Normative Discrimination and the Motherhood Penalty
This research proposes and tests a new theoretical mechanism to account for a portion of the motherhood penalty in wages and related labor market outcomes. At least a portion of this penalty is attributable to discrimination based on the assumption that mothers are less competent and committed than other types of workers. But what happens when mothers definitively prove their competence and commitment? In this study, we examine whether mothers face discrimination in labor-market-type evaluations even when they provide indisputable evidence that they are competent and committed to paid work. We test the hypothesis that evaluators discriminate against highly successful mothers by viewing them as less warm, less likable, and more interpersonally hostile than otherwise similar workers who are not mothers. The results support this “normative discrimination” hypothesis for female but not male evaluators. The findings have important implications for understanding the nature and persistence of discrimination toward mothers.
Discrimination against Mothers is the Strongest Form of Workplace Gender Discrimination: Lessons from US Caregiver Discrimination Law
Work-family reconciliation is an integral part of labor law as the result of two major demographic changes: the rise of the two-earner family, and the pressing concern of elder care as Baby Boomers age. Despite these changes, most European and American workplaces still assume that the committed worker has a family life secured so that family responsibilities do not distract from work obligations. This way of organizing employment around a breadwinner husband and a caregiver housewife, which arose in the late eighteenth century, is severely outdated today. The result is workplace-workforce mismatch: Many employers still have workplaces perfectly designed for the workforce of 1960. Labour lawyers in Europe and the United States have developed different legal strategies to reduce the work-family conflicts that arise from this mismatch. The Europeans’ focus is on public policy, based on a European political tradition of communal social supports — a tradition the United States lacks. Advocates in the United States, faced with the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world, have developed legal remedies based on the American political tradition of individualism, using anti-discrimination law to eliminate employment discrimination against mothers and other adults with caregiving responsibilities. This article explores both the social science documenting that motherhood is the strongest trigger for gender bias in the workplace and the American cases addressing “family responsibilities discrimination.”
Feminism, Equity and the Family-Centred Workplace
Gaps in gender equality are narrowing globally, but significant challenges persist in all countries. Approaches to improve gender equality need to be made by individuals and at the organisational level. Egalitarian men can do their utmost to promote opportunities for women in medicine and science. But to quote feminist Mary Beard, ‘you cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded male; you have to change the structure’.
Workforce + Childcare: Executive Summary
Child care supports the current workforce, and high quality child care builds a strong future workforce. It’s time for San Diego to take action.
The Equal Pay Act: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (But Not All the Way)
In 1963, we could have only dreamed of a woman with a realistic shot at the White House, or a female Speaker of the House or Secretary of State. There were no women heading Fortune 500 companies, jetting into space, or sitting on the Supreme Court. The average women had limited educational opportunities and very few career options, and in the jobs they had, on average, they still only made 60 cents on the dollar that men did.
Critical Mass: What Happens When Women Start to Rule the World – led by Jay Newton-Small
In sociology, political science and economics studies abound on when the presence of women begins to have an impact. Almost across the board, if there’s less than 20% representation outcomes don’t change. Either the women don’t speak up or the men don’t hear them. But somewhere between 20% and 30% and something called critical mass is attained and suddenly women’s voices are heard. Whether it’s on a Navy ship, in the Senate or on a corporate board, groups function better with diversity. Mixed workforces that have reached critical mass have shown a host of positive outcomes: police shoot and engage in violence less, companies have to restate their earnings less and banks take less risk. Women make up 46% of the workforce, but more than two-thirds of those on minimum wage are women. But, increasingly, women are breaking into management level roles, especially in government jobs. The public sector has leapt frogged ahead of the private sector in recent years and all three branches of the government are approaching critical mass at the same time. In this study group, I’ll examine how women govern, manage, command and lead differently than men and what it means for our future workforce.
Gender Equity in the News Media: Analysis and Recommendations for Newsroom Leaders
This paper analyzes the state of gender equity in the American news media industry today. Sadly, many of the challenges we will describe are not new. In fact, the disservice done to society by the exclusion of women from the reporting of news was raised as early as the 18th century by women suffragists and women’s rights activists in North America as well as Europe. Women first brought a gendered analysis of the mass media to the global stage in the 1970s, when a multipart critique was presented at the 1975World Conference on Women in Mexico City, which opened the UN Decade for Women. Conference speakers stressed the importance of the global mass communications media to “change stereotyped attitudes of men and women” and “eliminate discrimination against women,” and the published report exhorted the mass communication media to “inform the population about new roles for women and their struggle for equity with men” (United Nations, 1975).