We explore one way family caregiving shapes inequality at work by analyzing the evaluations of men and women who took employment leave to care for a newborn or elderly parents or to recover from a personal injury. Roughly 500 undergraduate students evaluated the employability, qualifications, responsibility, and adherence to leave policies of a fictitious applicant for a professional job. Evaluators rated fathers and male elder caregivers as the most employable. This advantage was not explained by evaluators’ thinking that fathers and male elder caregivers were qualified, responsible, and policy abiding, suggesting the operation of taste discrimination. Likewise, accounting for these factors widens the gap in perceived employability between male and female noncaregivers. We discuss what these findings reveal about the family-work link as well as their methodological and policy implications.
AckerJ. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139-158.
2.
AlbistonC. R. (2010). Institutional inequality and the mobilization of the family and Medical Leave Act. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
3.
BaumleeA. K.FossettM. (2005). Statistical discrimination in employment: Its practice, conceptualization, and implications for public policy. American Behavioral Scientist, 48(9), 1250-1274.
4.
BenardS.CorrellS. (2010). Normative discrimination and the motherhood penalty. Gender & Society, 24(5), 616-646.
5.
Blair-LoyM. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
BlakemoreJ. E. O.BaumgardnerS. R.KenistonA. H. (1988). Male and female nurturing: Perceptions of style and competence. Sex Roles, 18(7/8), 449-459.
7.
BornsteinS. (2012). The law of gender stereotyping and the work-family conflicts of men. Hastings Law Journal, 63, 1297-1345.
8.
BudigM.EnglandP. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66(2), 204-225.
9.
BudigM. J. (2002). Male advantage and the gender composition of jobs: Who rides the glass escalator?Social Problems, 49(2), 258-277.
10.
BudigM. J.HodgesM. J. (2010). Differences in disadvantage: Variation in the motherhood penalty across white women’s earnings distribution. American Sociological Review, 75(5), 705-720.
ClevelandJ. N. (1991). Using hypothetical and actual applicants in assessing person-organization fit: A methodological note. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21(12), 1004-1011.
14.
ClevelandJ. N.BermanA. H. (1987). Age perceptions of jobs: Agreement between samples of students and managers. Psychological Reports, 61(2), 565-566.
15.
ColtraneS. (2004). Families and society: Classic and contemporary readings. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth.
16.
ConnellR.W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
17.
CorrellS.BenardS.PaikI. (2007). Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty?American Journal of Sociology, 112(5), 1297-1338.
18.
CotterD. A.HermsenJ. M.VannemanR. (2004). Gender inequality at work. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
19.
DowdN. E. (2000). Redefining fatherhood. New York: New York University Press.
20.
EnglandP. (2010). The gender revolution: Uneven and stalled. Gender & Society, 24(2), 149-166.
21.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2007). Enforcement guidance: Unlawful disparate treatment of workers with caregiving responsibilities. Retrieved from http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/caregiving.html
22.
GlauberR. (2007). Marriage and the motherhood wage penalty among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(4), 951-961.
23.
GlauberR. (2008). Gender and race in families and at work: The fatherhood wage premium. Gender & Society, 22(1), 8-30.
24.
GrundyE.HenrettaJ. C. (2006). Between elderly parents and adult children: A new look at the intergenerational care provided by the “sandwich generation.”Ageing & Society, 26(5), 707-722.
25.
GüngörG.BiernatM. (2009). Gender bias or motherhood disadvantage: Judgments of blue collar mothers and fathers in the workplace. Sex Roles, 60(3/4), 232-246.
26.
HaysS. (1996). Cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
27.
HeilmanM. (2001). Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women’s ascent up the organizational ladder. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 657-674.
28.
HeilmanM.OkimotoT. G. (2008). Motherhood: A potential source of bias in employment decisions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 189-198.
29.
HochschildA. (1997). The second shift. New York: Penguin.
30.
HodgesM. J.BudigM. J. (2010). Who gets the daddy bonus? Organizational hegemonic masculinity and the impact of fatherhood on earnings. Gender & Society, 24(6), 717-745.
31.
IversonT.RosenbluthF. (2010). Women, work, and politics: The political economy of gender inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
32.
JudieschM. K.LynessK. S. (1999). Left behind? The impact of leaves of absence on managers’ career success. Academy of Management Journal, 42(6), 641-651.
33.
KaufmanR. L. (2010). Race, gender, and the labor market: Inequalities at work. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner.
34.
KellyE. L. (2005). Discrimination against caregivers? Gendered family responsibilities, employer practices, and work rewards. In NielsenL. B.NelsonR. (Eds.), Handbook of employment discrimination research: Rights and realities (pp. 353-376). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
35.
LundbergS.RoseE. (2002). The effects of sons and daughters on men’s labor supply and wages. Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(2), 251-268.
36.
MarsiglioW.RoyK. (2012). Nurturing dads: Social initiatives for contemporary fatherhood. New York, NY: Russell Sage.
37.
MossP.TillyC. (1996). “Soft” skills and race: An investigation of Black men’s employment problems. Work and Occupations, 23(3), 252-276.
38.
OlianJ.SchwabD. P.HaberfeldY. (1988). The impact of applicant gender compared to qualifications on hiring recommendations: A meta-analysis of experimental studies. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 41(2), 180-195.
PrenticeD. A.CarranzaE. (2002). What women and men should be, shouldn’t be, are allowed to be, and don’t have to be: The contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26(4), 269-281.
41.
RaleyS.BianchiS. M.WangW. (2012). When do fathers care? Mothers’ economic contribution and fathers’ involvement in child care. American Journal of Sociology, 117(5), 1422-1459.
42.
SmithP. R. (2004). Elder care, gender, and work: The work-family issue of the 21st century. Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, 25(2), 355-360.
43.
Tomaskovic-DeveyD.ZimmerC.StainbackK.RobinsonC.TaylorT.McTagueT. (2006). Documenting desegregation: Segregation in American workplaces by race, ethnicity, and sex 1966-2000. American Sociological Review, 71(4), 565-588.
44.
TownsendN. W. (2002). The packaged deal: Marriage, work, and fatherhood in men’s lives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
45.
WayneJ. H.CordeiroB. L. (2003). Who is a good organizational citizen? Social perception of male and female employees who use family leave. Sex Roles, 49(5/6), 233-246.
46.
WeaverJ. D. (2012). The first father: Perspectives on the President’s fatherhood initiative. Family Court Review, 50(2), 297-309.
47.
WilliamsC. (1995). Still a man’s world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
48.
WilliamsJ. (2001). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
49.
WilliamsJ. C.BornsteinS. (2008). The evolution of “FReD”: Family responsibilities, discrimination, and developments in the law of stereotyping and implicit bias. Hastings Law Journal, 50, 1311.
50.
WilliamsR. (2006). Interpreting and using heterogeneous choice and generalized ordered logit models. Retrieved from http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/
