Abstract
How does job context influence employers’ views of mothers as workers? Drawing on 51 in-depth interviews with employers in the finance and business service sectors of Hungary, the authors find that finance employers rely on a variety of strategies aimed at excluding mothers from entry-level professional jobs, while business services employers invest significant resources aimed at recruiting and accommodating mothers. To explain this variation, the authors suggest that employers’ views of mothers are dependent on their perception of skill requirements and knowledge/skill dynamism.
Mothers face disadvantages in the labor force relative to nonmothers (Budig & England, 2001; Gangl & Ziefle, 2009; Misra, Budig, & Moller, 2007; Waldfogel, 1998). Mothers earn less than nonmothers and encounter significant challenges accommodating family responsibilities with paid work (Budig & England, 2001; Cooke, 2014; Crittendon, 2001; Gerson, 1986; Stone, 2008). In many countries, mothers also face significant employment gaps compared with nonmothers (Gornick, Meyers, & Ross, 1997; Misra, Budig, & Boeckmann, 2011). To date, much of the research on motherhood penalties has focused on earning differences between mothers and nonmothers and the challenges working mothers experience negotiating work expectations and family commitments (see Williams, 2010 for a review). Most scholars conclude that many of the challenges mothers face stem from employers’ view of mothers as less competent and committed to work. Indeed, experimental and audit study research suggests that employers view mothers as less desirable workers relative to nonmothers even when mothers’ competence and commitment is well established (Benard & Correll, 2010; Vinkenburg, van Engen, Coffeng, & Dikkers, 2012).
Despite assumptions that employer bias drives motherhood penalties in the paid work, relatively little research has directly assessed the sources of employer attitudes and practices related to mothers. Even less research has sought to systematically compare employer attitudes to uncover the ways in which job context influences employers’ views. Thus, the factors that shape employers’ attitudes—and the practices derived from those attitudes—remain underexplored. Yet, employers represent critical gatekeepers to career mobility, occupational attainment, and income generation for all workers. Absent direct evidence of the factors that shape employers’ views of mothers as workers and how these views shape employment outcomes, our understanding of the mechanisms that drive labor market inequalities for mothers remains incomplete.
This study asks two related questions: How do employers’ perceptions shape their assessment of mothers as workers, and how are their perceptions shaped by job context? While most scholars assume that employer bias contributes to the disadvantages working mothers face (Gough & Noonan, 2013), relatively few studies have incorporated the views of employers directly. Quantitative studies tend to posit that bias drives wage gaps not explainable by individual and job characteristics (e.g., Budig & England, 2001), while most qualitative studies focus on mothers’ perceptions and experiences of bias and discrimination at work (e.g., Stone, 2008). As a result, there are at least two important gaps in the literature on motherhood and work that this study seeks to address. Specifically, we bring employers perceptions to the forefront of our analysis of motherhood penalties and thereby add a critical mechanism into our understanding of the factors that shape mothers’ access to work.
Our contribution seeks to identify the sources of employer bias against mothers. First, because most evidence of employer bias to date is indirect, we have very little evidence regarding the ways in which employers’ perceptions of mothers translate into recruitment processes, hiring practices, and employment outcomes. Second, because we have little evidence of how job context shapes employers’ views of mothers, we know relatively little about the potential for variation between and among jobs regarding the ways employers’ skill expectations translate into perceptions of mothers’ fitness for particular jobs. By comparing employer attitudes in two professional sectors where the context of entry-level jobs varies, we can identify key factors that contribute to the degree and variation of bias against mothers. By systematically comparing employer attitudes in two professional sectors, this study aims to fill these gaps and to better specify the demand-side mechanisms that contribute to mothers’ labor market attainment.
Hungary is an ideal setting to analyze and compare employer attitudes toward mothers for two reasons. First, by analyzing employer attitudes toward mothers in an institutional context where women are well represented in professional jobs and are guaranteed long maternity leaves, our findings can contribute to ongoing debates regarding the impact of parental leaves on women’s career mobility. While many scholars agree that long leaves harm women’s careers (e.g., Boeckmann, Misra, & Budig, 2015), very little research has analyzed how employers interpret the meaning of social policies at the organizational level. Thus, the mechanism that leads to reduced labor market attainment for mothers in countries that guarantee long leaves is unknown. Second, recent research suggests that the impact of motherhood on women’s careers is dependent on the institutional and cultural context (Budig, Misra, & Boeckmann, 2016). In conservative cultural contexts, like Hungary, that support a male breadwinner/female caregiver model, paid leave and public childcare can have a weak or even negative impact on women’s careers by, in part, reducing employers’ willingness to hire mothers (Budig, Misra, & Boeckmann, 2012). Less well understood, however, are the occupational or sector-based differences within countries that mediate between the institutional and cultural context and worker outcomes. By analyzing organizational and job-level factors that contribute to variation in employers’ perception of mothers as workers, we can better specify the mechanisms that shape mothers’ employment outcomes.
To answer our research questions, we draw on 51 in-depth interviews with employers in two professional sectors in Hungary where the job context varies: finance and business services. Although our unit of analysis is firm-level recruitment and hiring norms and practices, we analyze whether employers in different sectors perceive of skill requirements and work demands in ways that systematically differ with regard to mothers.
Motherhood at Work
Research on the disadvantages mothers face in paid work has focused primarily on earning differences between mothers and nonmothers and the challenges working mothers face negotiating work expectations and family commitments. Scholarship in the United States and Europe, for example, finds that mothers face both short- and long-term costs in terms of wages and wage growth compared with nonmothers even after controlling for experience, education, job commitment, and job characteristics (Abendroth, Huffman, & Treas, 2014; Budig & England, 2001; Cooke, 2014; Kmec, 2011; Korenman & Neumark, 1994; Waldfogel, 1998). However, not only do mothers face limitations on compensation but they also face challenges sustaining paid work (Gornick et al., 1997; Misra et al., 2011). Indeed, in much of the developed world, the employment rates for men and childless women have converged in recent years. However, mothers’ employment remains uneven, with large gaps in employment in some countries and more narrow gaps in others (Misra et al., 2011).
