Law, Norms, and Mitigating the Motherhood/Caretaker Penalty

• In Event: 229 - Section on Sociology of Law Paper Session. Gender and the Law

Abstract

Mothers and parents who take family leave are hired less often, promoted less often and paid less than other workers because of evaluators’ stereotypical biases. Can family friendly laws mitigate these biases? We argue that law can reduce bias by expressing a social consensus that penalizing caregiving is morally wrong, thus influencing how individuals judge working mothers and leave takers. We evaluate this argument using an experimental design that varies the policy environment across three conditions – no policy, family friendly laws, or voluntary family-friendly organizational policies – while holding workers’ performance, skills and experience constant. We find that in the no policy condition, leave takers of both genders receive less pay, and mothers and leave takers receive negative evaluations. The law condition eliminated these biases, even for mothers who did not take leave. Voluntary organizational policies produced mixed outcomes. We conclude that making family friendly laws salient can reduce workplace penalties by changing moral judgments about mothers and caretakers.

Authors

• Catherine Albiston, University of California, Berkeley

• Shelley J. Correll, Stanford University

• Traci Tucker, Stanford University

• Christina Carbone, UC Berkeley