AVERTISSEMENT

Ce document est le fruit d’un long travail approuvé par le jury de soutenance et mis à disposition de l’ensemble de la communauté universitaire élargie. Il est soumis à la propriété intellectuelle de l’auteur : ceci implique une obligation de citation et de référencement lors de l’utilisation de ce document. D’autre part, toute contrefaçon, plagiat, reproduction illicite de ce travail expose à des poursuites pénales. Contact : portail-publi@ut-capitole.fr

LIENS

Code la Propriété Intellectuelle – Articles L. 122-4 et L. 335-1 à L. 335-10 Loi n° 92-597 du 1er juillet 1992, publiée au Journal Officiel du 2 juillet 1992 http://www.cfcopies.com/V2/leg/leg-droi.php http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/infos-pratiques/droits/protection.htm

THÈSE

En vue de l’obtention du

DOCTORAT DE L’UNIVERSITÉ DE TOULOUSE

Délivré par l’Université Toulouse 1 Capitole

Ecole doctorale : Sciences de Gestion

Présentée et soutenue par :

Camille DESJARDINS

le 19 novembre 2021

Maternity as a Tipping Point in Women’s Careers

Discipline : Sciences de Gestion

Spécialité : Management des Ressources Humaines

Unité de recherche : TSM Research, UMR 5303 CNRS

Directrice de thèse : Professeure Marion FORTIN

JURY

Rapporteurs Madame Fida AFIOUNI, Professeure associée, American University of Beirut

Madame Ariane OLLIER-MALATERRE, Professeure, Université du Québec à

Montréal

Suffragants Monsieur Akram Al Ariss, Professeur, Toulouse Business School

Monsieur Nikos Bozionelos, Professeur, EM Lyon

Monsieur Karim Mignonac, Professeur, Université Toulouse 1 Capitole

2

« L’université n’entend ni approuver ni désapprouver les

opinions particulières de l’auteur. »

3

Dedication

A mes parents, Michel et Nathalie Desjardins

A mon mari, Jed Zeineddine

4

Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by a research grant of the Agence Nationale de la

Recherche, to whom I am grateful for giving me the opportunity to do a PhD. I wish to thank

the administrative members of TSM-Research laboratory and TSM doctoral programme for

helping with my research activities: thank you Anne-Sophie, Cédric, Claudia, Corinne,

Lesley, Montserrat, and Sarah. Thank you also to Fany Declerk, the former head of the

doctoral programme who has been a great support during the first years of my PhD. I also

wish to thank all the professors from the HR/OB track at TSM-Research for providing

invaluable feedback on my research over the years.

I would not have completed this journey without the help and guidance of my

wonderful PhD supervisor, Prof. Marion Fortin. Marion has been a tremendous mentor and a

great source of inspiration for me during the PhD. I would like to thank her for offering me

the opportunity to work on the JuDy project with her, this wonderful experience has made me

grow as a person and as a researcher, and I am very grateful for it. Marion, thank you for

your support, patience and benevolence throughout these three years. I hope that our paths

will cross again.

I wish to thank my dear co-authors, Prof. Marjo-Riitta Diehl, Dr. Hayley German and

Prof. Marc O’hana, it has been a great honor and pleasure to work by their sides. I hope for

many more research projects together in the future. Thank you also to Manon Bessolles, a

wonderful colleague who has been of great help in conducting the studies of the JuDy

project.

I am also very grateful to the members of my Viva Voce committee: Dr. Fida Afiouni,

Prof. Akram Al Ariss, Prof. Nikos Bozionelos, Prof. Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Prof. Karim

Mignonac. Thank you for taking the time to read my thesis, to attend my Viva Voce and for

doing me the great honor of sharing your expertise with me.

5

I want to acknowledge all the women I interviewed as part of this research, I thank

them for their time and for trusting me with their narratives. I hope that this research can help

other mothers (to be) and that it will make a positive difference within organizations.

I am thankful for crossing the paths of my PhD colleagues at the doctoral programme,

and for the beautiful friendships created through this experience: a special thought for

Eugénie, Acil and Nour. In particular, I wish to thank the colleagues with whom I used to

share an office as well as great solidarity, Angela, Batoul, Jenny, Thi, Mathieu, and all my

other colleagues from room J206. Thank you also to my fellow delegates, David, Evgeniya,

Thi and Vincent, it was great working with you toward creating more cohesion among TSM

PhD students. A heartfelt thank you to Clark Warner who has always shared great tips with

me and kindly offered his help during the writing phase of my PhD. Thank you for accepting

to proof read the first and last chapters of my thesis, Clark. And last but not least, a very

special thank you to Giulia Pavone, a colleague that has become a precious friend, who has

closely shared this journey with me. Our numerous coffee breaks, rich conversations and fun

moments outside of work have made this PhD adventure more enjoyable.

This accomplishment would not have been made possible without the full and

constant support of my fantastic parents, Michel and Nathalie. They have always supported

me in any choices I made in life and their love and encouragement throughout the years have

made the completion of this thesis possible, I will never thank them enough for that. Thank

you also to my darling sisters, Manon and Charlotte, for their phone calls and comforting

words during these three years of hard work.

Finally, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my dear husband, Jed,

who has provided me with uninterrupted support during this journey. The PhD has for sure

come with important challenges but he has always found the words to encourage me

6

overcome obstacles. I wish to thank him for his patience, love, and reassurance but also for

cooking delicious food during these three years.

7

Table of contents

Dedication ................................................................................................................................. 3

Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... 4

Table of contents ...................................................................................................................... 7

List of tables ........................................................................................................................... 11

List of figures ......................................................................................................................... 12

List of acronyms .................................................................................................................... 13

CHAPTER 1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 14

1. Research motivation ................................................................................................................ 14

2. Motivations behind my research questions ........................................................................... 16

2.1. The evolving literature on women’s careers ...................................................................... 16

2.2. Justice experiences at the time around maternity leave ...................................................... 17

2.3. Interruption challenges for mothers of young children ...................................................... 18

3. Thesis theoretical background ............................................................................................... 21

3.1. A historic overview of women’s careers research .............................................................. 21

3.2. Positioning my thesis in the literature on women’s careers ............................................... 25

4. Content overview ..................................................................................................................... 25

5. Thesis contributions ................................................................................................................ 27

5.1. To research ......................................................................................................................... 27

5.2. To practice .......................................................................................................................... 30

6. Declaration of contribution ..................................................................................................... 31

7. Conclusion of introduction chapter ....................................................................................... 32

CHAPTER 2. Novel Perspectives on Women’s Careers: A Review and Directions for

Future Research ..................................................................................................................... 34

8

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 35

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 36

2. Structure and approach of the review ................................................................................... 39

3. Five distinct perspectives on women’s careers ...................................................................... 45

3.1. The relational perspective .................................................................................................. 45

3.2. The decision-making perspective ....................................................................................... 52

3.3. The gender bias perspective ............................................................................................... 57

3.4. The temporal perspective ................................................................................................... 62

3.5. The intersectional perspective ............................................................................................ 69

4. “Looking ahead”: A path forward for research on women’s careers ................................ 73

4.1. Greater account of time ...................................................................................................... 73

4.2. Greater intersectionality ..................................................................................................... 75

4.3. Integration of biased-reduction interventions ..................................................................... 76

4.4. Need for adopting a holistic approach ................................................................................ 77

5. Limitations ............................................................................................................................... 79

6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 79

CHAPTER 3. (In)justice episodes around maternity leave: How women going on and

returning from maternity leave experience, make sense of, and react to justice-related

experiences ............................................................................................................................. 81

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 82

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 83

2. Theoretical background .......................................................................................................... 84

2.1. (Justice) Experiences at the time around maternity leave .................................................. 84

2.2. About justice events ........................................................................................................... 87

3. Method ...................................................................................................................................... 92

3.1. Sample ................................................................................................................................ 92

3.2. Study design and data collection ........................................................................................ 93

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3.3. Coding process ................................................................................................................... 94

4. Findings .................................................................................................................................... 97

4.1. Injustice events at the time around maternity leave ........................................................... 97

4.2. Justice episodes: How injustice events and justice omissions are interwoven over time 103

4.3. Justice memories and anticipations .................................................................................. 107

4.4. Responses to (in)justice experiences ................................................................................ 111

5. DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................................... 120

6. Practical implications ............................................................................................................ 125

7. Limitations ............................................................................................................................. 128

8. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 129

CHAPTER 4. All at Home: The Gender Effect of Work and Childcare Interruptions

during Telework .................................................................................................................. 130

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 131

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 132

2. Theoretical background ........................................................................................................ 135

2.1. Telework of working parents in times of COVID-19 ...................................................... 135

2.2. Career goals - long term and daily ................................................................................... 137

2.3. Interruptions and career goals .......................................................................................... 137

2.4. Interruptions and work engagement ................................................................................. 140

2.5. Interruptions and emotional exhaustion ........................................................................... 141

2.6. Gender effects of cross-domain interruptions .................................................................. 143

3. Method .................................................................................................................................... 145

3.1. Design, procedure and participants .................................................................................. 145

3.2. Measures ........................................................................................................................... 146

4. Results ..................................................................................................................................... 147

4.1. Analytic strategy ............................................................................................................... 147

4.2. Variance decomposition ................................................................................................... 148

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4.3. MCFAs ............................................................................................................................. 148

4.4. Hypothesis testing ............................................................................................................ 149

5. Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 154

CHAPTER 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 158

1. Synthesis of the papers .......................................................................................................... 158

2. Theoretical contributions ...................................................................................................... 160

2.1. Contribution to the literature on women’s careers ........................................................... 160

2.2. Contributions to organizational behavior ......................................................................... 162

3. Managerial implications ........................................................................................................ 164

4. Limitations and future research opportunities ................................................................... 167

5. Final conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 169

References ............................................................................................................................ 170

Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 207

Appendix 1. Women’s careers review data structure ................................................................ 207

Appendix 2. Interview guide for the first interview ................................................................... 213

Abstracts ............................................................................................................................... 215

French Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 215

English Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 216

Keywords ........................................................................................................................................ 218

11

List of tables

Chapter 1.

Table 1. Thesis overview ......................................................................................................... 33

Chapter 2.

Table 1. List of journals and number of articles included in the review ................................. 41

Table 2. Overview of the five perspectives on women's careers ............................................. 44

Chapter 3.

Table 1. Type of injustice events encountered across waves ................................................ 102

Table 2. Type of justice omissions encountered across waves .............................................. 106

Table 3. Propositions to counter the most common (in)justice events and omissions around

maternity leave ........................................................................................................ 127

Chapter 4.

Table 1. Means, SDs, Intraclass Coefficients, and Correlations ........................................... 148

Table 2. Indirect Effects ........................................................................................................ 151

Table 3. Interaction Effects ................................................................................................... 152

12

List of figures

Chapter 3.

Figure 1. Data structure ........................................................................................................... 96

Figure 2. Justice episode dynamics around maternity leave and career-related responses ... 119

Chapter 4.

Figure 1. Mediation model .................................................................................................... 149

Figure 2. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with authenticity153

Figure 3. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with balance ... 153

Figure 4. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with challenge 154

13

List of acronyms

CWIs: Childcare-to-work interruptions

WCIs: Work-to-childcare interruptions

KCM: Kaleidoscope career model

14

CHAPTER 1. Introduction

1. Research motivation

1

1 Sources https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01993-x https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/26/thinktank-sounds-warning-over-female-workers-stuck-on-mummy-track https://theconversation.com/women-face-motherhood-penalty-in-stem-careers-long-before-they-actually-become-mothers-164744 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/motherhood-penalty-cuts-earnings-by-up-to-45-zqnlxg3jj

https://www.ft.com/content/19025754-ad69-4cfa-9653-f8c8216539e9 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/upshot/coronavirus-careers.html

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Despite the growing participation of women in the workforce (Bernard, 2019) and the

fact that they now hold more higher education degrees than men (Couppié & Epiphane,

2019), women still lag behind their male counterparts in terms of career progression and

opportunities. In particular, research shows that the increase in disparities between women’s

and men’s careers coincides with the birth of the first child and continues to grow in the years

following childbirth (Coudin et al., 2019). When they become mothers, women see their

earnings drop (Cukrowska-Torzewska & Matysiak, 2020), however lower pay is not the only

penalty associated with motherhood. Indeed, mothers tend to be seen as incompetent (Masser

et al., 2007) and are less likely to be hired (Correll et al., 2007). This phenomenon has been

termed the ‘motherhood penalty’ and there is evidence that mothers may face its

consequences throughout their entire career (Eurofound, 2015; Eurofound, 2012).