To explain these trends, scholars have considered the sources of employer bias against working mothers. Theory on motherhood penalties has centered on the incompatibility between cultural constructions of motherhood and employers’ perception of the ideal worker (Benard & Correll, 2010; Williams, 2000). Culturally speaking, mothers are assumed to prioritize family responsibilities over professional commitments, while ideal workers are devoted to paid work without interference from nonwork attachments (Blair-Loy, 2003; Hochschild, 1997; Moen & Roehling, 2005; Williams, 2000). The ideal worker is expected to work long hours; be available to employers, customers, or clients 24-7; and to sacrifice life outside of work to get the job done (Correll, Kelly, Trimble-O’Connor, & Williams, 2014). By contrast, mothers are expected prioritize care and availability to children and family over work and other demands (Hays, 1998).
The incompatibility of these cultural expectations leads to employer bias against mothers when evaluating workers’ fitness for paid work. Indeed, employers tend to view mothers as less competent and capable when compared with nonmothers (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004). Ideal worker norms guide employers’ evaluations and expectations of worker behavior and tend to be most salient in white-collar professional jobs where work commitment expectations are highest (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2014; Kmec, Trimble O’Connor, & Scheiman, 2014). Yet, while scholars have documented the salience of ideal worker norms in professional workplaces in the United States as well as the barriers such norms create for women generally and mothers in particular (e.g., Crowley & Kolenikov, 2013; Gerson, 1986; Stone, 2008), few studies have sought to identify the contextual basis for employer bias against mothers. Very few studies, for instance, have analyzed variation between or among firms or sectors in terms of the salience of motherhood bias in recruiting and hiring (see Fuller, 2016 for a recent exception). Yet, research from mothers’ perspectives seems to suggest important sources of variation across jobs, suggesting that job context can have a significant impact on employer bias against mothers. In the United States, some mothers report that employer bias has led them to pull back or drop out of paid work; yet, many professional mothers are able to sustain careers (Damaske, 2011). Similarly, some American women report that the anticipation of employer bias leads them to alter or downgrade their career path; yet, again many mothers are able to sustain long-term professional careers (Bass, 2015).
While most research assumes that mothers’ challenges stem at least in part from employer bias and discrimination, there is abundant evidence that job context is a significant predictor of workplace inequality more broadly. We define job context as firm-level expectations, norms, and practices with regard to skill requirements and work demands. As others have noted, inequalities in occupational rewards are generated at the level of the job or workplace but reflect (and are reflected in) larger occupational contexts (e.g., Tilly, 1998). Managers have significant influence over workplace inequality (Castilla, 2011), and their perception of worker fitness is shaped by their perception of job demands and social expectations of different types of workers (Pedulla, 2016). While employers shape firm-level job context, their perceptions of skill requirements are influenced by larger sector-level norms and expectations. Thus, we focus on hiring managers’ perception of organizational needs as well as their perception of mothers’ fitness for meeting the needs of the firm.
There is emergent evidence that job context shapes the careers of mothers in white-collar jobs in important ways. For instance, work organizations in the United States and Europe vary significantly in the degree to which they provide flexible work arrangements for parents, including schedule flexibility, workplace flexibility, paid leave, and childcare (e.g., Budig et al., 2016; Den Dulk, Peters, & Poutsma, 2012). Similarly, organizations vary to the degree to which mothers face career penalties as a result of accessing so-called family friendly policies (Konrad & Yang, 2012). There is also evidence that mothers are penalized in male-dominated professional jobs due to their presumed inability to mobilize a sufficiently strong work commitment or assimilate to male-dominated cultural norms (Gorman, 2005; Turco, 2010). To successfully navigate such jobs in the U.S. context, mothers must engage in extensive mothering whereby they outsource the day-to-day care of children to devote themselves fully to paid work (Christopher, 2012). Such cultural pressures and structural limitations within professional jobs lead some mothers to exit full-time careers altogether (Stone, 2008).
Motherhood wage penalty scholarship and analyses of the role of job context in shaping mothers’ careers suggests that employer bias shapes employment outcomes; yet, very few scholars have attempted to measure bias directly. Relying on findings from a laboratory experiment and an audit study of employers in the United States, Correll, Benard, and Paik (2007) conclude that evaluators tend to view mothers as less desirable than nonmothers. In the laboratory study, evaluators were less likely to hire mothers and more likely to offer mothers lower starting salaries. Results from the audit study confirmed that employers prefer nonmothers to mothers with mothers receiving significantly fewer callbacks. More recently, Vinkenburg et al. (2012) found that experimental evaluators demonstrated more bias against mothers who were the primary childcare providers in their household. In their analysis of discrimination claims by pregnant workers in the United States, Byron and Roscigno (2014) found that employers tend to legitimate discrimination against soon-to-be mothers by exaggerating their firms’ commitment to meritocracy. While these studies provide evidence of employer bias, they do not engage employers directly to explore the conditions under which biases emerge and shape employment practices and outcomes. Yet, it is vital to examine employer perceptions directly to understand the conditions under which bias shapes labor market inequalities (Moss & Tilly, 2001). As noted earlier, job context is shaped (and shaped by) employers’ perception of skill demands and social role assumptions and stereotypes of potential workers. Thus, the current study explores how employers in different sectors apply and interpret gender role stereotypes in the context of recruiting and hiring for specific jobs.
The Hungarian Context
Hungary is an ideal site for our study because women are well represented in professional services sectors and enjoy access to paid maternity leave and publicly available childcare. Hungary’s work–family regime represents a mix of two systems: The secondary wage earner system that provides long (up to 3 years) of paid maternity leaves for working mothers and a dual earner system that provides universal public childcare for children aged 3 to 6 (Szelewa, 2010). Comparative research on gender welfare policies finds that paid parental leaves combined with public childcare tend to support women’s employment (e.g., Budig et al., 2016). However, these impacts tend to be moderated by cultural attitudes. Specifically, in context like Hungary where cultural attitudes support the male breadwinner/female caregiver model, paid leave and childcare can have a weak or even negative impact on mothers’ earnings (Budig et al., 2012).
