Family Responsibilities Discrimination and the Transformation of Meaning across Overlapping Organizational Fields

• In Event: 128 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Paper Session. Work and Family: New Challenges, New Directions

Abstract

In recent decades, family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) has received increasing attention from scholars and employers alike. Workers with family responsibilities, who are more often women, are increasingly seeking legal redress, arguing that implicit biases against caregivers and workplaces structured around the outmoded “ideal worker” have held them back. Skyrocketing litigation on this issue has prompted new discussions among human resources professionals about how to best protect employers from litigation and meet the changing needs of employees. In this paper, we trace the development of this conversation from the 1980s through to the present through analysis of the two most widely read journals among human resource professionals, HR Magazine and Workforce. We find that, throughout the period studied, concern about issues facing workers with family responsibilities is overwhelmingly motivated by making a “business case,” suggesting that, as in the case of other forms of discrimination, HR professionals play a key role in translating emerging legal concerns around FRD into a language employers and supervisors better understand: profit. Even when other frames—such as law compliance, diversity, or accommodation—are used, they are often used alongside, and subordinated to, concerns about productivity, retention, and the bottom line. Articles employing a business case frame display different patterns of reliance on experts, scientific evidence, and legal interpretation than other frames and, along with those employing an accommodation frame, are much more likely to discuss family responsibilities in gender-neutral terms, failing to acknowledge that women tend to shoulder a disproportionate share of family responsibilities.

Authors

• Krista Frederico, University of Arizona

• Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, University of Arizona

• Robin Stryker, University of Arizona