Ivona Hideg, York University, Canada; Anja Krstic, York University, Canada; Raymond Nam Cam Trau, Macquarie University, and Yujie Zhan, Wilfrid Laurier University
A significant barrier women face in men-dominated fields, like science and engineering, is balancing work and family responsibilities. While work-family conflict is not unique to these industries, it’s amplified by their long hours and high demands.
To address these challenges, organizations are increasingly offering family benefits, such as extended parental leave. Industries such as finance and technology in the United States and financial services in the United Kingdom are leading the way in offering generous parental leave policies.
However, such policies can have a paradoxical effect: despite their positive intentions in attracting women to men-dominated occupations, they may inadvertently harm women’s careers by reinforcing, rather than solving, inequities.
By comparison, recent research suggests that men may not face negative penalties after taking a parental leave. Moreover, taking a parental leave has been linked to positive impressions of men.
Our recent research suggests that women who take longer parental leaves in men-dominated industries may face penalties, including lower pay and limited promotion opportunities.
Enabling organizations to understand the unintended negative consequences of such policies and counteract them with initiatives that can help working mothers is critical to achieving equity aspirations espoused by leading companies.
Gendered work expectations
Women are often seen as highly communal, characterized by traits like warmth and compassion, while men are viewed as highly agentic, associated with career dedication and ambition.
Agentic qualities are often deemed essential in men-dominated occupations, and these gendered stereotypes create a perceived mismatch between women’s communal traits and the agentic qualities valued in these professions.
To advance in these fields, women must demonstrate agency. However, taking parental leave — a strongly communal act — can undermine perceptions of women’s agency, with longer leaves exacerbating doubts about their commitment and ambition.
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Conversely, these negative effects may not arise in women-dominated industries like education and health care, where communal traits align more closely with the skills and values needed for success. In such fields, taking parental leave is less likely to harm women’s salaries or career progression.
Australian parental leave policies
We conducted three studies on Australian parental leave policies using mixed methods, including archival data and experimental studies.
Our first study used archival data from 2001 to 2013 from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (HILDA) published by the Melbourne Institute. Our findings showed that longer parental leave was associated with lower post-leave income for women in men-dominated occupations. No such relationship was observed for women in women-dominated or gender-neutral occupations, like the food trade and horticulture.
Our second study replicated these findings using an experimental design with 311 Australian workers. For women applying to men-dominated roles, taking a 12-month parental leave (compared to one month) resulted in lower recommended salaries. A 12-month leave is a standard and commonly taken length in Australia. This effect was not observed for women applying to women-dominated jobs.
Our third study tested underlying explanations for these outcomes using another experiment with 163 workers and students in Australia. Results revealed that longer parental leaves negatively impacted perceptions of women’s agency, which, in turn, influenced salary recommendations. Longer leaves adversely affected evaluations of leadership effectiveness and promotability into management roles.
The negative outcomes of longer parental leaves in the second and third studies were consistent regardless of the evaluators’ gender.
However, our research has limitations. Because of the nature of the HILDA data, our findings predominantly reflect outcomes for women who are white, cisgender and heterosexual. Future research should examine the impact of parental leave policies in more diverse gender and racial contexts to promote inclusivity in research and the knowledge it generates.
Parental leave is essential
Parental leaves — particularly longer ones — are vital for both women’s health and career progression. Longer parental leaves are linked to improved health outcomes for mothers and babies.
The availability of parental leave plays a crucial role in helping women remain in the workforce and return after childbirth. Thus, parental leave is essential for supporting maternal and infant health while reducing women’s turnover and workforce attrition.
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However, if not managed effectively, parental leave can inadvertently harm women’s careers, especially in fields where they are underrepresented. Having a policy alone is not sufficient; it’s equally important to ensure women are fully supported upon their return to work.
At a minimum, managers and decision-makers must recognize that women may face biased evaluations post-leave, even when their qualifications and performance are on par with peers who have not taken leave.
Organizations should implement policies and practices that support mothers during their transition back to work. For instance, keep-in-touch programs can help women stay connected with their workplaces during leave. Such programs can enhance perceptions of women’s agency and mitigating the potential negative impacts of extended leaves.
More broadly, fostering allyship among men in men-dominated workplaces is essential. Men allies can address the career challenges faced by women who take parental leave and reduce the adverse effects of under-representation, particular in STEM fields, by promoting inclusion and respect for women.
Cultural changes are needed
While men-dominated industries often lead in offering generous parental leave policies to attract and retain women, these same policies can unintentionally hinder women’s long-term career success and impede gender equity in these fields. This negative impact is not observed in women-dominated occupations.
Men-dominated industries often prioritize agentic traits — such as long working hours and rigidity — over flexibility and inclusivity, which adversely affect both women and men. This emphasis on agentic traits can persist even when competence and high performance are evident.
To address this, organizations must cultivate leadership, cultures, and norms that value communal traits as much as agentic ones.
Research in the firefighting profession — a traditionally men-dominated field — demonstrates that such cultural shifts are possible. Equally emphasizing both agentic and communal traits in the profession fosters a culture of greater acceptance of women. This rebalancing not only diversifies the field, but also redefines success in a more inclusive manner.
One way for organizations to shift cultures to value communality more would be to measure and evaluate communal aspects of one’s performance. That is, organizations and managers would need to re-define what success looks like and what needs to be measured to assess effectiveness of one’s performance.
Ultimately, meaningful cultural change in men-dominated industries is essential to create workplaces that are more inclusive, balanced and supportive of diverse talent.
Tanya Zarina, Director of HR Strategy at Equinix and an HR consultant, co-authored this article.
Ivona Hideg, Associate Professor and Ann Brown Chair in Organization Studies, York University, Canada; Anja Krstic, Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management, York University, Canada; Raymond Nam Cam Trau, Senior Lecturer, Department of Management, Macquarie University, and Yujie Zhan, Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Wilfrid Laurier University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.