While there is little evidence of motherhood wage penalties in Hungary (Cukrowska & Lovász, 2014), there is evidence that highly educated mothers are significantly less likely than highly educated nonmothers to be employed (Glass, 2008). Qualitative research on the Hungarian labor market further reveals that employers in some professional sectors rely on a variety of strategies to demote and marginalize working mothers (Glass & Fodor, 2011). Taken together, this evidence suggests that the absence of a significant motherhood wage penalty may be due to the challenges highly skilled mothers face sustaining paid work in professional jobs. Professional services represent one of the fastest growing segments of the service industry in Hungary and elsewhere (e.g., Gorman & Sandefur, 2011), and women are increasingly well represented in professional service careers across industrial economies (Kumra & Vinnicombe, 2008). Thus, comparing recruitment and hiring for entry-level professional jobs in two professional services sectors allows us to analyze the impact of different job contexts on employer bias toward working mothers.
Finance and Business Services
We selected finance and business services for study because they are two of the fastest growing white-collar professional service sectors of the Hungarian economy. Since the 1990s, Budapest has become a major hub for foreign investments in finance and business services in Europe, driven in large part by the availability of a cheap but highly educated professional labor force. Companies like GE, Citibank, Unisys, HP, Emirates Airlines, and so forth have established large firms in Hungary, which provide accounting, legal services, logistical services, call centers, IT support, and a variety of other business and financial services regionally and globally.
Under socialism, women dominated white-collar professional jobs. While professional sectors began to attract men after 1990, women retained a foothold due to their skills, educational attainment, and job experience (Fodor, 1997). Gender segregation is relatively high in Hungary (European Commission, 2009), but segregation in professional sectors like finance and business services remains low. Women comprise over 60% of professional workers in both sectors and 50% to 60% of new hires for professional white-collar jobs. Employers in our sample prefer to hire workers at degree completion or when workers are in the early to mid-20s. Importantly, the average age of mothers at first birth in Hungary is 28 (slightly higher for educated professional women; OECD, 2016), meaning that most workers being screened for employment in these sectors are not yet parents. Our study focuses on employers’ attitudes toward mothers in entry-level professional jobs. This allows us to compare employers’ attitudes, recruitment preferences, and hiring practices at the point of hire for highly skilled professional workers.
There is no official data available that would describe internal segregation within each sector. Discussions with employers, however, revealed gender segregation along typical dimensions: For example, IT-related jobs were typically male dominated, while direct customer service tended to be female dominated. But employers preferred gender-balanced teams and most denied that women or men were more competitive for particular jobs. In addition, at least at the entry level, employers in both sectors tended to rotate people throughout the company and across jobs, reducing horizontal segregation early in the career.
Jobs in finance and business services represent some of the most attractive and lucrative jobs in Hungary. While the average monthly salary for private sector professional workers is 236,428 HUF (approximately $775 EURO), the average starting salary in finance and business services is approximately 300,000 to 350,000 HUF (approximately $980–$1200 EURO). Both sectors recruit recent graduates of university or postgraduate programs with degrees in finance, law, or economics. While some jobs (especially in finance) are highly prestigious and require specialized training (such as in law or accounting), most entry-level professional jobs typically include fairly monotonous client-based servicing following a brief on-the-job training period.
In finance, the typical entry-level jobs include those in finance, accounting and credit analysis, sales and marketing, and investment/brokerage. In business services, typical jobs include finance and accounting; marketing and market analysis; customer service and supply chain management; and operations, logistics, and data management. Similarities between these sectors and the fact that employers in these sectors operate in the same labor market and cultural and policy context and are bound by the same legal restrictions make them an ideal comparison for analyzing the job-specific factors that shape employers’ views of mothers as workers.
Despite these similarities, however, there are important differences between the two sectors. Most importantly, women are more underrepresented in senior management and executive-level positions in finance when compared with business services. Jobs in finance are much more vertically structured, meaning that there is more opportunity for mobility for entry-level workers in this sector. However, as our analysis will show, mothers’ greater disadvantage in this sector means that the sector is characterized by higher levels of vertical segregation than business services. The sectors also differ in terms of the degree of standardization of work and work schedules. The standardized nature of client servicing in business services when compared with finance means that work hours are more routinized in the former sector; according to our respondents, average work hours range from 50 or more in finance to 40 in business services. The sectors also differ in terms of requisite hard skills. While the professional language of both sectors is English, business services require all entry-level workers to demonstrate fluency in at least a third language (in addition to Hungarian and English). This is again due to the nature of the client base. While finance clients are corporate clients whose business language is also English, daily interactions with clients in business services includes end user customers from around the world.
Methods
Data for this analysis come from 51 in-depth interviews with employers in the finance and business services sectors in Hungary between 2004 and 2013. 1 Our analysis focuses on how job context shapes employers attitudes and perceptions of mothers as workers. As noted earlier, our unit of analysis is firm-level expectations, norms, and practices. However, we conceptualize employers’ perceptions and the recruitment and hiring practices that they design according to these perceptions as shaped by larger sector-level norms and expectations. Thus, our analysis explores whether and how employers in different sectors (finance and business services) perceive of skill requirements and work demands in ways that systematically differ with regard to mothers.
In-depth interviews are an important means of learning about employer attitudes (Moss & Tilly, 2001). Because our research design is based on in-depth employer interviews, our focus is on employers’ self-reported attitudes and perceptions of the skills and work commitment of mothers and nonmothers. Thus, the focus of our analysis is on employers’ cultural views of mothers’ skill, competence, and work commitment rather than on the objective capabilities of working mothers.
All respondents were directly responsible for recruiting and hiring workers for white-collar professional jobs. Interviews were explicitly solicited for individuals with direct responsibility for hiring professional workers. Most respondents held the job title of HR Manager or HR Director; yet, others held positions as directors in specific areas of their firm. All held managerial roles directly responsible for recruiting, screening, and hiring professional workers. To the extent that biases shape formal and informal practices related to recruiting and hiring for entry-level jobs, we believe hiring managers are the most important source for information on employer attitudes for this study. And indeed, extant research suggests that hiring managers often circumvent organizational policies when hiring and are resistant to bureaucratic restrictions on their discretion over the job screening process (Dobbin & Kalev, 2016; Williams, Kilanski, & Muller, 2014). Thus, we expect that hiring managers directly responsible for recruiting and hiring on a day-to-day basis have a greater impact on entry-level hiring than other members of the organization, including more senior executives.