Often, women end up being stuck on what has been called the ‘mummy track’ once

they have children, which typically refers to jobs with greater flexibility or fewer hours, at the

price of career advancement and responsibility. Research specifically shows that

organizations and managers are reluctant to promote mothers who work fractionally (Blair-

Loy, 2003). For instance, a recent longitudinal study conducted in France suggests that the

majority of the motherhood penalty can be attributed to a gap in promotions: Following

childbirth, women’s career advancement drops and while women start again making some

moves up the corporate ladder after two years, the earning gains associated with those moves

are much lower than for childless women (Lucifora et al., 2021).

At the same time, more and more initiatives have been implemented to put an end to

gender inequalities in organizations and societies. For example, Emmanuel Macron has

chosen gender equality as one of the major goals of his presidential mandate. In January

2019, the French government has implemented the ‘Gender Work Equality Index’, which has

been developed with the goal to eliminate gender inequalities within organizations. Each year

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companies with more than 50 employees have to calculate their gender work equality score

based on five indicators and communicate their score to the government. One of the

indicators of this index is concerned with mothers’ return form maternity leave and stipulates

that if salary increases have been granted within the organization during the employee’s

maternity leave, the organization also has to re-evaluate her remuneration. Specifically, the

returning employee should receive an increase equivalent to the average of individual

increases allocated to employees in the same professional category during the period of

maternity leave2.

Despite these advances and with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we

observe a decline in gender equality as suggested by the Global Gender Gap Report (World

Economic Forum, 2021). Specifically, the report states that it will take up to 267.6 years to

close the Gender Economic Participation and Opportunity gap, which includes the labor force

participation gap, the remuneration gap and the career advancement gap. A better

understanding of the mechanisms behind these gaps and penalties is needed if we want to

achieve work and career equality between men and women.

2. Motivations behind my research questions

2.1. The evolving literature on women’s careers

The topic of gender career equality and the careers of women in particular have

received growing scholarly attention over the past century (Joshi et al., 2015), and have

yielded important advances in our understanding of women’s career experiences. Yet, the

production of knowledge on this topic has tended to occur in a fragmented way. Very

different themes related to women’s careers have been covered in different disciplines such

2 https://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/droit-du-travail/egalite-professionnelle-discrimination-et-

harcelement/indexegapro

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as psychology and labor economics, through different approaches, and using varied theories.

We believe that there is a need to take stock of the evolution of the literature on women’s

careers to provide novel insights on this important topic and to delineate new directions to

move the field forward.

2.2. Justice experiences at the time around maternity leave

Academic research reveals that women who have children experience many

stereotypes and prejudices at work in relation to their maternity (Grandey et al., 2020).

Recent data show that once they become mothers, women face a median loss of 45% in

earnings as compared to if they had remained childless (Vagni & Breen, 2021). Following

childbirth, women also end up having fewer career prospects with 61% of scientist-mothers

believing that becoming a parent has damaged their career and 38% of them reporting they

have been offered fewer work opportunities since childbirth (Mother in science, 2021).

Highly skilled women are the ones that suffer the strongest consequences from spending time

out of employment to look after their children (England et al., 2016).

This gender career gap is often explained by women’s changing career motives

following childbirth. At the beginning of this century, several newspaper articles sparked

debates around the ‘Opt-out revolution’ phenomenon that described the decision of highly

educated women to leave the workforce to take care of their children, thus conforming to

traditional gender role expectations (Belkin, 2003; Story, 2005). These articles were highly

criticized for referring to this phenomenon as a choice, only considering the “pulls” attracting

working mothers out of the workforce, and failing to acknowledge the work-related

constraints associated with this decision, i.e., “pushes” (Williams et al., 2006).

A very new stream of research shows that the work experiences of women during

their pregnancy and upon work reentry following maternity leave can result in evolving

career attitudes for working women. Specifically, two studies have shown how interpersonal

18

experiences during pregnancy could harm women’s career attitudes. The results of the first

study suggest that work-interfering help received from coworkers during pregnancy can

result in turnover intentions postpartum for women (Jones et al., 2020) and the second study

shows that perceived decreased career encouragement influences women’s turnover

intentions throughout their pregnancy (Paustian-Underdahl et al., 2019). Further, work-

reentry experiences also seem to be important for women’s work and career outcomes.

Specifically, the perceived (lack of) organizational support directly impacts home stress and

indirectly affects experiences at work (Little & Masterson, In press). These results suggest

that threatening interpersonal experiences during a time of heightened uncertainty, i.e.,

pregnancy and maternity leave, can have harmful consequences for women’s career

outcomes over time. Understanding how women personally experience, make sense of and

react to the treatment they receive at work at the critical time of maternity leave can further

our knowledge on women’s career dynamics following childbirth.

2.3. Interruption challenges for mothers of young children

For the many women who decide to remain in the workforce while having young

children, work practices and childcare arrangements often bring about daily challenges. This

is especially true in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2019, the French

government decided to close schools and childcare services and many employees were asked

to work entirely from home for several months. These unique work settings, where parents of

young children had to simultaneously work and take care of their children, resulted in the

blurring of the work and family spheres for many of them. For instance, parents of young

children were likely to experience interruptions, defined as “unexpected suspension of the

behavioral performance of, and/or attentional focus from, an ongoing work task” (Puranik et

al., 2020, p. 817), coming from the work sphere while looking after their children, and from

children while working.

19

Research shows that teleworking from home increases the likelihood of experiencing

interruptions between home and work (Delanoeije et al., 2019) and the unique context of the

COVID-19 pandemic has been found to exacerbate these interruptions. Indeed, the pandemic

context brought many challenges for teleworking parents who juggled between their work

responsibilities and childcare as reported in the Washington Post: “Our personal

responsibilities interrupt our professional ones, which interrupt our personal ones — and we

feel we are failing at all our jobs.” (Edwards & Snyder, 2020). Based on this observation, the

two journalists decided to run an experiment which showed that the parent on childcare duty

was interrupted 45 times in a three-hour period for an average of 15 times per hour.

Noteworthy, mothers are more likely than fathers to be interrupted during their working

hours: while women could work 35% of their working hours without being interrupted, men

could do so for 70% of their work time (Andrew et al., 2020).

At the same time, we observe that the new work practices and associated challenges

have a strong impact on women’s career outcomes. A recent report indicates that women

have been experiencing a shift in their career attitudes and experiences since the beginning of

the pandemic (Deloitte, 2021). Specifically, 51% of surveyed women reported feeling less

optimistic about their career prospects and 57% of them mentioned planning to leave their

current job within two years. Women cited work-life balance concerns as the major reason

for having the intention to quit their employer. While it is clear that the pandemic has

adversely impacted women’s career outcomes, how women experience work on a daily basis

under pandemic settings is less well understood. There is a need to further our knowledge on

women’s work experiences during this critical time because they are likely to hold important

implications for women’s career development. It is reasonable to question whether these

experiences will end up widening the gender career gap in the long term, as already shown in

20

the Global Gender Gap Report 2021 which suggests that it will now take 135.6 years3 to

close the global gender gap worldwide as opposed to 99.5 years before the beginning of the

pandemic.

Overall, there is a need to develop a better understanding of mothers’ unique work

experiences that are known to have harmful consequences on women’s career outcomes. By

doing so, organizations and managers will be able to provide appropriate support to these

employees, to retain female talent within organizations and potentially to help make steps

toward closing the gender career gap.

The aim of this research is to obtain a better understanding of women’s career

experiences and in particular the work experiences of women at two critical points in their

careers, namely maternity leave and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also seeks to explore how

women’s personal interpretation of the justice and interruption experiences might impact

their career aspirations, attitudes and behaviors over time. Specifically, my work is guided by

the following overarching research question: How do work experiences influence women’s

career outcomes over time? Each paper presented in the following chapters assists me in this

quest by asking the following sub questions:

- Paper 1 (Chapter 2): How has the literature on and our knowledge of women’s careers

evolved over the last decade?

- Paper 2 (Chapter 3): What types of justice-related events do women experience at the

time around maternity leave, and how do they interpret and make sense of these

events? How do these (in)justice experiences affect their career intentions and

choices?

3 The Global Gender Gap is composed of the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap,

the Educational Attainment gap, the Health and Survival gap and the Political Empowerment

gap.

21

- Paper 3 (Chapter 4): How are daily cross-domain interruptions between work and

childcare experienced by teleworking mothers and fathers of young children, and how

do these experience affect their career motive fulfillment, wellbeing and work

attitudes?

3. Thesis theoretical background

This research is inscribed in the literature on women’s careers and builds on the

organizational justice framework (Greenberg, 1987) and research on work interruptions (e.g.,

Puranik et al., 2020).

3.1. A historic overview of women’s careers research

Historically, career researchers have tended to focus on the career development

patterns of men (e.g., Levinson, 1978; Schein, 1978) and have paid little or no attention to

women’s career specificities (Gallos, 1989; Sullivan, 1999). This is problematic because

several studies have shown that fundamental career theories such as Super’s career stages

theory (1957) and Levinson’s seasons of life theory (1978) could not be applied to women

because they failed to capture women’s complex lives (e.g., Ornstein & Isabella, 1990; Smart

& Peterson, 1994). These observations led several career scholars to shift away from the

conceptualizations and empirical investigations of men’s careers to focus on women’s career

development specifically. The first papers showing interest in how women’s careers evolve

over time go back to the 1980s. For example, Rossi (1980) regretted the lack of consideration

of biological factors in life-span theories and explored the influence of important concerns

such as work-family balance, maternal responsibility and the meaning of age and aging on

women’s career and life-span development. Further, new theories were developed such as

Astin’s model of career choice and work behavior (1984), which proposes a need-based

sociopsychological approach to explain how different psychological and cultural-

22

environmental factors interact to generate a career choice. Specifically, Astin argued that

women and men typically differed in the work and career expectations that shape their career

choices, which are informed by their socialization experiences and the knowledge of their

environmental constraints.

In the 1990s and 2000s, career scholars started to consider that approaching careers as

linear, stable, and limited to organizational boundaries was no longer relevant in light of the

increasingly dynamic nature of work environments. Hence, new models of career

development were proposed to capture the major changes associated with the way careers

were seen, developed and utilized. These new models, which include the protean career

model (Hall, 1996, 2004) and the boundaryless careers (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996) model,

reflected the increasing mobility of workers across professions, organizations, and countries

(Sullivan & Arthur, 2006), and revealed that more and more individuals followed value-

driven careers where career success was defined in more subjective ways (Hall, 1996; Heslin,

2005). Again, several researchers argued that these new models did not fully account for the

unique specificities of women’s careers (Sullivan & Mainiero, 2008). In response to this

observation, new models integrating women’s larger life contexts were proposed.

Back in 1992, Powell and Mainiero developed a conceptual model, namely Cross-

Currents in the River of Time, arguing that women are concerned with both their career and

their relationships but the degree of importance given to each domain is likely to differ over

time, and to subsequently influence women’s career decisions. Building on empirical

findings, O’Neil and Bilimoria (2005) proposed a three-phase model to explain women’s

career patterns over time. The first phase, idealistic achievement, occurs in early career stages

and is driven by women’s desire for success and career advancement. The second phase,

pragmatic endurance, happens in mid-career stages when women usually have professional

and personal responsibilities and try to reconcile the two. The third phase, reinventive

23

contribution, corresponds to advanced career stages where women are concerned with

contributing to both their work and families. While women’s motivations differ across

phases, success in both their career and relationships matter in each of them.

In a similar vein, Mainiero and Sullivan (2005) conducted multiple studies to develop

the kaleidoscope career model (KCM) that accounts for the differences in the way women

and men describe and build their careers. While their results showed that men were more

likely to follow a traditional career path (i.e., upward career progression in one industry),

women on the contrary often rejected the concept of linear careers with traditional career

success standards. Specifically, Mainiero and Sullivan argue that careers are not defined by

organizations anymore but by the worker’s own life choices and values, and thus their KCM

captures the influence of individuals’ life components on their career. According to the KCM,

individuals make career decisions based on three main motives that typically shift over the

course of a career, namely authenticity, balance and challenge. Authenticity refers to making

professional choices that allow an individual to be true to herself or himself, balance involves

the pursuit of an equilibrium between work and non-work domains and challenge designates

the need for an individual to perform a stimulating work that offer professional opportunities

(Sullivan & Mainiero, 2007). Typically, women and men tend to focus on challenge in their

early career, in mid-career men tend to value authenticity while women are more concerned

with balance, and finally, women direct their attention to authenticity in their late career

unlike men who tend to pursue balance (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005). When one parameter

moves into the foreground, the other parameters remain still somehow active but they recede

to the background.

