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Two of the studies conducted as part of the JuDy project will be presented in August 2021 at the international conference organized by the Academy of Management (AoM). Founded in 1936, AoM is the leading professional association of management and organization researchers. Its community now includes nearly 20,000 members in more than 120 countries.

 

The study on women’s work experiences during their maternity leave will be presented as part of the symposium "Women's Careers in the 21st Century: New Perspectives and Insights". And the second study on teleworking parents during the Covid-19 pandemic will be presented in the symposium "Novel Advances on Poorly Understood Challenges Women Face at Work".

 

Short abstracts for each presentation :

Women’s work experiences at the time around maternity leave

There is wide evidence that becoming a mother is a critical moment for women’s careers (Kleven et al. 2019). Especially highly skilled women have been shown to experience severe penalties for time spent on maternity leave (England, Bearak, Budig & Hodes, 2016), yet we lack studies that investigate what happens during this crucial period from the women’s own perspective and how these women make sense of the treatment they receive at work. In our qualitative longitudinal research with working women around the time of their maternity leave, we integrate the Organizational Justice perspective to gain insights into women’s professional experiences at this turning point in their careers. Specifically, we investigate how fairness experiences and expectations before, and evolving fairness experiences during and after maternity leave may impact women’s career aspirations and attitudes. The 36 participating women in our sample were all highly skilled and were interviewed at three points in time from the moment before going on maternity leave up to several months upon their return to work. The findings suggest that (un-)fairness experiences can have repercussions, whether positive or negative, on career aspirations, attitudes and decisions. Several interviewees established a link between specific (unfair) experiences with supervisors and their desire to quit their job and to find a new employer, while others felt encouraged to take on a new role upon their return. Interestingly, in some cases there appeared to be a motivational effect of career aspirations on fairness judgments, leading participants to interpret given organizational practices as fair even when typical criteria of fairness were violated. Taken together, these findings shed light into the importance of promoting fair practices for supporting women at this pivotal time for their careers. The results will be discussed with regard to theory and practice.

 

Teleworking parents during the Covid-19 pandemic

we have collected data from 287 participating working mothers and fathers who answered 1309 daily surveys over the course of one week, while teleworking. Our aim was to investigate some of the poorly understood challenges in relation to the growing trend of working from home, and how this experience may be different for men versus women. Interestingly, we find that perceived work-to-childcare interruptions had different effects for men versus women. While men's daily experienced work-life balance was unaffected by such interruptions, women reported decreased fulfillment of work-life balance motives when work interrupted childcare related activities. On the other hand, women's perceived daily experiences of authenticity and challenge at work were unrelated to such interruptions, while men actually reported higher levels of experienced authenticity and challenge on days when they perceived more interruptions from work-to-childcare.

We interpret these results in the light of gender-role-theory and develop recommendations for theory and practice, to better support women in new types of telework arrangements. To bring our findings to life, we illustrate our quantitative diary findings with quotes that we selected from our participants during the course of the study.

 

If you would like to receive the full versions of these two symposia, please contact us at contact@anr-judy.fr.