All business service interviews were conducted in private, foreign-owned firms, while finance interviews included mostly private, foreign-owned firms as well as two large state-owned organizations—a distribution that reflects the ownership structure of both industries. The sampling frame included public directories of all finance and business service companies in Hungary in 2004, 2008, and 2013. Human resource personnel at all institutions were contacted directly by the authors, who requested interviews with managers and supervisors directly responsible for hiring for entry-level white-collar positions. This resulted in 33 interviews in finance and 17 in business services. This represents a response rate of approximately 60% in finance and of approximately 50% in business services. In both sectors, our sample included large, medium, and small firms. The business language of both industries is English, all respondents were fluent English speakers, and all interviews were conducted in English. While the majority of respondents were Hungarian, the nationality of respondents varied and included individuals from the United States, France, Italy, Great Britain, and Turkey. Men and women were equally represented in our sample. The age of respondents ranged from 35 to 60 with an average around 45. 2
Both authors participated in all interviews, which lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. The authors alternated between leading the interview and taking notes and contemporaneously transcribing interviews on a laptop computer. Contemporaneous transcription was ideal because respondents were generally more comfortable with laptop computers than with voice recording devices. After each interview, both researchers compared the notes and transcription files carefully to include any missing detail after which both researchers reviewed the transcript for accuracy. All interviews were conducted in person in the corporate offices of respondents with the exception of one, which was conducted at a nearby café. Each author coded interviews independently to identify key themes. We then compared our respective themes and recoded transcripts to better identify patterns. Our analysis is based on themes derived from this process and draws on quotations identified by our coding.
Interviews began with questions regarding the strategies used to recruit and screen applicants and employers’ description of highly skilled candidates. We then asked about the obstacles employers face in terms of securing and retaining skilled workers and whether they experienced challenges due to workers’ family responsibilities. While questions about family responsibilities were asked in a gender-neutral manner, nearly all respondents interpreted such questions in terms of motherhood, and all respondents mentioned maternity or maternity leave as a challenge. 3 Follow-up questions built upon these responses; when an employer mentioned motherhood or maternity leave, the authors asked additional questions regarding employers’ attitudes toward and experiences with mothers. Respondents were forthcoming about issues related to gender, family, and work as well as about their strategies for excluding or accommodating working mothers.
Findings
Our analysis reveals that employers’ views of mothers are dependent on two job context-specific factors: employers’ perception of a job’s skill requirements and their perception of a job’s knowledge/skill dynamism. Skill requirements refer to employers’ understanding of the primary skills necessary to succeed at the job, while knowledge/skill dynamism refers to employers’ perception of how rapidly the requisite skill set or knowledge base changes. Because of differences in their perception of job requirements, employers in the two sectors view mothers as workers very differently. While employers in business services view mothers as desirable workers, finance employers view mothers as incapable of meeting the demands of the job. As a result, business services employers seek to recruit and accommodate mothers while finance employers attempt to screen out and exclude mothers from the industry. We begin by reviewing our findings related to skill requirements and knowledge/skill dynamism and then we detail how employers’ views contribute to “managing motherhood,” which refers to the ways in which employers’ views of mothers translate into employment practices that exclude mothers in finance and accommodate mothers in business services.
Skill Requirements
Employers in both sectors viewed soft skills as more important than experience or technical knowledge for entry-level positions. However, the types of skills employers screened for were dependent on job context. In finance, employers screened for skills highly consistent with the “ideal worker” norm, while in business services, employers were much more likely to screen for stereotypically feminine traits such as interpersonal and communication skills. As a result, employers in finance actively screened mothers out of the hiring process, while employers in business services sought to signal their commitment to family-friendliness.
Finance
In finance, employers’ perception of the requisite soft skills strongly aligned with ideal worker norms and focused on job commitment and dedication. Several respondents mentioned that workers must have the “right mentality” or the “right business sense” to be competitive. The following statement by a senior manager at a large bank illustrates this perspective: “Important soft skills [include] assertiveness, proactivity, self-confidence. Bad skills include hesitancy and insecurity.” Other soft skills mentioned by nearly all finance respondents included the ability to deal with conflict, leadership potential, ambition, and the ability to “think strategically.”
Professional fitness was measured by a willingness to work long hours and leadership potential. Nearly every employer stated that workers are expected to work 50 hours per week or 9 to 10 hours per day; in the words of one employer, “of course work hours are flexible but that just means you work your butt off.” Employers also privileged workers whom they believed had strong leadership potential, which they conflated with assertiveness, confidence, and ambition—the typical trope of “think manager-think male” (Schein, 2001). Consider the description of the ideal worker by a manager at a large American firm: “willingness for self-development, openness to new things, analytical thinking skills … good decision-making skills, [ability to] work under pressure, takes risks but safe, calculated risks.” As a result of this construction of the requisite skill set, most finance respondents viewed mothers as ill-equipped to meet the demands of the industry. The following quote by a manager of a large Hungarian firm explaining the absence of mothers in the industry illustrates this viewpoint: If a woman wants to go home at 4 pm, she’s not as ambitious and has to pick up a kid from kindergarten, that’s her problem. If [mothers] cannot bring the same energy as men because she has problems at home, it’s the person’s decision, her problem.
Despite the masculine bias inherent in these constructions of skill, nearly every respondent indicated that men and women were equally represented in entry-level jobs in finance. Thus, employers do not necessarily view women as unqualified or incapable of succeeding in these jobs. The women they hire, however, tend to be young, unmarried, and childless. Employers were explicit that while such women were ideal for the job, their fitness was dependent upon their (lack of) family aspirations. Asking job applicants about family planning was routine; 4 women who had children or planned to bear children were screened out (Glass & Fodor, 2011). Even women who did not state a desire to bear children were suspect depending on their age. One senior manager stated that while “a 25 year old is okay [because] she probably won’t give birth for another five years … a 30 year old is problematic already [because] she is likely to have kids soon.” Thus, women’s perceived suitability for jobs in this sector is dependent on their age and family status. Childless women were acceptable because they could focus on the job; mothers or women “at risk” for becoming mothers were not because they had competing priorities.