The KCM is one of the most prominent models for the study of women’s careers and

its relevance has been tested empirically in different contexts. For example, studies have used

the KCM as a theoretical framework in the context of career transitions (Mainiero & Gibson,

24

2018) and more specifically women’s opting-out and opting-(back)in experiences (Cabrera,

2007, 2009; Zimmerman & Clark, 2016). The KCM has also been drawn on to explain the

different career patterns of dual career couples (Clarke, 2015) and the contrasting career

motives of different generations of workers (Sullivan, Forret, Carraher & Mainiero, 2009). It

has also been suggested as a framework to identify the sources of stress for women at work,

and in turn help reduce them (Sullivan & Mainiero, 2007). More recently the KCM has been

applied in the context of emigration (O’Connor & Crowley-Henry, 2020).

While simultaneously examining how women’s careers may differ from men’s,

research explored barriers to gender career equality. For example, scholars sought to answer

important questions such as ‘why are women underrepresented at the highest levels of the

hierarchy’. With the introduction of the glass metaphors, researchers started to investigate

phenomena explaining how women’s career advancement is restrained. The most well known

metaphor may be the ‘glass ceiling’ (Morrison et al., 1987), which refers to vertical

discrimination against women preventing them from accessing the highest organizational

positions. Once they breach the glass ceiling, women may also encounter the ‘glass cliff’,

described by Ryan and Haslam (2005) as the phenomenon by which women are only

assigned to executive roles in times of crisis, where chances of failure are higher.

More recently, scholars have started to explore the role of women’s physiological

changes in their career experiences. Gatrell and colleagues (2017) offer new perspectives on

how maternal bodies, which reflect women’s potential for childbirth, can explain the

underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of organizational hierarchies. Drawing on

Douglas’ reflections on the concepts of “taboo” and “social pollution” (1966), the authors

draw parallels between tribal communities and organizations to demonstrate how women are

ostracized from career-advancing positions. Specifically, Gatrell and colleagues suggest that

this happen for three reasons: equivocality, which refers to the fact that maternal bodies are

25

reminders of childbirth spilling over to the workplace, contextuality, which suggests that

maternal bodies belong to home rather than organizational settings and medicalization, which

implies that maternal bodies are seen as highly hormonal and are associated with a perceived

reduction in cognitive ability. Moreover, the authors argue that the association of negative

organizational outcomes with the maternal body is strongest during pregnancy and new

motherhood. Similarly, Grandey and colleagues (2020) identify menstruation, maternity and

menopause, which they refer to as the three Ms, as taboo topics in the workplace.

Consequently, the authors argue that the natural experiences of the three Ms throughout

women’s career life are associated with stereotypical beliefs and are often incongruent with

ideal worker expectations. These beliefs and experiences can harm women’s career progress.

3.2. Positioning my thesis in the literature on women’s careers

Despite the increased level of research in the field of women’s career studies over the

past two decades, there remain many unanswered questions. A substantial body of research

has explored the macro phenomena describing women's career barriers (e.g., the motherhood

penalty, the glass ceiling, etc.), however there is still a lot to unveil about the micro dynamics

behind these career penalties. In particular, research is lacking person-centric investigations

of women’s experiences at different turning points of their careers. Gaining knowledge on

women’s career experiences is crucial for retaining women in the workforce and helping

them progress in their careers. In my research, I seek to address this gap by investigating

women’s career experiences through different means, as detailed in the section that follows.

4. Content overview

This research explores women’s career experiences at two critical points in their

careers, namely the period of maternity leave and the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it

26

examines the influence of justice-related and interruption experiences on important work and

career outcomes.

This thesis is constituted by three distinct papers, including one integrative review

article and two empirical studies. The first paper (Chapter 2), entitled “Novel Perspectives on

Women’s Careers: A Review and Directions for Future Research”, provides an integrative

review of the literature on women’s careers. We focus on research published from 2009

onward as we build on the 2008 review by O’Neil and colleagues entitled “Women’s Careers

at the Start of the 21st Century: Patterns and Paradoxes”. With this paper, our aim is to

provide a fresh examination of the recent and quickly amassing research on women’s careers.

We reviewed 167 articles on this topic and conducted an inductive analysis (Thomas, 2006)

to categorize the relevant research articles. Our analysis yields five distinct perspectives on

the topic, from which we derive four directions for future research.

The second paper (Chapter 3), “(In)Justice Episodes around Maternity Leave: How

Women Going on and Returning from Leave Experience, Make Sense of, and React to

Justice-Related Experiences”, presents a longitudinal qualitative study on women’s personal

experiences at work at the time around their maternity leave. We conducted semi-structured

interviews with highly educated working women at three points in time from their pregnancy

disclosure up to their work reentry following maternity leave. We draw on the framework of

organizational justice (Greenberg, 1987) and adopt a person-centric approach (Weiss &

Rupp, 2011) to investigate women’s justice-related experiences at this critical transition time,

as well as their associated career attitudes and decisions. The findings show that women are

confronted with numerous injustice events around the time of their maternity leave, but also

to justice omissions that we define as the absence of action which in turn gives rise to an

unfairness assessment. Altogether, the interplay between injustice events and justice

27

omissions over time has important consequences on women’s career aspirations, attitudes and

decisions.

Finally, in the third paper (Chapter 4) “All at Home: The Gender Effect of Work and

Childcare Interruptions during Telework”, we present a diary study over five consecutive

days among teleworking parents during the first COVID-related lockdown in France (in April

2020). In this study, we investigate the impact of two types of interruptions, namely work

interrupting childcare and childcare interrupting work, on parents’ work engagement and

emotional exhaustion, via the mediating effect of career goal fulfillment. While we find that

childcare to work interruptions negatively affect both women and men’s career goal

fulfillment as well as the downstream outcomes of work engagement and emotional

exhaustion, our results also suggest that women and men experience work to childcare

interruptions differently. Specifically, we find that only women’s perceived balance

fulfillment is damaged by work to childcare interruptions, while men somewhat benefit from

these types of interruptions and see their daily levels of authenticity and challenge rise.

5. Thesis contributions

5.1. To research

5.1.1. Novel perspectives on women’s careers

The first paper (Chapter 2) takes stock of the recent literature on women’s careers and

its evolution over the past decade. Building on the review by O’Neil, Hopkins and Bilimoria

(2008), it offers an encompassing view of the evolution of the field and its current knowledge

by bringing together contributions from the management, applied psychology and career

disciplines. Our analyses enable the development of five distinct perspectives that summarize

and organize the literature on women’s careers in a clear and coherent way and help shed

light on important research gaps.

28

The major perspectives and their associated research gaps allowed for the

development of four directions for future research on the topic of women’s careers. Each

direction presents empirical and theoretical opportunities that can help move the field

forward. The first direction, greater account of time, stresses the need to embrace women’s

career temporal dynamics and to integrate subjective time in the study of women’s career

experiences. The second direction, greater intersectionality, recommends adopting an

intersectional lens (e.g., make comparisons across samples of women with different social

characteristics) to get more accurate representations of the careers of all women. The third,

integration of bias-reduction interventions, proposes to take concrete action against gender

biases and implement tailored interventions within organizations. Finally, the fourth

direction, need for adopting a holistic approach, encourages scholars to adopt a holistic

approach in their studies by integrating the five perspectives, in order to get a more

comprehensive understanding of women’s career experiences. Taken together, the distinct

perspectives and the four directions for future research highlight the important questions that

need to be answered as we look for steps toward closing the gender career gap.

5.1.2. Justice dynamics in the context of women’s careers

The second paper (Chapter 3) contributes to the literatures on women’s careers and on

organizational justice in several ways. First, it answers a call made a decade ago for the

investigation of subjective experiences within organizations (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) and

provides one of the first person-centric investigations of justice dynamics in the context of

women’s careers. Specifically, it shows how women personally experience, make sense of

and react to the treatment they receive at work at the time around their maternity leave. We

provide important information on the typical injustice events women are likely to experience

around their maternity leave and how such experiences can result in career responses over

time.

29

Second, the findings advance our understanding of justice episodes (Whiteside &

Barclay, 2015) by integrating a new concept, i.e., justice omission. While previous research

focused on justice judgments of entities and events, we find that individuals can also form

fairness assessments in relation to an absence of action, which we term a justice omission. In

particular, our results suggest a two-way relationship between events and omissions such that

often both stem from the same underlying issue, one can trigger the other over time, and

together they can form a justice episode.

Finally, this research helps us understand the role of motivated reasoning in justice

judgment formation, as we draw on system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) and

autobiographical memory (Brewer, 1986) in our analysis of the data. We find that when

confronted with specific (in)justice episodes, some participants provide justifications for

perceived unfair treatment. Noticeably, many women who engage in system justification do

so consistently over time, but despite their justification efforts they also tend to experience

decreased career aspirations and increased turnover intentions. In line with Barclay and

colleagues’ suggestion that memories are a key element of motivated justice reasoning

(2017), our findings suggest that women are likely to mobilize autobiographic memory to

make sense of the treatment they receive at work and therefore to retrieve past (in)justice

experiences to fit with present justice experiences. Memories of past injustice experiences

may also form the basis for anticipated injustice.

5.1.3. Work and career consequences of cross-domain interruptions

The third paper (Chapter 4) contributes to the literature on interruptions in several

ways. First, by drawing on the gender role theory (Gutek et al., 1991) it provides important

information on the underlying mechanisms that can explain why and how daily experiences

of work to childcare and childcare to work interruptions affect women differently from men.

Specifically, it highlights the importance of studying interruptions in the context of

30

individuals’ life and career goals. Second, it answers a recent call for the investigation of the

bright side of interruptions (Puranik et al., 2020) and provides evidence that interruptions can

be beneficial for some individuals in specific context. In particular, our findings show that

fathers’ perceived career goal fulfillment can benefit from work to childcare interruptions,

which in turn affect important work and well-being outcomes. Third, it contributes to the

literature on women’s careers by showing how the daily experience of interruptions between

work and childcare may constitute a push-out factor for women’s workforce participation

over time.

Overall, the constituting three papers of my thesis conjointly contribute to the

literature on women’s careers by providing conceptual clarifications and empirical

investigations of women’s career experiences at two critical career transitions periods.

5.2. To practice

This research has implications for organizations and managers wishing to improve

women’s career experiences and to make steps toward closing the gender career gap.

The first paper identifies important manifestations of biases within organizations and

it suggests that different groups of women face unique work experiences and challenge.

These findings shed light on the important issues managers need to pay attention to in order

to support all women’s career experiences and development.

The second paper informs us of the typical injustice events and justice omissions

women experience from the time they announce their pregnancy up to their work reentry

after maternity leave. While our listing of injustice events shares important information on

the practices and behaviors to be avoided by managers and colleagues, our description of

justice omissions brings useful clues on the actions organizations need to undertake during

this critical time period filled with uncertainty for women. In the paper, we offer 14 clear

suggestions of actions to implement to counter the injustice events and justice omissions that

31

we identify as the most common. For example, a booklet with all of the information related to

pregnancy, maternity and breastfeeding provisions can be distributed to employees following

their pregnancy disclosure. As such, we provide organizations and managers with important

tools to better handle the transition period of maternity leave.

The third paper suggests that under teleworking settings, interruptions between the

work and childcare spheres can be experienced differently by women and men. Thus, it is

important that organizations and managers take this information into consideration when

designing work tasks and work arrangements. Specifically, we encourage organizations to

provide flexibility to their employees, especially mothers, as it might help to reduce the

occurrence of childcare to work interruptions, which are associated with harmful work and

well being consequences. At the same time, if employees have more autonomy in their

working hours, they may better manage interruption experiences and diminish their negative

effects. In particular, it is important that employees and managers share information on how

and when they can be interrupted.

6. Declaration of contribution

Chapter 2 “Novel Perspectives on Women’s Careers: A Review and Directions for Future

Research”: The first paper has been co-authored with Prof. Marjo-Riitta Diehl. I am the first

author on this paper. A short version of this paper has been accepted for presentation at

EAWOP 2022 and the full paper is currently being prepared for submission to the Journal of

Vocational Behavior.

