family

How to Encourage Men to Take Family Leave: New Research

by

Two new studies show that while men are as likely as women to say they need time off from work to care for babies, aging parents, or sick family members, men are less likely than women to take unpaid leave and they take shorter paid leaves than women. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times notes that both new studies find a gulf between men’s desires to be more involved with caregiving and with reality. In other words, men are finding it difficult to balance career and family—something women have known for decades. Even though men are more likely than women to have access to paid leave, they don’t take it or don’t take all that they could. Women, on the other hand, will take unpaid leave because they have to.

Why is this happening? Miller summarizes the two studies as saying that the primary cause of men taking less leave, when it is available, is that when challenges arise with balancing work and family, both women and men tend to resort to traditional roles where men are breadwinners and women are caregivers. These decisions have long-term consequences for women’s careers and account for a large portion of the gender-pay gap.

The first study, a report from the New America summarized by Miller and conducted by the NORC study at the University of Chicago, included a nationally representative sample of 2,966 Americans. They found that men were only slightly less likely to have taken family leave, but when they did, the time off was shorter. Just over half of the men in this study, and slightly more women, reported that one reason men don’t take leave is because “caregiving isn’t manly.”

The second study reported by Miller was conducted by the Boston College Center for Work and Family, which focused on 1,240 white-collar workers at four companies that offer gender-neutral paid leave. This study found widespread support for leave, yet women were much more likely than men to take the full amount of leave offered by their company. Men say they want it, but they don’t take it when it becomes available.

Why? Traditional gender roles are deeply embedded in societal and family cultures. Miller surmises that both family members and people in the workplaces give subtle messages about what is acceptable gender-role behavior—even in workplaces that offer gender-neutral paid family leave—which then affects the decisions of men about whether to take family leave or for how long. Both of the new studies recommend changes that can make a difference in shifting gender-role expectations and encourage men to take family leave:

  • Senior male leaders can be role models who take family leave themselves and talk about being fathers.
  • Men need to see that their male colleagues who take leave are not penalized.
  • Managers need to encourage men to take family leave.
  • Organizations can make full-length paternity leave the default, requiring men to opt out if they want to take less leave.
  • Organizations can put systems in place to help cover the workload of women and men who take family leave.
  • Fathers can be included in parenting groups and flextime policies.

These types of changes in attitudes and structures can make a difference. Without them, traditional gender roles that limit the ability of fathers to have the relationship they want with their children—and that limit the ability of mothers to have full careers—will stay in place.

What else do you think can contribute to changes in gender-role expectations?

 

Photo by The Honest Company on Unsplash

New Research on Family-Friendly Policies in the Workplace: Lessons from around the World

by

recent New York Times article Claire Cain Miller gives examples of some of the laws that have been passed around the world to address family and career balance:

  • Chile passed a law, the most recent version in 2009, requiring employers to provide and pay for child care for women with children under two.
  • Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than seven the right to ask their employers for reduced hours without fear of being laid off.
  • The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993, which provides workers with twelve weeks of unpaid leave.
  • Many other countries in Europe provide long, paid maternity leaves—some up to one year—and part-time work protections.
Several new studies, summarized by Miller, have produced some disappointing findings about the “unintended consequences” of these laws for women. We need to learn from these experiences. Here are some of these findings:
  • In Chile, the result of the requirement for employers to provide child care has been a decrease in women’s starting salaries of between 9 percent and 20 percent.
  • In Spain, women’s right to work part time has resulted, a decade later, in a decline in full-time stable jobs for all women, with companies 37 percent less likely to promote women and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them.
  • In the United States, as a result of the FMLA, women are 5 percent more likely to remain employed but 8 percent less likely to be promoted than they were before the law was passed.
  • A study of twenty-two countries with family-friendly policies found that women were more likely to be in dead-end jobs and were less likely to be managers.
Clearly, this news is not good. So what are the lessons we can learn about how to get more support for working families without penalizing women?
  • Make sure employers do not bear the costs so that they do not pass them on to their employees as in Chile. Three states in the United States offer paid family leave and finance it through employee payroll taxes, which seems to be working.
  • Keep policies gender neutral and encourage both women and men to use them. In Sweden, family leave policies encourage both parents to take time off for a new baby. In most other countries, including the United States, these policies are considered to be for women, and it is nearly all women who take advantage of them. If men take advantage of family-friendly policies, perhaps they will be seen as policies for everyone, and not just for women.
  • Continue to challenge the myths about women’s careers, described in previous blogs (“Myths about Women’s Careers,” part I and part II), and work toward equal partnership with the men in our lives.
Do you have other ideas about how to overcome the unintended consequences of family-friendly policies for women? Please let us hear them. We need to figure this out together.]]>