Strategies to evaluate motherhood status during the hiring process ranged from questions about the names and ages of children, to vigilant scrutiny of employment gaps, to questions about candidates’ willingness to work long hours and travel. For many, explicit questions about family status and planning were routine. One manager stated that when interviewing women, family status is a primary concern: “I have to run a department … it is always in the back of my mind [when interviewing job candidates] when she is going to have a baby.” One HR manager in a large multinational firm was very explicit about her technique with women candidates who are nervous about discussing family planning in a job interview: When hiring … I always tell [women candidates] they don’t have to answer [questions about family status] but as a woman I know it’s normal to have a baby … so I ask how long we can expect to work with her. Then she answers … If [she] says in one year she wants to have a child, then it affects the decision but if they say 2-3 years and gives an argument, we believe them so that it won’t affect the decision. If they don’t answer, it affects the decision because [we are] suspicious.
Business services
Business service employers, like employers in finance, also privileged soft skills in the hiring process. The emphasis during the screening process was on applicants’ “mindset” and “personality” rather than on experience or technical skills. However, in contrast to finance, employers in business services defined skill requirements in terms less aligned with the ideal worker norm. For instance, the most common set of soft skills these employers emphasized included interpersonal and communication skills, friendliness, and a tolerance for repetitive tasks. When asked about the most important skills for new hires, a manager in a small multinational firm said the following: “Communication skills. You can have language skills but if you are not able to communicate effectively, diplomatically … interpersonal skills. Being able to know how to communicate with people.” In this way, gender stereotypes that hold women are stronger in terms of interpersonal and emotional management worked in mothers’ favor. According to an HR manager in a medium-sized multinational firm, the key skills he recruits for are “relational skills”: “We need a very strong technical and professional base but also a very strong capability to manage relationships toward customers and colleagues.”
These skills reflect the nature of jobs within the sector, which is characterized by minimal internal ladders, routinized customer interaction, and relatively standardized administrative tasks. Thus, although business services employers draw from the same well-educated labor pool as finance—and, like finance, women and men are equally represented in entry-level white-collar jobs—employers’ construction of the job led to skill requirements much more compatible with motherhood. Also unlike finance where entry-level hires are expected to move vertically within the firm, business service jobs have a flatter organizational structure. As a result, managers in this industry are less likely to screen for leadership characteristics. In fact, several respondents noted that they try to screen out applicants that seem too ambitious because they fear such hires will become discouraged by the lack of mobility offered by the firm. According to a headhunter whose clients include most business service firms in the industry: [It’s] a huge advantage if [prospective workers] are open minded, proactive, some monotonous tasks, can they do it? They don’t want to be managers in 1 or 2 years. [Our clients] want somebody not so driven to be a manager. Rather a team player.
Importantly, many respondents viewed men as much more likely to grow bored and leave, while mothers were viewed as more loyal to the employer. One manager of a large multinational firm summarized this common perception, “We are fighting turnover. If we can be successful in offering our women [family-friendly policies], if we’re successful in making it clear that we are not against maternity, then we believe we can increase the loyalty of our people.” Thus, traits that make nonmothers attractive to employers—ambition, drive, and so forth—become a disadvantage in an industry that lacks internal job ladders and suffers from high turnover.
Also in contrast to finance, employers in business services were much less likely to inquire about family status during the recruiting process. When asked whether they consider family status when hiring, most said no and many were adamant that doing so was illegal. A manager at a medium-sized multinational firm stated, “We don’t ask … You can’t avoid [hiring mothers] because [mothers] are the good workforce who is committed, motivated and a good resource.” Employers in this industry view motherhood as simply a normal part of doing business. Many also stated that it simply was not relevant to the types of skills they were screening for.
Other respondents were quick to point out that their industry is attractive to professional workers precisely because of the family-friendly nature of the jobs. Although several business service managers noted the family-friendliness of their firm, not a single respondent in finance described his or her firm as family friendly. Yet, most respondents in business services indicated that family-friendliness was a competitive advantage. According to a manager at a small multinational, “This is why ladies come to [business service sector]. [Employers] are good when it comes to obeying the law. They consider it part of the package of doing business here.”
Knowledge/Skill Dynamism
In addition to the requisite soft skill requirements, we also observed variation in employers’ perception of the relative dynamism of the knowledge and skills required for the job. Employers in finance perceived a high level of knowledge/skill dynamism in the industry and believed that work interruptions led to a high rate of skill deterioration, while business service employers viewed the requisite knowledge and skills as relatively stable over time. As a result, business service employers did not view work interruptions—even those resulting from long maternity leaves—as disqualifying one from professional employment.
Finance
In finance, employers stated that maternity leave led to irreparable deterioration in job-specific knowledge and skill. According to a manager of a large multinational firm, “Every three to four years we have major change, so it’s impossible to come back to the organization at the same position after that much time.” The perception of the industry as dynamic and fast-changing led employers to view returning mothers as incapable of “catching up” with the requisite knowledge required to meet client needs. A manager of a large Hungarian-owned bank explained the inability of women to return after maternity leave by pointing to this perceived dynamism, “Our organizational structure fundamentally changes over three to five years … It’s a very tough and fast changing environment.” Referring specifically to women returning from maternity leave, he stated, “It’s impossible to come back to the organization after that much time.”
Business services
This perception of change and flexibility was not as salient in business services, where client interactions are much more routinized and team-based and where the requisite skills are perceived to be stable over time. Employers viewed the opportunity costs of maternity leave as minimal and not necessarily resulting in skill deterioration. For example, an HR manager at a small business center explained the job in the following way: You are mainly doing the same thing for years, so [we’re] looking for someone who is not interested in a challenging role … [who understands] that most organizations [in the industry] are quite flat and not everybody has the opportunity to step up.