Chapter 3 “(In)Justice Episodes around Maternity Leave: How Women Going on and

Returning from Maternity Leave Experience, Make Sense of, and React to Justice-Related

Experiences”: The second paper was co-authored with my PhD supervisor, Prof. Marion

Fortin. I am the first author on this paper. This paper has been presented at several academic

32

peer-reviewed conferences including Academy of Management, European Academy of

Management, European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology, International

Society for Justice Research and to a research colloquium at Aston Business School. The

manuscript is currently being prepared for submission to Academy of Management Journal.

Chapter 4 “All at Home: The Gender Effect of Work and Childcare Interruptions during

Telework”: The final paper is the result of a collaboration with Prof. Marion Fortin, Dr.

Hayley German and Prof. Marc Ohana. I am second author on this paper. This paper has been

presented at the Academy of Management conference and at a research colloquium at Aston

Business School. The manuscript is currently being prepared for submission.

7. Conclusion of introduction chapter

Women have long been discriminated against at work and recent research suggests

that they are still faced with many challenges and several disadvantages throughout their

working life. One of the biggest challenges may be experienced in relation to maternity.

Maternity leave is a time associated with heightened uncertainty for women who have doubts

about how their supervisor will react to their pregnancy announcement, about what could

happen during their absence, and about their return to work experience. Women are likely to

experience (in)justice events and omissions at this critical time, which trigger career

responses over time. Challenges at work continue to arise when women look after young

children, with the manifestation of work-childcare interruptions. Overall, these justice and

interruption experiences are likely to result in harmful career outcomes for women.

In the following chapters, I present three distinct articles, which are the fruit of my

PhD journey. A summary of each paper is provided in Table 1 below. I provide a conclusion

to this research at the end of the thesis, and present its overall contributions as well as

research and practical implications.

33

T

hesis resea

rch q

uestio

n: H

ow

do w

ork

experien

ces influ

ence w

om

en’s ca

reer ou

tcom

es over tim

e?

ap

ers R

esearch

qu

estion

s T

heo

retical

gro

un

din

g

Meth

od

s C

on

tribu

tion

s to resea

rch

Pra

ctical im

plica

tion

s

1

How

has th

e literature o

n

and o

ur k

now

ledge o

f w

om

en’s careers ev

olv

ed

over th

e last decad

e?

- In

tegrativ

e literature rev

iew

- 1

64 articles fro

m 1

4 p

eer rev

iewed

academ

ic journ

als

- Dev

elopm

ent o

f five m

ajor p

erspectiv

es that

shed

new

light o

n th

e topic o

f wom

en’s careers.

The p

erspectiv

es inclu

de relatio

nal, d

ecision

-

mak

ing, g

ender b

ias, temporal an

d in

tersectional.

- Iden

tification o

f four d

irections fo

r futu

re

research to

move th

e field o

f wom

en’s careers

forw

ard

The research

iden

tifies importan

t man

ifestations

of b

iases with

in o

rgan

izations an

d th

eir associated

career co

nseq

uen

ces and th

us p

rovid

es

info

rmatio

n o

n th

e importan

t issues w

om

en face

at work

and th

at man

agers n

eed to

pay

attentio

n

to.

2

- W

hat ty

pes o

f justice-

related ev

ents d

o w

om

en

experien

ce at the tim

e

around m

aternity

leave,

and h

ow

do th

ey in

terpret

and m

ake sen

se of th

ese ev

ents?

- H

ow

do th

ese (in)ju

stice

experien

ces affect their

career inten

tions an

d

choices?

Org

anizatio

nal

Justice

(Green

berg

,

1987)

- L

ongitu

din

al semi-

structu

red in

terview

s around

matern

ity leav

e - 3

5 h

ighly

-skilled

work

ing

wom

en

- Iden

tification o

f typical ju

stice even

ts

enco

untered

at the tim

e around m

aternity

leave

and th

eir career conseq

uen

ces - In

troductio

n o

f a new

concep

t, justice o

missio

n

- Better u

nderstan

din

g o

f justice ep

isode tem

poral

dynam

ics with

the in

troductio

n o

f justice

om

issions

- Em

pirical in

vestig

ation o

f auto

bio

grap

hical

mem

ory

in ju

stice judgm

ent fo

rmatio

n

- Contrib

utes to

the k

now

ledge o

n m

otiv

ated

justice reaso

nin

g

The fin

din

gs h

ighlig

ht th

e typical in

justice ev

ents

and ju

stice om

issions w

om

en ex

perien

ce from

the

time th

ey an

nounce th

eir preg

nan

cy u

p to

their

work

reentry

after matern

ity leav

e. While th

e id

entified

inju

stice even

ts constitu

te usefu

l

info

rmatio

n o

n th

e practices an

d b

ehav

iors to

be

avoid

ed b

y m

anag

ers and co

lleagues, ju

stice

om

issions u

nderlin

e the actio

ns th

at are necessary

fo

r them

to u

ndertak

e durin

g th

is critical time

perio

d filled

with

uncertain

ty fo

r wom

en.

3

- How

are daily

cross-

dom

ain in

terruptio

ns

betw

een w

ork

and

child

care experien

ced b

y

telework

ing m

oth

ers and

fathers o

f young ch

ildren

? - H

ow

do th

ese ex

perien

ces affect their

career motiv

e fulfillm

ent,

wellb

eing an

d w

ork

attitudes?

Gen

der ro

le

theo

ry (G

utek

et al., 1

991)

- D

aily d

iary stu

dy o

ver 5

consecu

tive d

ays d

urin

g th

e C

ovid

-19 lo

ckdow

n w

ave in

Fran

ce (April 2

020)

- 3

39 telew

ork

ing p

arents o

f

young ch

ildren

- Interru

ptio

ns are ex

perien

ced d

ifferently

by

wom

en v

s. men

- C

ross-d

om

ain in

terruptio

ns h

ave im

portan

t career, w

ork

and w

ellbein

g o

utco

mes

- Importan

ce of stu

dyin

g th

e effects of

interru

ptio

ns in

the co

ntex

t of o

ne's life ro

les and

goals

- Contrib

utio

n to

the call fo

r investig

ation o

f the

positiv

e side o

f interru

ptio

ns

The resu

lts suggest th

at org

anizatio

ns n

eed to

pro

vid

e flexib

ility to

moth

ers as it mig

ht h

elp in

red

ucin

g th

e occu

rrence o

f cross-d

om

ain

interru

ptio

ns, w

hich

are associated

with

harm

ful

career, work

and w

ell bein

g co

nseq

uen

ces. At th

e

same tim

e, if emplo

yees h

ave m

ore au

tonom

y in

th

eir work

ing h

ours, th

ey m

ay b

etter man

age

interru

ptio

n ex

perien

ces and d

imin

ish th

eir neg

ative effects. In

particu

lar, it is importan

t that

emplo

yees an

d m

anag

ers share in

form

ation o

n

how

and w

hen

they

can b

e interru

pted

.

Table 1. Thesis overview

34

CHAPTER 2. Novel Perspectives on Women’s Careers: A Review

and Directions for Future Research

35

Abstract

Despite important advances in women’s career development over the past few decades,

recent data suggest that the progress toward closing the gender career gap remains slow and

might even be scaling back. Over the last decade, and in the recent context of the COVID-19

pandemic, organizations have witnessed a shift in workplace practices that are associated

with harmful consequences for women’s careers. These developments motivated us to take

stock of the current state of the literature on women’s careers. Obtaining a better

understanding of the underlying mechanisms putting women at a career disadvantage and

unveiling the unanswered questions on this important topic are critical to reducing gender

career inequality in the future. In the present research, we review 167 articles on the topic of

women’s careers from top-tier journals in the management, applied psychology and career

disciplines and categorize them into five distinct perspectives, namely, relational, decision-

making, gender bias, temporal and intersectional. We present the perspectives’ premises,

summarize the key findings for each perspective and highlight their associated major research

gaps. Based upon an analysis derived from these perspectives, we delineate four directions

for future research to advance the field on women’s careers.

Keywords: Women’s careers, career barriers, career development, gender career gap

36

1. Introduction

Recent years have seen many improvements in women’s career progress. For

example, the representation of women on boards of large, quoted companies increased from

12% in 2012 to 29% in 2020 (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2020). Additionally,

the #Metoo campaign has drawn attention to sexism in the workplace and has potentially

decreased sexual harassment against women (Johnson et al., 2019). At the same time, we

know that women encounter the glass ceiling relatively early on in their career development

(World Economic Forum, 2020), that they remain structurally underrepresented in top

decision-making positions (only 29% globally), and that a significant gender wage gap (40%)

persists (Grant Thornton, 2019). According to recent data, progress toward ending the gender

economic participation and opportunity gap is slowing down, and at the current pace, it will

take up to 257 years to close (World Economic Forum, 2020). Beyond the harmful economic

effects of not encouraging female participation in the labor force (Ferrant & Kolev, 2016) and

the harmful impact of gender discrimination on the women concerned (e.g., Vigod &

Rochon, 2020), gender diversity and equal career opportunities are issues of ethics and justice

(Terjesen & Sealy, 2016). Therefore, it is not surprising that the topic of gender equality in

the workplace continues to attract scholarly attention and that the literature on women’s

careers has grown rapidly (Connell, 2019; Joshi et al., 2015).

While recent investigations have yielded important and helpful insights about

women’s careers, this knowledge has evolved in a piecemeal fashion, covering a broad range

of distinct themes, approaches and theoretical lenses. Building on the review article

“Women’s Careers at the Start of the 21st Century: Patterns and Paradoxes” that was

published by O’Neil, Hopkins and Bilimoria in 2008, our goal is to take stock of how the

literature and knowledge on women’s careers has evolved over the last decade and to provide

novel perspectives on this important topic. Reviewing a total of 76 articles, O’Neil and

37

colleagues (2008) categorized the existing conceptual and empirical articles at the time into

four distinct patterns, namely, women’s careers are embedded in larger life contexts, arguing

that women’s careers and private life are more interconnected than those of men; families and

careers are central to women’s lives, presenting how women’s family responsibilities

influence their careers; women’s career paths reflect a wide range and variety of patterns,

suggesting that women’s careers are diverse and differ from men’s; and human capital and

social capital are critical factors for women’s career development, implying that women’s

career development is subjected to human capital (e.g., education, job experience) and social

capital (e.g., network ties) differently from men’s. The review also presents four paradoxes

regarding the discrepancies between available research and organizational practices.

Since O’Neil and colleagues’ review (2008), several positive developments have

taken place, as outlined earlier (e.g., the participation of women on company boards has

increased, and sexual harassment toward women has decreased). An increasing number of

initiatives have been implemented, at institutional levels and within organizations, to improve

gender equality at work (e.g., increased offerings of flexible work arrangements and women-

only networks). The COVID-19 crisis has also shifted workplace practices (Kniffin et al.,

2021), which have been shown to significantly impact women’s career experiences and

ambitions (Deloitte, 2021). In this context of societal and institutional change, the career

experiences of women have been a topic of prolific research over the past decade. However,

extant research remains scattered across disciplines, and an expansive overview of the recent

literature on women’s careers is lacking. Given these developments and observations, the

time is ripe for a high-level integration of the literature on women’s careers published in the

second decade of the 21st century. Specifically, our objective in this review is to bring

together the currently fragmented literature on women’s careers to examine what is currently

known about women’s careers and to evaluate how our knowledge on women’s careers has

38

evolved over the last decade. To take steps toward gender equality at work, we need to

advance our understanding of the mechanisms that undermine and restrain women’s careers

in the 21st century and to identify the critical questions that are yet to be answered.

Overall, with this review, we seek to provide an informative synthesis of the evolution

of research on women’s careers since 2008 to highlight important research gaps, delineate

clear directions to move the field forward and address some of the key challenges in gender

career inequality. We follow Sullivan and Al Ariss’s approach to career transitions (2021),

which outlines five theoretical perspectives that provide a clear and coherent overview of the

literature on career transitions, to offer insights into the literature specifically examining

women’s careers. By bringing together the management, career and applied psychology

disciplines, our analyses reveal five distinct perspectives that summarize the literature on

women’s careers over the last decade. These perspectives are relational, decision-making,

gender bias, temporal and intersectional. For each perspective, we start by defining its major

premise. Then, we review and categorize the key findings of the articles belonging to the

perspective, and we outline the major research gaps. In light of our analysis of these

perspectives, we develop an agenda for future research on women’s careers.

Our review contributes to the literature on women’s careers in the following ways.

