differently are Competition (first place for men, fifth for women), Security (first for women, third for men), and Altruism (third for women, fifth for men). And of these, only Competition has a percentage point difference of more than 4.6%.
Challenging Assumptions about What Motivates You
“Maybe women aren’t quite from Venus, and men aren’t quite from Mars when it comes to the values that motivate us. We are a lot more alike in our values, in our intrinsic motivations, than it would seem,” says Casey Wahl, founder and CEO of Attuned.
“For example, men have for centuries sought to entrench the idea in social hierarchies that they are more rational than women. But now we have data showing that Rationality as a motivator for men is dead last, just as it is for women. Yes, the average score is a bit higher, but in the hierarchal scheme of things, men just don’t value Rationality all that much.”
Moreover, Wahl notes that even the differences in motivational needs between men and women may be little more than products of the societies in which people grow up.
“Intrinsic motivations come from our value hierarchies—the values that are important to us and which drive our motivations,” he says. “But values are learned. We take them on from those around us and from our communities. The differences that there are between men and women, therefore, likely result from societal expectations and norms. We have been exposed to them over and over, and we feel the pressure to internalize them until they become our own motivations.”
Kristine Ayuzawa, director of people operations at tech recruitment firm Wahl+Case, says that she found Attuned’s data enlightening, but not surprising.
“I tend to think that, deep beneath the surface, at the level assessed by Attuned, men and women are more alike than we are different,” she says. “Motivators like Financial Needs, Security, and Status fall within the top four for both men and women. This reflects the reality that, while many aspects of our work may be fulfilling, ultimately people need to earn a living.”
When measuring internal motivation toward intrinsic rewards, she says, it’s also important to remember context. “While these motivators might show up in different areas of your life, Attuned is looking specifically at work environments. From that lens, it’s no surprise that drivers like financial security, feeling respected at work, and finding opportunities to progress in your career are important to everyone.”
Individual Motivations Matter More
Although Attuned’s data provides a unique macro-level view of intrinsic motivation, Wahl is quick to point out that the values and preferences that drive people are, ultimately, particular to each individual.
Indeed, with eleven motivators and a possible score of 0-100% for each, Attuned’s platform allows for more than 7.5 quadrillion possible combinations. To put that in perspective, that’s just under a million times the population of Earth, or more than 68,000 times the number of people who have ever lived.
“In the end, these are averages and, across society, men and women’s motivations are more alike than different,” he says. “What we have to be dearly mindful of is that, when we approach the individual level and move farther away from these averages, people will be very different. That individual motivational uniqueness is what managers will need to be deeply aware of to get the best out of their team.”
This article was originally published on Globis Insights.