While some employers acknowledged that some retraining is necessary for returning workers, they were willing to make that training available for all workers. According to a manager of a small multinational business services firm, “It doesn’t matter [if women return after] six months or three years, we can put them into the next training that starts so they can get that knowledge again.” Thus, even when employers perceived a knowledge or skill deterioration resulting from maternity leave, they were willing to accommodate returning mothers through existing training programs for new workers.
Indeed, many business service employers viewed returning mothers as an asset. One manager said it was vital to reintegrate returning mothers because they had valuable company-specific knowledge and a needed skill set. Another manager at a large multinational expressed that mothers are model workers, “After you have children, you’re more patient, you’re more tolerant, if you ever had a problem with multitasking you learn. You prioritize, organize, your time management gets better … I don’t find [maternity leave] to be a disadvantage.” And, while many employers in this sector expressed a preference for workers to return sooner than 3 years guaranteed under Hungarian law, nearly all employers expressed willingness to accommodate workers who took the full leave period.
Managing Motherhood: The Impact on Practice
Employers in both sectors felt responsible for “managing motherhood” in the workplace. However, how motherhood was managed varied greatly. This section reviews findings related to how employers’ views of mothers translated into employment practices that excluded mothers in finance and accommodated mothers in business services.
Finance
In finance, employers managed motherhood by screening mothers out of the recruitment and hiring process, limiting promotion opportunities, and downgrading or terminating mothers upon their return from maternity leave. The following quote by an HR manager at a large multinational firm illustrates the common view that mothers are incapable of meeting the demands of finance: When a woman has small kids, their priorities change. You cannot expect a woman with a 2 year old child to be here overtime. If you do, that’s a false expectation. Women with children need coaching. Is this the right job? I may give you a job which may be paid less but has more flexibility. You can’t expect a woman with kids to work that much. Hungarian law prohibits discrimination or segregation by sex due to pregnancy. In general, it is good that women have this protection. But in reality, I wouldn’t dare stay home for 3 years. The work environment wouldn’t allow it. Who on earth would take me back after 3 years? Any HR person would be lying if she said she doesn’t consider [motherhood status].
Business services
Business service employers were eager to recruit and retain mothers through a variety of accommodation efforts. Nearly every respondent indicated that their company offers at least one and in most cases several arrangements aimed at accommodating mothers, including flexible hours, part-time work, home-based work, and subsidized childcare. Most also pursued retention efforts during leave, including monthly lunches, invitations to office parties and social events, and women’s networks and social clubs. Such accommodations are extremely rare in Hungary and nearly nonexistent in finance. In fact, only a single finance firm in our study considered part-time or home-based work for returning mothers and not a single finance firm in our sample subsidized childcare for workers. Flexible work accommodations are often limited in their ability to transform the workplace because they are often negotiated individually between employees and employers (Perlow & Kelly, 2014); yet, these efforts represent a significant departure from finance.
In business services, accommodating mothers was viewed as simply a part of doing business. According to a manager of a small multinational firm, “Out of 170 employees, we have about 25-27 maternity leavers at home. We are open to take everybody back. If somebody was good, why shouldn’t we take somebody back?” Rather than exceptional, enabling and supporting returning mothers was viewed as routine. In the words of a senior manager in a large European business services firm: Maternity leave? I mean, it’s normal. If we target this group around or below 30, sooner or later they go to maternity leave … You can’t avoid it because this is the good workforce who is committed, motivated and a good resource.
Most respondents justified accommodation efforts as an important means of recruiting and retaining women generally and mothers specifically. Like employers in finance, business service employers recruit significant numbers of professional women for entry-level professional jobs. However, unlike in finance, employers do not attempt to screen out mothers, nor are mothers discriminated against following their return from leave. That is not to say that some employers did not lament the costs associated with accommodating mothers. One HR manager of a small American-owned firm considered hiring mothers “a risk” stating, “Some of my manager are saying I’ve just had three ladies leave [to go on leave], I’m not hiring another woman!” But even that manager acknowledged that hiring and retaining mothers was simply part of the cost of doing business in his sector, stating that “if she has skills, [we] need her.” Indeed, two business service employers indicated that while young mothers are not ideal, the conditions of the industry require their accommodation. The following quote by a woman HR manager of a small multinational business services firm illustrates this view: “In a perfect world we would hire women but not young women, around their 40s, who are over with family issues, who are stable and can appreciate a job like this.” Despite this reluctance, however, the overall pattern of difference between the sectors was consistent.
Discussion and Conclusion
Previous research has identified motherhood as a status characteristic associated with significant labor market disadvantages (Budig & England, 2001; Correll et al., 2007; Harkness & Waldfogel, 1999). Theory and research on motherhood penalties also posit that bias against mothers may be more prevalent in professional white-collar jobs where ideal worker norms dominate (e.g., Blair-Loy, 2003; Williams, 2000). Yet, very little scholarship has sought to measure employer attitudes directly or identify how job context influences employers’ views of mothers as workers. Job context results from the interaction between employers’ perception of skill demands and their social role expectations of workers, including gender role stereotypes related to motherhood. By comparing employers’ views of mothers in finance and business services, we identify two contrasting approaches to managing motherhood in professional jobs: exclusion and accommodation. In finance, employers perceive of skill demands in ways that lead them to conclude that mothers re unable to meet requisite job demands. They thereby exclude mothers through discriminatory practices. In business services, employers perceive of skill demands in ways that lead them to view mothers as valuable workers. These employers are thereby committed to recruiting and accommodating them before and after maternity leave. These findings have several implications for theory, policy, and practice.