First, we bring different streams of research together (i.e., the management, applied

psychology and career disciplines) to develop an encompassing view of how the literature on

women’s careers has developed over the last decade and to present its current stage. Second,

we organize the extant literature in five distinct perspectives and thus provide clarity to this

rather scattered field. Third, we identify new theoretical and empirical opportunities for

future research, suggesting how research on women’s careers can move forward. By

synthesizing insights on women’s careers from various perspectives, we hope to shift the

39

conversation on women’s careers toward a holistic understanding that recognizes women as a

group with many distinct voices and experiences.

2. Structure and approach of the review

Following the procedures recommended by Elsbach and van Knippenberg (2020), we

conducted an integrative literature review, which allows the development of novel insights on

a given topic by connecting different communities of practice (Cronin & George, 2020).

First, we identified key journals in the management, career and applied psychology

disciplines publishing literature on topics related to women’s careers (as described in Tang et

al., 2020). We included only articles that were published in peer-reviewed journals and had

thus been subject to the peer-review process. We included nine top-tier journals (Journal of

Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Administrative Science

Quarterly, Organization Science, Journal of Business Ethics, British Journal of Management,

Journal of Organizational Behavior and Human Relations) and 3 specialist journals (Journal

of Career Development, Journal of Vocational Behavior and Career Development

International). We accessed the journals using the Sage, JSTOR, PsycINFO, Emerald, Wiley

and Science Direct databases. In our search, we used combinations of the terms “women”,

“female”, “vocation” and “career” to retrieve relevant articles from the selected peer-

reviewed journals; for example, we combined “female” with “vocation” and “women” with

“career”. Articles containing these terms in their titles, abstracts or keywords were included

in the review sample. Given the large scope of research on women's work and career

experiences, it was necessary to define clear boundaries for the review. Thus, we limited our

search to studies that specifically examined careers and excluded studies that investigated, for

example, women’s leadership styles or women on boards unless the research explicitly

mentioned implications for careers. Further, as we used O’Neil and colleagues’ review

40

(2008) as a starting point for our review, we focused our search on peer-reviewed articles

published from 2009 onward. The initial search yielded 221 articles.

The first author then screened all of the retrieved articles to determine their relevance

for the review and to assess whether they met the three criteria set for inclusion. We included

empirical or theoretical articles that (1) were published after 2008; (2) had women-only

samples or mixed-gender samples where an effort was made to differentiate the results for

each gender; and (3) were directly relevant and offered insights into the topic of women’s

careers (this was already our focus in the initial search). The second author was involved in

the process; the first and second authors regularly met to discuss the progress in the review,

and any potential unclarities that remained were solved jointly. Overall, we found 145 articles

that matched our search criteria from the 12 journals previously identified (see Table 1).

Finally, we examined the reference lists of the articles to identify important research on the

topic that may have not been captured in the initial review search. Based on this step, we

decided to include in the sample two more journals that we noted repeatedly published

research on women’s careers, namely, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and

Psychology of Women Quarterly. This search yielded 18 additional papers that were included

in the sample. Using Web of Science, we also conducted a reverse citation analysis to ensure

that we had included all studies that had cited O’Neil et al.’s review (2008). As a result, we

identified four further studies that met our inclusion criteria, leaving us with a final sample of

167 articles.

Out of the 167 articles that met our selection criteria, 161 were empirical and 6 were

conceptual or theoretical. The topic of women’s careers was investigated qualitatively

(N=60), quantitatively (N=82) or using mixed methods (N=19). Additionally, whereas

several studies from our sample used a longitudinal design (N=19), most adopted cross-

41

sectional designs. The majority of the studies were conducted in North America (47%),

Western Europe (24%), or the Middle East (15%).

Table 1. List of journals and number of articles included in the review Management (21) Career (114) Applied Psychology (25)

Journal of Management (3) Journal of Career Development

(37)

Journal of Applied Psychology (2)

Journal of Business Ethics (1) Journal of Vocational Behavior

(29)

Personnel Psychology (5)

Administrative Science Quarterly

(1)

Career Development International

(48)

Psychology of Women Quarterly

(12)*

Journal of Organizational Behavior

(1)

Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology (6)*

British Journal of

Management (4)

Human Relations (11)

Following the procedure of Haffar and Searcy (2017), we then analyzed the content of

the retained articles, performing a descriptive analysis and a thematic analysis. First, we

identified categories to descriptively code our sample of articles. The descriptive codes

included year of publication, country where the study was conducted, sample characteristics

(job position and gender), theoretical framework used, method followed (qualitative or

quantitative), type of article (empirical, conceptual or review), and research field

(management, applied psychology or careers). Second, we conducted a fine-grained coding

of the articles in line with an inductive analysis (Thomas, 2006) to thematically categorize the

articles. As opposed to a deductive approach, which is restrained by preconceptions, the

inductive approach allows categories and theories to emerge from the data itself. Specifically,

we followed the steps outlined by Thomas (2006), reading through each article several times

and drawing categories. We then combined the codes we identified into broader themes. We

resolved minor disagreements and unclarities during the coding through discussion. Through

this analysis, we identified five major perspectives on women’s careers, namely, relational,

42

decision-making, gender bias, temporal and intersectional. The data structure of the review is

provided in the appendices (Appendix 1).

The relational perspective (47 studies) focuses on how women’s careers are

embedded in family and work relationships. The decision-making perspective (21 studies)

explores various factors that influence women’s career attitudes and decisions, from career

events to expatriation motives. The gender bias perspective (56 studies) examines the

prejudice and discrimination women face at work and how these influence their careers. The

temporal perspective (26 studies) brings insights into the temporal dynamics of women’s

careers, focusing on career stages and trajectories and critical periods for their careers.

Finally, the emerging intersectional perspective (17 studies) offers a glimpse into the plural

singularities of working women and how their social identities interact, shape and sometimes

slow down their careers. A summary of the five perspectives is provided in Table 2.

Although we conducted the analysis inductively, our analysis was informed by

previous research. Some of the perspectives we identified mirror Sullivan and Al Ariss’

(2021) theoretical perspectives on career transitions, such as the relational and decision-

making perspectives, which also broadly correspond to the patterns identified by O’Neil and

colleagues in 2008. For example, throughout their careers, women make numerous career

decisions that may result in actual career transitions (e.g., the decision to take parental leave

or use flexible arrangements). Additionally, career transition decisions and adjustments are

influenced by the non-work and work domains, as women’s career attitudes and decisions

often are. Further, O’Neil and colleagues’ review suggests that women’s family

responsibilities influence their careers, and we find that the role of different relations in

women’s careers continues to dominate the recent literature. Moving forward from the

perspectives presented in Sullivan and Al Ariss’ review (2021) and patterns proposed by

O’Neil et al. (2008), we identified three novel perspectives focusing on women’s careers,

43

including the gender bias, temporal and intersectional perspectives. These perspectives

capture new and unique insights into recent streams of research on women’s careers.

44

Tab

le 2. O

verv

iew o

f the fiv

e persp

ectives o

n w

om

en's careers

Persp

ectives

Ma

jor p

remise

Nu

mb

er o

f articles

Rep

resenta

tive ex

am

ples

Resea

rch g

ap

s

Rela

tion

al p

erspectiv

e W

om

en’s careers are em

bed

ded

in

family

, wo

rk an

d co

mm

un

ity

relation

ship

s.

51

L

ivin

gsto

n (2

01

4): C

areer neg

otiatio

n in

the h

ou

seho

ld

Ram

aswam

i, Dreh

er, Bretz &

Wieth

off (2

01

0): th

e

imp

act of m

ento

r's gen

der o

n p

rotég

é's career success

McG

inn

& M

ilkm

an (2

01

3): H

avin

g a fem

ale sup

erior

can en

han

ce jun

ior w

om

en p

rofessio

nals’ career m

ob

ility

Fo

cus o

n th

e attribu

tes of th

e men

tor/su

perv

isor b

ut little

is kn

ow

n ab

ou

t the im

pact o

f their attitu

des an

d

techn

iqu

es on

wo

men

’s career ou

tcom

es

Little is k

no

wn

abo

ut h

ow

caring

for an

elderly

can

imp

act wo

men

's careers

Decisio

n-m

ak

ing

persp

ective

Ex

plo

ration

of m

ajor facto

rs that

influ

ence w

om

en’s career attitu

des

and

decisio

ns.

22

F

ou

ad et al. (2

01

6): D

ifferences in

org

anizatio

nal su

pp

ort

and

com

mitm

ent b

etween

wo

men

wh

o p

ersist in

eng

enieerin

g an

d th

ose w

ho

do

no

t

Kim

et al. (20

19

): Ro

le of career ch

ance ev

ent in

career ch

ang

es.

Sav

ela & O

’Brien

(20

16

): female stu

den

ts are con

cerned

with

the fu

ture fit b

etween

their fam

ily an

d th

eir career

Little o

r no

exp

loratio

n o

f ho

w m

otiv

es and

wo

rk

exp

eriences in

teract and

imp

act wo

men

's career cho

ices o

ver tim

e

Main

ly fo

cus o

n w

om

en in

ST

EM

/male-d

om

inated

fields

Gen

der b

ias p

erspectiv

e W

om

en face p

rejud

ice and

d

iscrimin

ation

at wo

rk an

d th

ey

hav

e do

wn

stream career

con

sequ

ences.

53

G

loo

r et al. (20

17

): Career w

ithd

rawal fo

llow

ing

w

ork

place in

civility

becau

se of "m

ayb

e bab

y"

exp

ectation

s

Ho

ob

ler et al. (20

14

): Man

agers' b

iased ev

aluatio

ns

tow

ards w

om

en as a reaso

n fo

r wo

men

's absen

ce from

top

leadersh

ip

Blo

ck et al. (2

01

9): S

trategies to

nav

igate stereo

typ

e th

reatenin

g sy

stems

Em

ph

asis on

the ty

pes o

f gen

der b

iases enco

un

tered

with

in o

rgan

ization

s, yet little em

pirical in

vestig

ation

s of

ho

w to

redu

ce them

Tem

po

ral p

erspectiv

e W

om

en’s careers are in

terwo

ven

into

time.

24

M

ainiero

& G

ibso

n (2

01

8): Im

po

rtance o

f KC

M

param

eters in m

idcareer

Law

son

et al. (20

15

): Fam

ily g

end

er socializatio

n in

child

ho

od

and

gen

der o

ccup

ation

al attainm

ent in

yo

un

g

adu

ltho

od

Pau

stian-U

nd

erdah

l et al. (20

19

): Ho

w career

enco

urag

emen

t and

career mo

tivatio

n in

teract du

ring

the

transitio

n to

mo

therh

oo

d to

pred

ict turn

ov

er inten

tion

s

It is un

kn

ow

n h

ow

sub

jective tim

e can in

fluen

ce wo

men

's

career attitud

es and

decisio

ns

No

con

sideratio

n o

f past an

d fu

ture to

un

derstan

d

wo

men

's career dy

nam

ics

Lack

of lo

ng

itud

inal in

vestig

ation

s of critical p

eriod

s of

time in

wo

men

's careers

Intersectio

na

l persp

ective

Wo

men

’s plu

ral sing

ularities

interact an

d sh

ape th

eir career

pattern

s.

16

M

cClu

ney

& R

abelo

(20

19

): Co

nd

ition

s of v

isibility

can

be h

armfu

l to B

lack w

om

en's careers

Arifeen

& G

atrell (20

20

): 'Glass ch

ains' th

eoretical

con

struct

To

mlin

son

et al. (20

13

): Differen

t career strategies

betw

een W

hite an

d B

lack an

d m

ino

rity eth

nic w

om

en

Ov

erall, little ackn

ow

ledg

men

t of th

e mu

ltiple so

cial ch

aracteristics of w

om

en an

d h

ow

they

interact to

influ

ence th

eir career exp

eriences an

d ch

oices

45

3. Five distinct perspectives on women’s careers

We now present the five perspectives on women’s careers, namely, relational,

decision-making, gender bias, temporal and intersectional, in detail to provide a coherent

summary of the literature produced on women’s careers over the past decade. For each

perspective, we present its rationale and clarify how it relates to the findings of O’Neil and

colleagues (2008). We then examine the current literature and offer illustrative examples of

studies conducted on the topic. Finally, we identify research gaps and propose ways to

address them in the future.

3.1. The relational perspective

3.1.1. Perspective overview

As identified by Sullivan and Al Ariss (2021), the relational perspective on careers

examines the role of interpersonal connections in careers and, in the context of our review, in

women’s careers. Grounded in developmental psychology theories, research has shown that

women’s career development is greatly influenced by their relational experiences (Gilligan,

1982) and that their careers are socially embedded (O’Neil & Bilimoria, 2005). Unlike men,

women tend to make career decisions according to their relations to others (as illustrated, for

example, by research on kaleidoscope careers, Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005; Cross-currents in

the river of time, Powell & Mainiero, 1992).