Women Worry More than Men about Family Chores: Why This Matters

by

  • Is he lazy, or not really committed to equality?
  • Is she doing it all so well that he doesn’t feel a need to do more?
  • Are her standards so high that she doesn’t trust him to “do it right” regarding child care?
  • Is she really unwilling to let go of control?
    • What is clear to her is that she is becoming resentful and exhausted. Why is this important? There is the obvious potential damage to her relationship if her resentment continues to grow. There is also a potentially negative impact on her career. In an article in the New York Times, Judith Shulevitz noted that it takes “large reserves of emotional energy to stay on top of” all the details in the management of family life. Shulevitz cited research on heterosexual couples (she noted gay couples as being more egalitarian) from all strata of society that confirms that my friend’s experience is not unusual—women do the larger share of “worry work” about the details of family management. Tracking all these details can actually be a significant distraction for women at work and can scatter our focus, potentially disrupting our careers. Shulevitz speculated that these distractions “may be one of the least movable obstacles to women’s equality in the workplace.” Wow! Think about the possible significance of this statement. What, then, could be our part in keeping this inequality in place? Shulevitz related a story about young women in a recent undergraduate course on women and work who were making presentations at the end of the course. Many of them slipped in their language and talked about the importance of men “helping out” with household tasks and “babysitting” the children. Helping out and babysitting are not the same as sharing responsibility. These slips in language probably reflect traditional societal stereotypes that create pressure for women to be the right kind of mother. These pressures seem to be alive and well in our society, and even young women seem, to some extent, to be internalizing them. I think my friend may be asking the right questions. As women, have we internalized the traditional role expectations for us as women and mothers? If so, are we acting out these expectations by
    • Sending a mixed message to the men in our lives about whether we really want them to do an equal share?
    • Feeling we “should” do more of the household/child-care tasks to be the right kind of mother?
    • Keeping control of the lists because we really like being in control?
    • Being inflexible about our standards for doing family management?
    What is the truth of the matter for you on the questions above? What can you let go of? What has worked for you to equalize the load with your partner?]]>

    Myths about Women’s Careers: New Research – Part II

    by

    recent Harvard Business Review study of 25,000 Harvard Business School graduates, spanning three generations (baby boomers, generation Xers, and millennials) sheds light on some myths and gaps in expectations about women’s careers that persist across generations. Because this study focuses on Harvard Business School graduates, who are a highly educated and ambitious group of women and men, I think the findings are particularly eye-opening for the rest of us in that they provide a window into how entrenched attitudes about gender roles are in our society. These entrenched attitudes affect our careers as women, as well as our overall satisfaction with our lives. The big question for many of us is, “Haven’t things changed for millennials?” Some of the following findings from this study can help answer this and other questions about gender gaps in our careers. The researchers found the following about expectations for career priority for men upon graduation from Harvard Business School’s MBA program:

    • More than half of the boomer and generation X men expected that their careers would take priority over their spouse’s or partner’s (this attitude was slightly less prevalent for men of color).
    • 50 percent of millennial men expected their careers to take priority, which is only slightly less than previous generations.
    • 39 percent of white men and 48 percent of men of color anticipated their spouse’s career would be equally important.
    The career priority expectations for women upon graduation from Harvard Business School’s MBA program were different:
    • The vast majority of women across racial groups and generations anticipated that their careers would rank equally with their partner’s.
    • 75 percent of millennial women expected their careers would rank equally with their partner’s.
    • 26 percent of millennial women expected their partner’s career would take priority. Notice the big gap in expectations between millennial women (26 percent) and millennial men (50 percent).
    • Only 7 percent of generation X women and 3 percent of boomer women thought their careers would take priority over their partner’s.
    The study’s authors also looked at the reality for career priority after a number of years in the workforce and found that 75 percent of generation X and boomer men reported that their careers had, in fact, taken precedence (this was less true for black women and men). This is much higher than either women or men expected upon graduation. Men in the study shared the following expectations for family responsibility upon graduation:
    • 75 percent of generation X and boomer men expected their partners would be the primary child-care provider (somewhat lower for black men).
    • 66 percent of millennial men have this expectation.
    • 33 percent of millennial men expect to do an equal share of childcare, compared to 22 percent of generation X men and 16% of boomer men.
    Again, women’s expectations upon graduation for sharing family responsibility differed:
    • 50 percent of generation X and boomer women expected to have primary responsibility for childcare.
    • 42 percent of millennial women expect to do so, which is only slightly less than previous generations.
     

    Impact of Findings on Career Satisfaction

    This study showed that all women were more likely to have egalitarian expectations for both career priority and for child-care responsibility than were the men, and the generation X and boomer women reported disappointment about how their careers ended up taking lower priority. The authors of the study reported that “traditional partnerships were linked to higher career satisfaction for men, whereas women who ended up in such arrangements were less satisfied, regardless of their original expectations.” While the expectations for equality of millennials show a slight improvement, this group is too early in their careers to know yet if their reality will be different. Remember the story of my client, June, in part I of this series published last week? As long as our deeply entrenched attitudes about gender roles (that women’s careers are less important and that childcare is the primary responsibility of women) remain unchallenged, they will play out in both organizations and families as barriers for women’s careers, and change will continue to be very, very slow. The gap between women’s expectations and their actual experiences will continue to be large. It’s no wonder that there are so few women in senior leadership roles—but let’s not blame women. Entrenched attitudes present both internal and external barriers to women realizing their potential.  Let’s work together, women and men, to challenge existing attitudes and practices both at home and at work. What do you think about the findings from this study? What changes would you like to see in the ways women and men balance career and family responsibilities?]]>

    Myths about Women’s Careers: New Research – Part I

    by

    research reported in the Harvard Business Review dispels several commonly held myths about the lack of equity in advancement for women and why so few women are in senior management. Here are three of the myths:

    Myth #1: Women fail to achieve equality because they take themselves off the career track to have children.