Implications for Theory
Scholars of work-based inequality have identified a number of mechanisms that shape inequalities in access to work-based rewards, including jobs, wages, and promotions. These mechanisms include resource pooling, social closure, opportunity hoarding, and exploitation that often center on categorical distinctions among individuals (Acker, 2006; Tilly, 1998; Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014). Critically, theoretical advances in this field focus heavily on job context and the relationships between and among organizational actors as a primary site where work-based inequalities are generated (see Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014 for a review). Our work advances theoretical explanations for motherhood penalties by identifying two mechanisms that shape mothers’ access to professional jobs. First, employers’ construction of skill requirements varies by perceived job requirements and shapes employers’ assumptions about the ideal worker (Rivera, 2012). Employers’ increasing concern with workers’ soft skills increases employer subjectivity over the labor process, resulting in exclusion of particular groups of workers (Moss & Tilly, 2001). Employers’ construction of skill is also deeply gendered and dependent on job and organizational characteristics (Acker, 2006; Britton, 2000). Ideal worker norms, particularly salient in white-collar professional jobs, assume workers’ primary commitment is to the job and career and serve to reinforce assumptions about the incompatibility with good mothering and career success (Blair-Loy, 2009; Williams, 2000). As a result, professional employers are likely to demonstrate bias against mothers irrespective of working mothers’ demonstrated experience, skill, or competence (Benard & Correll, 2010; Correll et al., 2007; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004; Schein, 2001). In doing so, these employers engage in opportunity hoarding where the best jobs are reserved for “ideal” candidates with work commitments that match employers’ (Tilly, 1998).
Yet, our findings suggest that even in professional sectors, employers’ views of mothers are variable and dependent on their perception of job-based skill requirements. While mothers experience exclusion from jobs where ideal worker norms dominate, mothers experience greater accommodation in jobs where perceived skill requirements are more compatible with stereotypes associated with motherhood. For instance, interpersonal skills such as empathy, mutual support, nurturance, loyalty, friendliness, and likeability are often perceived as “women’s work” (Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2007; Schein, 2001). While such characteristics are often associated with female-dominated low-skill jobs, similar constructions may be salient in some professional, white-collar and managerial positions as well (Ryan et al., 2007). For instance, Eagly and Carli (2007) found that leadership roles that emphasize interpersonal relationships select for stereotypically feminine qualities. Others have shown that during crises, women may be preferred for leadership positions due to stereotypes concerning women’s warmth, self-sacrifice, support of others, and empathy (Ryan et al., 2007). Because mothers are assumed to embody feminine stereotypes even more than women generally (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2004; Heilman & Okimoto, 2007), such stereotypes are likely to encourage accommodation of mothers in the labor process. Cultural constructions of motherhood may also be more compatible with employer expectations in job contexts where horizontal, collaborative, and team-based relationships are prioritized over more hierarchically organized jobs due to a greater emphasis on interpersonal skills in the former and a greater emphasis on individual competitiveness in the latter (Whittington, 2011). Thus, in professional sectors where customer or client interaction is constructed as requiring loyalty, likeability, or friendliness, or in leadership settings where similar qualities are valued, mothers may be viewed as ideal workers. Indeed, as our findings suggest, when employers privilege soft skills such as cooperation, teamwork, and patience, mothers are viewed as valuable workers and investments are made in recruiting and retaining them. As highly skilled professional jobs become increasingly customer and client-based, we may see a greater demand for such skills and, in turn, a greater willingness to accommodate mothers.
We also find that employers’ perception of knowledge/skill dynamism is important for shaping their views of mothers as workers. Particularly in client-intensive professional jobs, employers increasingly prioritize skills such as adaptability and flexibility and seek employees who can master multiple complex skills and transfer those skills across a number of tasks and situations (Blair-Loy, 2009; Kalleberg, 2001). In such jobs, ideal workers are those who actively engage in continuous learning and skill development and demonstrate the ability to meet the ever-shifting needs of clients (Wood, 1992). Employers’ growing emphasis on flexibility and skill dynamism is likely to disadvantage mothers, particularly those who have—or are assumed to have—discontinuous career trajectories. These disadvantages will be greatest in jobs or sectors where skills and job-related knowledge are subject to rapid shift. Irrespective of whether mothers experience skill depreciation during career interruptions, employers who view flexibility and adaptability as central to the labor process are likely to perceive significant skill depreciation for leave takers.
Our findings suggest, however, that the degree to which knowledge dynamism and skill flexibility have penetrated professional sectors has been uneven (e.g., Blair-Loy, 2009; Briscoe, 2007; Kalleberg, 2001). Briscoe’s (2007) client-based models of professional skill illustrate this variation. In professional jobs that require a high degree of worker-specific client interactions, workers must adapt to changing client needs and expectations. In other professional sectors, however, client interactions are more routinized, and there are fewer expectations that any one worker will be required to adapt to client needs. The former model best represents employers’ construction of knowledge/skill dynamism in finance, while the latter more closely aligns with employers’ perception of skill dynamism in business services. Due to the reliance on high levels of worker–client specificity in finance, the salience of motherhood is amplified, and employers perceive mothers as less capable of meeting the demands of the job. Finance employers’ assumptions regarding skill depreciation due to employment disruptions shape their views of mother as workers. In contrast, in business services, worker–client tasks are more routinized and standardized, and motherhood is less salient. In this sector, employers are less likely to view employment interruptions as detrimental to worker competence. Taken together, these findings challenge scholars of gender labor market inequalities to consider the contextual basis of ideal worker norms across different jobs, workplaces, sectors, and industries.
Implications for Policy and Practice
Our study has important implications for workplace policy and practice. First, our study speaks to the ongoing debate regarding the impact of parental leave on women’s career mobility. There is substantial debate regarding the impact of leave policies on women’s careers, with some arguing that paid maternity leave increases the salience of motherhood and harms career mobility and others arguing that paid leave has minimal or even positive effects on women’s employment. Much of this debate concerns the length of leave; while scholars seem to agree that long leaves harm women’s careers (Boeckmann et al., 2015; Mandel & Semyonov, 2006), many acknowledge that short- or moderate-term leaves have minimal negative impacts (Hook & Pettit, 2009). A recent comparative study of motherhood earnings penalties found that moderate length leaves are actually associated with smaller wage gaps between mothers and nonmothers (Budig et al., 2016). However, our findings suggest that the impact of maternity leave—including long leaves—will vary by job context.