The research we reviewed continues to show that women’s careers remain socially

embedded, as they are greatly impacted and sometimes restrained by women’s relationships

at home and at work. In line with O’Neil and colleagues’ claim (2008) that women’s career

development and satisfaction are influenced by both their personal and professional

connections, our review also provides evidence in this respect. Although O’Neil et al. (2008)

tended to focus on the influence of the parental role on women’s career outcomes, new

46

empirical research also examines the influence of spouses. Furthermore, when considering

the role of professional relationships in shaping women’s careers, the 2008 review focused on

social networks; however, new studies also integrate other conceptualizations and types of

work relationships, including mentoring and career referents.

3.1.2. Current literature

3.1.2.1. Family connections

Research published since 2008 has mainly focused on the extent to which women’s

relationship with their partner influences their careers. Several studies demonstrate how

negotiation experiences with a partner influence women’s career outcomes. For example,

Livingston (2014) drew on quantitative data to illustrate how career negotiation operates in a

household. She found that when women engaged in fierce negotiation strategies – thus

defying gendered societal norms – they tended to be penalized for doing so, as they were then

less likely to be in charge of the career role in the couple and they ended up in charge of most

of the emotional work at home. Conversely, when women engaged in cooperative

negotiations, their husbands tended to provide more emotional support in the household.

Similarly, Ullrich and colleagues (2015) drew on a dyadic design to examine career

negotiations among partners on whether to relocate for a job. Specifically, investigating the

role of spousal characteristics and attitudes in job-related relocation willingness, they

discovered that women were more likely to put their careers on hold in favor of their

husbands’ careers and that when they were offered an opportunity to relocate as employees,

they were more inclined to take into account their spouse’s job alternatives than male

employees. Finally, signs of social change can be seen in Clarke’s (2015) exploration of the

career decisions of Generation Y dual-career couples through the lens of the Kaleidoscope

Career Model. Although previous findings had suggested that dual-earner couples tended to

follow gendered career patterns, the author found that Generation Y couples engaged in dual

47

careers could follow different career trajectories. For instance, some women pursued alpha

careers, thus concentrating on their career, while their husbands followed a beta career

pattern, which implies a focus on work-life balance. Some couples also seemed to make

career choices according to both alpha and beta focuses. Taken together, these findings

suggest that women’s careers are closely linked to their partners’ and that their career

decisions are influenced, and sometimes constrained, by their spousal life.

Research has also widely demonstrated that having children has a significant impact

on women’s career aspirations (van der Horst et al., 2014), attitudes and decisions. For

instance, Stavrou and Ierodiakonou (2011) examined how the family and caregiving roles of

unemployed women in Cyprus impacted their flexible work arrangement intentions. Further

research has also illustrated how becoming a mother and having a family has implications

beyond simple career intentions, with mothers turning to self-employment (Lewis et al.,

2015), as already documented in O’Neil et al.’s review (2008).

3.1.2.2. Work relationships

More than ten years ago, mentoring was presented as an important determinant of

female protégés’ career development. In fact, O’Neil and colleagues (2008) proposed that

women are more likely to access senior leadership positions if their organizations offer them

both formal and informal mentoring. The current literature continues to suggest not only that

women are influenced by their familial relationships but also that their professional

connections hold important consequences for their career development. Indeed, studies reveal

that organizational members such as mentors (e.g., Ramaswami et al., 2010a), tutors (Cohen-

Scali, 2014), supervisors (Abalkhail, 2020) and career referents (Gibson & Lawrence, 2010)

influence women’s career outcomes differently than men’s, as depicted below.

The recent literature, however, is more detailed in examining the success factors of

mentoring. While protégés’ characteristics, such as feminine versus masculine identity

48

(Ortiz-Walters et al., 2010) and cultural traits (Ramaswami et al., 2014), have been shown to

influence protégés’ career attainment, mentors’ characteristics also seem to be important in

determining mentees’ career outcomes. For instance, both mentors’ and protégés’ genders

have been identified as predictors of protégés’ career attainment (Ramaswami et al., 2010a;

2010b). Ramaswami and colleagues (2010a; 2010b) conducted two separate studies in male-

dominated industries and investigated the moderating role of protégé gender in the

relationship between mentoring and career attainment. In both studies, they found that having

a senior male mentor was associated with higher career attainment for female professionals

than for male professionals. Specifically, women were more likely to have high

compensation, to have high satisfaction in their career progression and to access partner or

senior executive positions when having a male mentor. Against the backdrop of the salvo of

critiques received by a recent (and retracted) article 4 in Nature Communications that

suggested that working with female mentors has lower career impacts for female protégés in

academia, there is clearly a need to acknowledge the pervasiveness of patriarchal structures

in organizations. These structures may embed gender discrimination and explain these

findings, and they should raise concerns. Furthermore, although having a mentor seems to be

critical for women’s career development, there is evidence that women do not benefit from

the same mentoring experiences as men. For example, Terjesen and Sullivan (2011)

examined how mentoring experiences differ between men and women transitioning to

entrepreneurship and found that women were less likely than men to have a mentor in the

entrepreneurial environment that could provide support during this critical transition period

for their careers.

Research has also explored the role of female managers in the careers of other women

(subordinates, junior colleagues, etc.). The complexity of women-to-women work

4 AlShebli, B., Makovi, K. & Rahwan, T. RETRACTED ARTICLE: The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance. Nat Commun, 11, 5855 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038

49

relationships and experiences is likely to influence women’s career advancement (Abalkhail,

2020). Although there are often discrepancies between junior women’s expectations and

perceptions of the career support they receive from more senior women – such that junior

women expect senior women to engage in career assistance behaviors to a greater extent than

they actually do (O’Neil et al., 2018) – there is evidence that having a same-sex superior can

positively influence women’s intentions to remain in an organization (Chen et al., 2014) and

their likelihood of getting promoted (McGinn & Milkman, 2013). However, the opposite

happens when they are in workgroups with higher proportions of same-sex peers.

In addition, having a developed network may enhance women’s career progress as

well as their career satisfaction (Chang et al., 2020). In line with findings reported in O’Neil

and colleagues’ review (2008) suggesting that networks are critical for women’s careers even

though they are often underdeveloped, we noticed that women do not benefit from networks

in the same way as men. For instance, examining ‘why women build less effective networks

than men’, Greguletz and colleagues (2019) found arguments for both external and internal

networking barriers, including work-family conflict and homophily, as well as moral

considerations and gendered modesty. Gender role theory (Eagly, 1987) may also explain

why women have less effective networks than men. Building on this theory, Woehler et al.

(2020) developed a conceptual framework suggesting that the characteristics of men’s and

women’s networks typically differ. They argued that even when women happen to have a

network with similar characteristics as men’s networks, they do not benefit from the same

career success returns; this suggestion conflicts with previous findings indicating that women

benefit more from a male mentor than men (Ramaswami et al., 2010a; 2010b). The authors

explained that gender role expectations influence actors’ use of work and career-related

resources and the willingness of network contacts to share these resources in such a way that

it disadvantages women. Thus, networks might constitute an explanation for gender career

50

inequality. Taken together, these findings point to the structural dimension that puts women

at a disadvantage in terms of networking, while executive leadership and members of

women’s networks invoke women’s individual responsibility for their career advancement

(Greguletz et al., 2019; O’Neil et al., 2011). Additionally, women tend to value these

networks (Shortland, 2011).

Finally, the literature presents another major factor influencing women’s careers,

namely, career role models. There is evidence that having and interacting with career role

models can positively impact women’s leadership aspirations (Yeoward & Nauta, 2020),

enhance their entrepreneurial intentions (Austin & Nauta, 2016), and encourage them to take

on expatriate assignments (Shortland, 2014). Additionally, women may look up to career

referents to set their career expectations (Gibson & Lawrence, 2010). Interestingly, and

contrary to previous research, Gibson and Lawrence (2010) found that the gender of the

referent is less important than their career level. However, even when targeting career

referents at the same level as their male counterparts, women tend to have lower career

expectations. These findings show that referents’ career status is not the only factor

influencing women’s career goal setting.

3.1.3. Research gaps

Although research stemming from the relational perspective has become richer, we

identify two major gaps in the body of literature that draws on the relational perspective to

examine women’s careers. First, regarding personal relationships, scholars have tended to

focus on the influence of spouses and children on women’s career decisions and have paid

little attention to the other caregiving roles women hold. Family caregiving for an adult is

increasing because people live longer but with more care needs (Kingston et al., 2017), and

approximately 60% of caregivers are women (National Alliance for Caregiving, 2020); thus,

we suggest the need for research on how caring for an elderly can influence women’s career

51

choices. There is some evidence that female caregivers are more likely to experience negative

work conditions, which can induce career responses and result in reducing work hours,

resigning, or retiring earlier than expected (Lahaie et al., 2013). These findings suggest that

further research could provide insights into how the work experiences of female caregivers

influence their career attitudes and behaviors over time.

Second, regarding work relationships, there is increasing evidence of the influence of

specific attributes of a mentor, such as gender, on a protégé’s career success. However,

relatively little is known about the impact of mentoring attitudes, techniques and quality on

women’s career outcomes. Perhaps the difference between males’ and females’ mentoring

and their downstream career outcomes rely more on the techniques mentors use than their

gender. It is also possible that these differences result from an interaction between gender and

the techniques employed by mentors, whose effects may depend on the organizational

context and national culture. Patriarchal dynamics within organizations may also provide

interesting explanations for the double penalty women experience as mentors and mentees.

More studies are needed to determine why having a male mentor is associated with higher

career returns. Perhaps the different types of networks that men and women mentors have and

their ability and willingness to harness these networks can provide one explanation, or the

different types of “content” of mentoring may lead to distinct outcomes. Social gender

stereotypes may also help shed light on these findings. Perhaps the recommendations of male

mentors to both the mentee and the higher echelons of the organizational hierarchy are given

more weight and are seen as more legitimate than female mentors’ recommendations. Further

research examining the dynamics of mentoring may thus shed light on some of the

mechanisms undermining women’s career advancement.

52

3.2. The decision-making perspective

3.2.1. Perspective overview

In line with Sullivan and Al Ariss’ research (2021), the major premise of this

perspective is to shed light on the factors that influence women’s career decision processes.

Articles included in this perspective try to unveil some of the hidden linkages behind

women’s career patterns. In their 2008 review, O’Neil et al. present three conceptual

frameworks showing that women’s career choices are tangled up between their work and

private lives (i.e., Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005; O’Neil & Bilimoria, 2005; Powell & Mainiero,

1992). In contrast, research on decision-making processes produced after 2008 tends to focus

on the motives to pursue a career – especially in science, technology, engineering and

mathematics (STEM) fields – on the major life events that produce career responses, and on

the influence of family factors on career decisions. Moreover, while O’Neil and colleagues’

review (2008) showed that the literature had mainly focused on examining the reasons for

women to engage in entrepreneurship, recent research has also started to investigate women’s

motives to undertake expatriation assignments.

3.2.2. Current literature

3.2.2.1. Career attitudes and decisions in male-dominated fields

The contexts in which women operate seem to have a significant impact on their

career attitudes and choices. Researchers have investigated the motives for women to choose

to pursue a career in a male-dominated field (e.g., Blondeau & Awad, 2018; Sáinz et al.,

2020) – where gendered norms may be even higher – as well as the reasons for them to

persist in versus leave this type of organization (Fouad et al., 2016). Studies also show that

women’s career attitudes seem to differ depending whether they work in a male- versus a

female-dominated field (Durante et al., 2012).

53

Recent studies have shown that women and men have contrasting motives for

pursuing a degree or a career in STEM. For example, Blondeau and Awad (2018) found that

only interest predicted women’s future expectations to pursue a career in STEM. Specifically,

women’s interest seemed to revolve around the techniques and processes linked to their

STEM field, whereas men’s interests were linked to specific objects of fascination since

childhood (Sáinz et al., 2020). Furthermore, other scholars have investigated women’s career

attitudes once they enter an engineering career, such as female engineers’ turnover intentions

(Singh et al., 2013). In a similar vein, Fouad and colleagues (2016) examined the differences

between women who persist in an engineering career versus women who decide to leave this

type of career. While the two types of women experienced similar self-confidence and

outcome expectations, the persistent women experienced different workplace support and

demonstrated higher occupational commitment than the leavers. Interestingly, women who

remained engineers were also less likely to be married and had fewer children (Buse et al.,

2013). In female-dominated domains, women tended to look for high-paying careers and

were likely to delay having a family (Durante et al., 2012).