    Myth #2: Women value careers less than men.

    Myth #3: Having children makes employees less reliable, less driven, and less creative.

    In their study of 25,000 MBAs over three generations (baby boomers, generation Xers, and millennials) of graduates from the Harvard Business School, the authors found the following:
    • Only 11 percent of generation X and boomer women with children under eighteen were out of the workforce full time to care for children. The figure is 7 percent for women of color.
    • Both women and men expressed the same amount of ambition upon graduation from the MBA program across the three generations.
    • Both women and men in senior management teams were likely to have made career decisions to accommodate family responsibilities, and they were still able to perform at a level sufficient to achieve senior management positions.
    So, why do men achieve more success in their careers? As Lisa Miller of New York Magazine put it, “Most women work full-time through their child-rearing years, and yet they achieve less than men at work because, well, they’re women.” In other words, both workplace cultures and societal attitudes—not the choices women make—are responsible for women achieving less. The following story demonstrates how workplace and societal attitudes may be impacting women’s careers: I have a coaching client, June, who has been driven to be a senior leader since she was a small child. She always earned good grades, completed two advanced professional degrees, and worked hard. Although she worked for two major corporations, she was not able to get the challenging assignments or promotions that she desired and felt ready to accomplish. She was frustrated and unhappy at work. When her son was born, he provided an excuse to step out of the corporate world, which did not seem to value her. She and her husband agreed that she would stay home full time with their son, although that had never been her plan. She explained that she would never have left her full-time position if she felt that challenging opportunities were available to her. She still longed for meaningful work, but the part-time opportunities available to her were neither interesting nor demanding, and she was growing more unhappy by the day. June’s story reflects the impact of the three myths about women and work. While June did value having a career, she may not have been considered for challenging assignments or advancement because she was of childbearing age, and she was assumed to be less committed to a career. None of this was actually true for June, and her company unnecessarily lost a bright and talented worker. What can organizations do to keep talented women and men? Here are five tips:
    1. Discard the myth that women don’t value careers; provide opportunities for their advancement and development, even when they are in their childbearing years.
    2. Provide a way back into full-time work for women and men who use family leave time or flex time when starting a family.
    3. Provide meaningful and challenging part-time work opportunities for both women and men who want to cut back for awhile when they start a family, but who do not intend to step off their career path.
    4. Stop punishing (by judging harshly) women and men for wanting to share family responsibilities and temporarily requesting flex-time and part-time work.
    5. Support couples in being equal partners and sharing family responsibilities.
    But wait! There’s more! Read about more interesting findings from this myth-breaking research next week in Part II.]]>

    How and When to Tell the Boss That You’re Starting a Family

    by

    Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times explains that while having children is a routine part of life for working women, the attitudes in American culture about gender and work have not caught up with the fact that women have shown they can be both mothers and productive employees. By the same token, assumptions that men should be breadwinners and not caregivers have also not changed. The results are discriminatory for both women and men in different ways:

    • Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work, or to be paid as much as male colleagues with the same qualifications. They are seen as less stable than women with no children or men.
    • Because men with children are seen as more stable, they are more likely to be hired than childless men and are paid more. But men with children who want to take family leave or use flexible work arrangements to be caregivers receive worse job evaluations and lower hourly raises and are at greater risk of being laid off.
    • There is no legal protection for pregnant workers. A bill called the Pregnancy Workers Fairness Act, requiring employers to make “reasonable accommodation” for workers who become pregnant, does not have enough support in the US Congress to pass.
    Five Tips for Preparing to Go on Maternity Leave Even with these difficulties, it is possible to balance motherhood and a career. Here are five tips to help you make the transition to maternity leave smoother for yourself and your employer:
    1. Tell your boss as soon after the first trimester as possible to allow time for planning.
    2. Know your legal rights, company policy, and the insurance benefits available to you for maternity/family leave.
    3. Think about your work calendar and begin planning early for big events or deliverables that will occur during your absence. Develop a detailed draft work plan for coverage of your responsibilities, and review this with your supervisor.
    4. Talk with your boss, or HR, about the available facilities for breast pumping so that you know whether breast-feeding is an option when you return.
    5. Determine the amount and type of contact you do or don’t want during your leave, and discuss this with your boss. Develop a communication plan for letting your colleagues and clients know who to communicate with while you are on leave.
    How have you handled family planning and maternity leave in your career? Please share any ways you’ve found to overcome cultural perceptions about working mothers.]]>