Our findings show that mothers’ career discontinuity was viewed very differently in finance and business services. Finance employers pointed to the length of leave as disqualifying women from professional employment, while business service employers did not view long leaves as an impediment to women’s employability. This contrast suggests that interruptions due to family-related leave will be particularly disadvantageous in professional sectors where employers place greater emphasis on career continuity and where career disruptions are equated with skill depreciation. However, in sectors where requisite knowledge and skills are viewed as relatively stable over time and where the work process is more routinized, even long employment gaps resulting from long maternity leave policies will not necessarily fuel bias against mothers. Thus, we find that long leaves are not necessarily fatal to mothers’ careers, and the impact of leave on mothers’ careers is dependent on job context. Rather than limiting parental leave duration, therefore, social policy might focus on enhancing women’s employment security in professional careers where career continuity is strongly enforced through discriminatory recruitment, hiring, and retention practices.
Importantly, however, our findings suggest that formal legal regulations aimed at protecting mothers, prohibiting discrimination, and providing job protections postleave are necessary but insufficient for shielding workers from discrimination. While Hungary has one of the most far-reaching and generous antidiscrimination laws in the world, 6 employers in our study routinely—and knowingly—violated the law by asking respondents about their parental status, screening them out based on their parental status and denying them jobs following maternity leave. As several scholars have observed, the enforcement of legal protections require institutions to effectively enforce those protections by raising the costs—either financial or in terms of negative publicity or legal sanctions—of violating the laws (e.g., Stryker, 2007). Thus, far-reaching antidiscrimination laws can coexist with high levels of discrimination in contexts where effective enforcement mechanisms are lacking or where labor market regulations are weak. Hungary is lacking in the institutional basis to enforce its antidiscrimination laws and in the political will to effectively regulate foreign capital, which dominates the finance and business service sectors (Glass & Fodor, 2011). This “compliance gap” is not unique to Hungary, however (e.g., Irvine & Sutlović, 2015, p. 62), or even to Central Eastern Europe (Nelson & Bridges, 1999; see Stryker, 2007 for a review). While many wealthy countries like the United States have weak labor market regulations due to successive rounds of deregulation, countries like Hungary that are dependent on foreign investment tend to limit market regulations to attract foreign investment. As a result, workers generally and mothers specifically may be increasingly subject to bias and discrimination in paid work in these contexts, formal protections notwithstanding.
Finally, our findings have implications for vertical segregation in highly skilled professional jobs. Mothers face greater exclusion in finance where opportunities for upward mobility are more plentiful. By contrast, in the professional context with a flatter organizational hierarchy, a greater emphasis on horizontal cooperation and teamwork, and fewer opportunities for advancement (business services), mothers face greater accommodation. Mothers’ exclusion in finance translates into a significant underrepresentation of women in top leadership positions in that field. Although our study focuses on entry-level professional jobs, employers’ attitudes toward women as mothers translates into much greater vertical segregation by gender in finance because mothers are screened out before they can compete for top positions. This means that in hierarchical professional careers that screen for leadership characteristics at the entry level, mothers will be disadvantaged and women will face a significant glass ceiling. By contrast, in business services, women were better represented at all levels because their career interruptions are accommodated and do not systematically screen mothers out of the job ladder. To address the paucity of women in top leadership positions in finance would require stronger childcare supports for young children, shorter leave policies, and stricter enforcement of antidiscrimination laws.
Our study advances research and theory on motherhood and work by illustrating the ways in which employers’ views of mothers’ are shaped by job context. Greater attention to the ways contextual factors that shape employer attitudes and practices allows a more nuanced understanding of how motherhood shapes labor market outcomes. Future research can build upon the current study in four ways.
First, because our study is focused on employers’ perceptions rather than objective skill requirements or workers’ productivity measures, we are limited in our ability to reach conclusions regarding the nature of employer discrimination against mothers. Benard and Correll (2010) distinguish between normative and statistical discrimination. Normative discrimination refers to employers’ normative beliefs about different types of workers irrespective of perceived skill or competence, while statistical discrimination refers to employers’ attempt to reduce uncertainty by attempting to match workers based on objective skill or competence requirements. Our analysis of employer perceptions does not allow us to speak to whether motherhood impacts mothers’ productivity or work commitment. However, research in the United States suggests mothers demonstrate no difference from other workers in terms of job commitment, work intensity, work effort, or job engagement, suggesting that employer perceptions of mothers are not based on mothers’ productivity but on assumptions about mothers’ productivity (Kmec, 2011). Research that analyzed more objective measures of skill requirements could provide evidence of the nature of employer discrimination across jobs, sectors, or industries and provide a more nuanced understanding of the motivations and dynamics of motherhood bias in paid work.
Second, this study examines two professional sectors in Hungary, where there is limited racial/ethnic diversity. Thus, while previous research suggests that race/ethnicity shape employer perceptions of mothers in important ways (e.g., Glauber, 2007; Kennelly, 1999), we were unable to analyze racial/ethnic differences in Hungary. Future research should seek evaluate the relevance of job context in shaping employers’ construction of motherhood for women of color.
We are also limited to comparison of two sectors where the job context varies. Scholars can build up on our analysis by evaluating employers’ attitudes across a greater variety of jobs, industries, and sectors, including nonprofessional settings. Some research finds that low-income women may experience greater motherhood wage penalties than higher income women (Budig & Hodges, 2010); yet, this difference may be due to greater levels of employer discrimination at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy or to greater barriers to entry and mobility in highly skilled professional jobs. If exclusionary practices are more widespread in professional sectors, then professional mothers will be more likely to leave careers compared with nonprofessional mothers (Stone, 2008), and wage penalties may underestimate the true extent of the barriers that mothers face. Analysis of nonprofessional contexts or comparisons of professional and nonprofessional contexts could provide insight into the mechanisms driving mothers’ career mobility.
Finally, our study is limited to Hungary, which is characterized by long leaves and job guarantees yet relatively lax enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. Thus, our conclusions about the factors that shape employer attitudes may not be generalizable to contexts where long leaves are less normative. Needed is more comparative research on the ways in which the political and cultural context shapes employer attitudes. As other scholars have demonstrated, social policies that facilitate mothers’ employment are effective but only in countries where there is broad cultural support for mothers’ paid work (Budig et al., 2012). This suggests that while job and sector are important mechanisms that shape employment outcomes, it is likely that larger structural and cultural factors also contribute to employers’ views of mothers as workers.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.