3.2.2.2. Major career events

Major career events also seem to play an important role in the careers of women,

either as an antecedent of career outcomes or as a consequence. Indeed, over the past decade,

several studies have shown how major career events can impact women’s career attitudes and

behaviors. For instance, Cabrera (2009) investigated women’s career decisions after a career

break and found that the majority of the participants looked for balance in their lives when

returning to work. Their desire to find equilibrium between the professional and private

spheres influenced their career decisions such that they frequently opted for a protean career

orientation allowing greater flexibility (e.g., a part-time position or reduced work hours).

More recent empirical evidence suggests that other types of events, such as career chance

54

events and career shocks, can have an impact on women’s career development. A chance

event is often described as being unexpected and unplanned and having the potential to

significantly impact one’s career development in a positive or negative manner (Rice, 2014;

Kindsiko & Baruch, 2019). For example, Kim and colleagues (2019) provided evidence that

encountering a “chance event” such as receiving cancer treatment or being referred for a job

could lead women to engage in drastic career changes, including quitting their job, starting a

new career or enrolling in a doctoral program. Similarly, Nair and Chatterjee (2020)

investigated how a career shock (e.g., marriage, job relocation) could impact individuals’

career choices and decisions in the Indian context. The authors found that while women’s

career decisions were shaped by parental and spousal responsibilities, men’s career choices

were driven by their eldercare responsibilities. Interestingly, the authors outlined the

temporality of specific events and revealed how they generate certain types of outcomes; for

example, becoming a mother was associated with quitting the workforce for women.

The reviewed research suggests not only that career events may hold important career

consequences for women but also that women’s experiences at work can engender a major

career episode that holds important implications for their professional lives. Hwang and

colleagues (2011) longitudinally investigated the factors predicting industry-level career

changes of MBA graduates. They found that perceptions of career growth and career

advancement opportunity were the strongest predictors of industry shift and that women were

more likely than men to commit to this conversion.

3.2.2.3. Women’s careers are embedded in their family life

How women’s family considerations influence their important decisions is well

documented, as already concluded by O’Neil and her colleagues in their review (2008).

Following this line of research, several scholars have continued to investigate the

combinations of family and work criteria that can influence women when they make early

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career choices. For example, Flynn and colleagues (2011) noticed that women tend to value

the family friendliness of the recruiting organization in selecting their first academic

appointment, unlike men. Similarly, Savela and O’Brien (2016) showed that female students

are concerned with the future fit between their family and their career. Specifically, they

investigated how family factors such as “willingness to compromise career for children” and

“anticipation of work-family conflict” as well as instrumentality levels influence women’s

leadership aspirations and occupational engagement. They found that women who scored

high on instrumentality had greater leadership aspirations and occupational engagement, that

work-family interference anticipation was associated with high occupational engagement,

and that women who aimed to pursue a traditional career had lower anticipations of work-

family interference.

Complementing the studies described above showing that women already consider

their (future) family when making early career decisions, other studies have explored

women’s personal aspirations and experiences once they become mothers. For instance, one

and Ensher (2011) interviewed mothers of young children and discovered that they tended to

“opt in between”, meaning that they neither opted out of nor opted into the workforce but

instead made career decisions that allowed them to balance their professional and family

lives, such as taking a part-time position or relying on flexible schedules. Although this

finding may seem counterintuitive, research shows that the more ambitious mothers are, the

more likely they are to rely on flexible work arrangements and to work long hours (Dikkers

et al., 2010). In turn, this behavior positively relates to job and career satisfaction.

3.2.2.4. Self-expatriation motivations

Another stream of research has investigated the reasons why women decide to self-

expatriate – a topic that was less prominent in research at the beginning of the 21st century.

In a recent study, Wechtler (2018) analyzed online diaries (blogs) to determine the motives of

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childless women to self-initiate an expatriate assignment. The findings highlighted four main

motives for expatriation, including escape as a main motivation, followed by confrontation

with reality, identity reconstruction and the meaning of the expatriation experience to the self.

In an older study, Thorn (2009) also explored the motives of highly skilled women for self-

expatriation. Interestingly, the results showed gendered differences according to life stages.

In their early career stages, women tended to follow an exploration phase where cultural and

travel opportunities dominated. In the following stage, relationships tended to take a central

role, as this stage was often a time when they followed their partners or wanted to be closer to

their families.

3.2.3. Research gaps

Although scholars adopting the decision-making perspective have tended to examine

the role of motives in women’s career decisions, much of the research continues to be

dominated by decisions that are not related to work and primarily concern family. Less is

known about the potential impact of different work experiences on the decisions women

make for their careers.

Furthermore, the majority of the reviewed literature has focused on the career-related

experiences of women in STEM or male-dominated fields. However, given that the majority

of working women work in female-dominated jobs or more gender-balanced work, it is also

important to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence their decisions to work

in specific jobs, to remain in or leave these jobs, and to change their level of career

ambitions. Interestingly, we see more women opting to join the booming social business

scene (Garcia-Lomas & Gabaldon, 2020). Thus, research on career decisions involving

changing sectors or changing from a regular employment relationship to entrepreneurship is

also needed.

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3.3. The gender bias perspective

3.3.1. Perspective overview

Building on Acker’s research (1990) stating that organizations are not gender neutral,

the gender bias perspective is concerned with the prejudice and discrimination women face at

work as well as the downstream career consequences of these forces. As suggested by Acker

(1990), gender is inherently embedded in organizational processes, such as in the

representations of the ideal worker, in the division of labor, or in the interactions between

female and male colleagues. As a result of the segregation operating in organizational

structures, women are adversely affected by prejudices at work.

Despite having been published more than 30 years ago, Acker’s research (1990)

remains highly relevant today. Indeed, there is evidence that gender bias in the workplace

remains, including workplace sexism (Manuel et al., 2017) and sexual harassment, which can

hold important implications for women’s career attainment (McLaughlin et al., 2017).

Moreover, a recent report shows that biases toward women in organizations have worsened

during the COVID-19 crisis, reducing the chances that women are hired or promoted and

increasing performance standards for women (YPO, 2021).

Much of O’Neil et al.’s (2008) observations based on their review remain relevant

today. Research shows that the glass ceiling that was a major issue at the beginning of the

new millennium continues to prevail today, constraining women’s career advancement. Back

in 2008, the authors emphasized the persistence of the traditional male model within

organizations where only upward career mobility is rewarded. Somewhat disappointingly,

our review also provides evidence that women still suffer from organizational patriarchal

structures today. Similar to O’Neil and colleagues’ research (2008), our review unearths

evidence that women are not rewarded for engaging in work best practices and can even be

penalized for their high potential.

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3.3.2. Current literature

3.3.2.1. Workplace mistreatment

Recent studies have investigated how women are confronted with the most severe

forms of workplace mistreatment and how these experiences have important consequences

for their careers. For example, Leaper and Starr (2019) investigated female undergraduates’

experiences of gender bias and sexual harassment and found that women overwhelmingly

reported having experienced sexual harassment or gender bias at least once in the past year.

The results also indicated that being sexually harassed by instructors negatively impacted

STEM motivations and career aspirations. Similarly, Fernando and Prasad (2019) showed

that early- and midcareer women face sexual harassment in academia in the UK and shed

light on the mechanisms organizational members (e.g., colleagues, managers, HR) use to

silence the victims. The authors found that victims were led to react to organizational

silencing by reluctant acquiescence. Workplace incivility is also likely to be encountered by

early-career women as a result of “maybe baby” expectations held by supervisors and

colleagues, and it can prompt career withdrawal among these women (Gloor et al., 2018).

3.3.2.2. Biased assessments

Some studies have also explored seemingly subtler forms of gender biases in

organizations. For instance, Hoobler, Lemmon and Wayne (2014) examined one potential

reason women do not access the higher levels of the hierarchy, namely, managers’ biased

evaluations of women. The authors found that both male and female managers systematically

perceived female subordinates as less career-driven than their male counterparts and that

these assessments influenced subordinates’ perceived opportunities for organizational

development. In turn, when subordinates received organizational developmental

opportunities, they were more likely to present managerial aspirations. Similarly, Bono and

colleagues (2017) examined leaders’ perceptions of the derailment potential of their

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managers. Their findings suggested that women were less often viewed as having ineffective

interpersonal behaviors than men, but when they were, the consequences of this perception

were more damaging. These findings are even more concerning because when leaders

perceived a manager as likely to derail, they tended to withdraw their supervisory mentoring

and sponsorship, which are critical for women’s career advancement. Sadly, even when

women’s career motives and achievements are recognized, they can be detrimental to

women’s future performance ratings (Inesi & Cable, 2015). Across four studies, the authors

showed that evaluators, especially male evaluators with high social dominance, gave lower

performance evaluations to female subordinates with strong competence signals.

3.3.2.3. Problem of (in)visibility

The representation and objectification of women by men are known to be critical for

women’s careers and to influence their career attitudes (Garcia et al., 2016). Recent studies

demonstrate that women have to navigate between different strategies to manage their hyper

(in)visibility in organizations. For example, Bennett and colleagues (2019) explored female

composers’ strategies to manage their gender identity in a male-dominated environment.

They revealed that many women follow passing tactics to hide their gender identity at work,

namely, fabrication, where they provide false information about themselves, and

concealment, where they limit the information about themselves made available to others.

The identity strategies used by women at work may depend on their career advancement:

Fernando et al. (2019) suggested that women adopt different visibility strategies according to

their career stage. For example, women in their early career tended to use tactics of

enhancement (embracing the stigmatized identity) or confirmation (recognizing stereotypes

and using them), while women in their later career followed logic of assimilation (acting

strategically masculine). The authors argued that some of these approaches reinforce gender

stereotypes within organizations and constrain women’s career development in fine.

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3.3.2.4. Stereotype threat

Research has also documented how stereotype threat restrains women’s careers.

Through the prism of hypervisibility or invisibility at work, Block and colleagues (2019)

investigated the strategies used by women who navigate stereotype-threatening systems.

Although previous research has examined women’s strategies to manage their gender and

professional identity, this study explored how women engage in cognitive and emotional

labor to understand the reasons for their underrepresentation in male-dominated fields. The

authors found that women differed vastly in their strategies to manage their (in)visibility.

While most (especially early-career women) accepted the dominant discourse that women are

underrepresented because of their lack of ability, some strongly rejected it and others (mostly

senior women) were more resilient and decided to focus on the career goals they had set for

themselves.

Building on social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 1994), other studies have

shown that stereotype threat damages women’s pursuit of STEM careers by affecting their

academic self-efficacy (Cadaret et al., 2017), their career goals (Lin & Deemer, 2019), and

their career intentions (Deemer et al., 2014). Stereotype threat also influences the way

undergraduate women conceive the glass ceiling (Ezzedeen et al., 2015). Their perceptions

resulted in different career intentions: some expressed their desire to prioritize family over

their careers, others were prone to sacrifice family over their work, and a few wished to have

it all.

Given that women are confronted with stereotype threats throughout their entire

careers and that these threats can be associated with damaging work and career

consequences, it is important to explore solutions to reduce the occurrence of such threats.

Shapiro and colleagues (2013) investigated the effectiveness of stereotype threat

interventions for individuals who are known to suffer from stereotypes (i.e., women and

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Black college students). They found that these interventions could be effective, especially for

women’s STEM career interests, but needed to be tailored to the types of stereotype threats

experienced. For example, role model interventions were effective at reducing group-as-

target stereotype threats, and self-affirmation interventions were suited for addressing self-as-

target threats.

3.3.2.5. Gendered occupational and market segregation

Considering that market segregation and occupational segregation are still prevalent

in the global workforce (World Economic Forum, 2020), research has continued to

investigate this division in different contexts, such as expatriation (Tharenou, 2010) and,

more recently, investment management (Cooper et al., 2020). Scholarios and Taylor (2011)

explored gendered role segmentation in call centers and provided evidence that women were

overly presented in mass production roles, as opposed to managerial roles where men

prevailed, even when they had the same education level as their male counterparts. Unlike

men, women did not benefit from having domestic responsibilities, either; in contrast, their

supervisory career support decreased as their domestic responsibilities increased.

