Research suggests that pregnant women are discriminated against in the workplace and that a significant percentage of new mothers leave the workforce. Few researchers have examined the link between women’s discriminatory experiences and workforce attrition, instead of focusing on either individual-level factors (e.g., income) or workplace factors (e.g., workplace support) that predict turnover. We integrate previous findings on individual and workplace factors within a stigma framework that takes into account pregnant women’s anticipated and experienced stigma. We hypothesized that pregnant women’s anticipated and experienced stigma would mediate the relationships between individual (e.g., gender role attitudes) and workplace factors (e.g., workplace support) and job satisfaction, psychological well-being, and turnover intentions. Using a three-wave longitudinal design, we surveyed 142 pregnant women during and after their pregnancies, and we used path analysis to test mediational models. Results indicated that anticipated stigma partially mediated the relationship between workplace factors and psychological well-being, whereas experienced stigma partially mediated the relationships between workplace factors and job satisfaction, psychological well-being, and turnover intentions. Overall, our study demonstrates both the utility of a stigma framework and the importance of workplace experiences in understanding why women leave their jobs.
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