Signaling devotion to work over family undermines the motherhood penalty

Abstract

Women experience workplace penalties when they become mothers, whereas men who become fathers are not penalized. We explored whether a working mother’s self-professed devotion to work over family would undermine the “motherhood penalty.” Male and female business students evaluated an applicant for an industrial engineering job. The applicant was always described as married, with 2 children. Depending on random assignment, the candidate was male or female, and expressed devotion to work or to family. Family-devoted mothers experienced strong hiring discrimination (with lower ratings than all other candidates), but work-devoted mothers escaped the motherhood penalty and were rated as highly as work-devoted fathers. We discuss the advantages and drawback to expressing work devotion to escape the motherhood penalty.