Although the literature tends to advocate for less gender segregation in managerial

roles, women accessing these positions may in fact reinforce this exact segregation, as argued

by Cardador (2017). Based on qualitative data collected on both female and male engineers,

the author suggested that women accessing managerial roles as opposed to technical roles

(which are more valued and overwhelmingly occupied by men) may reinforce negative

gender stereotypes about female engineers and sustain gendered career patterns. Taken

together, these findings suggest that more attention should be given to the most desired

occupation across sectors. While there are many reasons to encourage the promotion of

women to managerial positions, this may not always be the most appropriate path for women

to advance in their careers in the long term and access the top of the hierarchy. Moreover,

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when women manage to access leadership positions in their organizations, they may be in a

critical position associated with detrimental consequences for their careers. Indeed, the glass

cliff phenomenon (Ryan & Haslam, 2005) underlines that even though women are said to be

more risk averse, they end up in risky leadership positions. For instance, Darouei and Pluut

(2018) conducted three studies in which they found that women with low career self-efficacy

tended to assess a risky job offer as being a promotion and were therefore more likely to

accept such an offer.

3.3.3. Research gaps

Research on gender bias in women’s career experiences has investigated the prejudice

women face at work in terms of outcomes (e.g., accessible occupations), procedures (e.g.,

biased assessments) and interactions (e.g., harassment) and has provided an extensive body of

literature on the topic. However, relatively little is known about how to effectively reduce the

occurrence of such prejudice. Some studies have started to examine ways to reduce gender

biases at work (Shapiro et al., 2013), but there is little empirical investigation of the

effectiveness of interventions aimed at countering these biases. Reducing the occurrence of

gender biases within organizations seems paramount if we want to help female talent remain

and progress in organizations.

3.4. The temporal perspective

3.4.1. Perspective overview

The key focus of the temporal perspective is to illustrate the role of temporal

dynamics in women’s careers. We can conclude that over the years, the literature on

women’s careers has shifted from being rather static to being more dynamic. In their review,

O’Neil and colleagues (2008) described that women’s careers are part of women’s larger life

constraints and developments. Based on three major conceptualizations of women’s careers,

namely, the ‘cross-currents in the river of time’ framework (Powell & Mainiero, 1992), the

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women’s career development model (O’Neil & Bilimoria, 2005), and the Kaleidoscope

Career Model (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005), the authors illustrate how women’s career

development strategies and career decisions are conditioned by women’s larger life contexts

over time. Whether in phases (O’Neil & Bilimoria, 2005; Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005) or in a

time flow (Powell & Mainiero, 1992), careers are interwoven into the fabric of time. Given

this observation, it seems surprising that a large part of the literature on careers has neglected

the inherently temporal dynamics of careers. For example, most of the empirical work

described in O’Neil et al.’s review (2008) was cross-sectional. Since 2008, the literature has

moved beyond the simple conceptualizations and cross-sectional investigation of (time in)

women’s careers, and we observed several insights that draw on temporal treatments of

women’s careers in empirical studies during the past decade. Some authors explored the

career and work experiences of women at specific points in time, while others investigated

the role of career events longitudinally.

3.4.2. Current research

3.4.2.1. Women across career stages

Following the traditional conceptualizations of careers, authors have investigated the

careers of women through the prism of life and career stages. In this section, we focus on

three distinct career stages: early career, midcareer, and late career.

Studies have usually examined each career stage separately, and topics covered across

waves differ in nature. In the early career stage, the career and work experiences of women

were explored in different contexts (e.g., female psychologists in clinical settings; Scalise et

al., 2019) and timing (e.g., in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis; Simosi et al., 2015).

Studies tended to examine the internal and individual factors and understandings that could

explain women’s career trajectories. For example, Giraud and colleagues (2019) studied the

role of early career values and individual factors in explaining the objective career success

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(i.e., income) of business school graduates. The results suggested that female graduates

tended to earn less than their male counterparts and that they were more likely to consider

intrinsic career values when making job decisions than men, who tended to prioritize

extrinsic career values. Hüttges and Fay (2015) explored the link between work values and

subjective career success and found that scoring high on extrinsic reward-oriented work

values was associated with higher supervisor support and subjective career success for men

than for women.

Research has also studied how early-career women view their careers. For instance,

drawing on interviews with 20 young female professionals, Harman and Sealy (2017)

challenged the traditional concept of career ambition and provided evidence that early-career

women identified themselves as ambitious in broader and more positive ways than the

traditional career literature suggests. Kelan (2014) investigated early career professionals’

work experience narratives and showed how age and gender interacted in these narratives.

Specifically, the findings suggested that women perceived that the biological clock was a

possible explanation for different career patterns between men and women, that career

success relied on individual rather than societal structures, and that gender inequality

belonged to a former generation and would no longer affect them.

In the midcareer stage, authors were concerned with women’s personal experiences at

work and of work. In an ethnographic study, Maddox-Daines (2016) explored the career

experiences and aspirations of 13 female managers in a higher education institution in the

UK. Drawing on interviewees’ midcareer “process of discovery”, the author found that

women tended to look for balance and authenticity in their professional lives, as suggested by

research on the Kaleidoscope Career Model (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005). Similarly,

Mainiero and Gibson (2018) investigated the importance of authenticity, balance and

challenge parameters for women and men in the midcareer stage. The results suggested that

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unlike men, women experienced an increased need for balance in the full midcareer stage as

well as authenticity in the late midcareer stage. The desire for a challenge, however,

decreased similarly for both women and men over time. Interestingly, both papers moved

away from the traditional representation of career stages based on age and instead

incorporated women’s perceptions and experiences to determine such stages.

Focusing on the late career stage, authors have looked at the influence of career

aspirations and past career and life experiences on retirement concerns, decisions and

experiences. For example, Birkett and colleagues (2017) explored the retirement expectations

and experiences of elderly individuals using retrospective life course data. Although women

and men tended to have different career trajectories, when they did follow similar career

paths, they did not approach and navigate retirement in the same way. Depending on their

past career trajectories, women were more likely than men to pursue a paid or voluntary work

activity once retired or to use their retirement to spend time with their family or communities.

Similarly, Newton and Stewart (2010) examined how past experiences impacted women’s

concerns and aspirations at 62 years of age, a time when women often prepare for retirement.

Specifically, the authors used three-wave longitudinal data to investigate how women’s

involvement in social projects, including a family or a career at T1, led to concerns about

identity, intimacy and generativity at T3. They found that at age 62, women with careers

were most concerned with identity, whereas women with family commitments but no career

were most concerned with generativity. Women combining a family and a career were found

to be as concerned with their identity as their generativity.

August (2011) also uncovered findings in line with the idea that women’s concerns

and aspirations tend to evolve in a distinct way in the late career stage. Drawing on

longitudinal interviews with women in their late career stage, she investigated the relevance

of the Kaleidoscope Career Model to study women’s late career experiences pre- and post-

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(official) retirement. While the author found that all three parameters of the model were

relevant to women in their late career stage, she also uncovered additional meaning

underlying authenticity, thus broadening our understanding of the kaleidoscope career model.

Indeed, among more traditional views of authenticity, women in this sample perceived

authenticity as taking care of the self, as self-acceptance, as negotiating end-of-life issues,

and as finding deeper levels of meaning in work, thus linking their new concerns with their

career aspirations. Taken together, these findings suggest that women’s evolving career

experiences and aspirations over time influence their retirement modalities.

3.4.2.2. Women’s career trajectories

Some studies performed longitudinal investigations of women’s vocational evolution

and experiences from childhood to early employment. For example, Lawson, Crouter and

McHale (2015) longitudinally examined the role of childhood experiences (e.g., parents’

attitudes and household work share) in the gendered occupational attainment of men and

women later in life. They found that spending more time with their fathers during childhood

was associated with attaining less gendered occupations for women as opposed to men.

Lawson and colleagues (2018) also explored the gendered vocational development of women

from childhood to young adulthood and showed that women tended to have less gender-

typical aspirations during childhood compared to their occupations during their first years of

employment. Klug, Drobnic and Brockmann (2019) investigated employment insecurity

following the transition from school to work. Although they found that women tended to

encounter fewer obstacles than men straight after leaving education, insecurity increased

once they became mothers. Thus, these findings offer further evidence of the motherhood

penalty. Following this logic, Evers and Sieverding (2014) examined the career trajectories of

medical graduates over a 15-year period and discovered that women earned significantly less

than men at T2. One plausible explanation for this gap was that women interrupted their

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career for a longer time than men and that the number of children predicted both the

likelihood and the length of career interruptions. Adding to these findings, Biemann and

colleagues (2012) longitudinally examined employment characteristics over a 20-year period

from the early career years to establishment career years. The results showed that women

were more likely to follow boundaryless careers than men. Specifically, the results provided

evidence that when they got married and had children, women ended up in nontraditional

career paths that followed both part-time employment patterns and fragmented career

patterns. Interestingly, Dlouhy and Biemann (2018) conducted a longitudinal study on

occupational mobility development and found that occupational turbulence (number of

occupational transitions) was less important for women than men over a 15-year period. The

authors argued that these results might be explained by the fact that women are aware of the

higher costs for them to change occupations as opposed to men and therefore are less likely

to take the plunge.

3.4.2.3. The critical period of pregnancy in women’s careers

Given the well-documented impact of children on women’s careers (e.g., Correll et

al., 2007; England et al., 2016), it is not surprising to see that some scholars decided to pay

specific attention to women’s work experiences during their transition to motherhood.

Contributing to the opting-out or pushed-out discussion, researchers have been concerned

with the reasons why women quit the workforce. For example, Paustian-Underdahl and

colleagues (2019) examined how career encouragement and career motivation interact to

influence women’s turnover intentions and intentions to return to the workforce. The results

showed that women perceived decreased career encouragement over the course of their

pregnancy. Interestingly, in contrast to widely shared assumptions, women’s career

motivation increased over the course of their pregnancy. Overall, the authors found that

decreased career encouragement could lead women to opt out of their careers through

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reduced career motivation. Similarly, a longitudinal study (Jones et al., 2020) investigated

another factor that is seemingly positive but that may encourage women to quit the workforce

following childbirth: help received during pregnancy. The results suggested that as the

average amount of help received during pregnancy increased, women’s postpartum intentions

to quit their careers increased through decreased self-efficacy. Spector and Cinamon (2017)

also intended to shed light on women’s career decision process during their pregnancy. The

authors used vocational and maternal exploration processes to better explain how women

make career decisions throughout their transition to motherhood. They found that

organizational support enhanced maternal exploration, which in turn decreased well-being

and the likelihood of modifying work patterns (e.g., workload or job). Taken together, these

studies illustrate that complex mechanisms involving multiple actors are at play in the

evolution of women’s career decisions during pregnancy.

3.4.3. Research gaps

While several studies have adopted longitudinal designs, relatively little is known

about the temporal dynamics of women’s careers. For example, more research is needed on

how past experiences and anticipations can influence career attitudes and decisions in the

present (e.g., Birkett et al., 2017). Moreover, the literature on women’s careers has tended to

explore time through an objective lens, i.e., clock and calendar time, and little is known about

how subjective (psychological) time influences women’s career attitudes and behaviors.

Furthermore, although there remains little doubt that women experience numerous

prejudices over the course of their careers, we lack studies that investigate the temporal

dynamics behind these events. There is little knowledge about when typical unfair or

discriminatory events happen, how many or what types of events need to take place before a

career response is triggered in time, and how immediate such career responses are. Ballinger

and Rockmann (2010) refer to anchoring events in social exchange relationships whereby a

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singular event can alter a relationship quickly, dramatically and durably. Similarly,

researchers could study specific career events – positive or negative – that may be considered

turning points for women’s careers, including maternity leave, a miscarriage, a promotion, an

experience of discrimination, etc., and investigate how they affect and alter women’s career

attitudes and decisions over time. Overall, more longitudinal investigations are needed to

fully account for women’s career dynamics.

3.5. The intersectional perspective

3.5.1. Perspective overview

The intersectional perspective is grounded in the plural singularities of working

women. Studies following this line of thinking have investigated how different aspects of

women’s identities combine to influence their career and work experiences. Originating in

the feminist and antiracist literature of the late 1980s, the term intersectionality was first

introduced to shed light on the oppression experienced by Black women in society, and it

suggested that discrimination is a complex and multilayered phenomenon that includes the

intersection of several aspects of a person’s social identities (Crenshaw, 1989). While

Crenshaw originally developed this framework considering the intersection between gender

and race, other intersections have been studied over the years in the management discipline

(e.g., religion, gender and ethnicity, Essers & Tedmanson, 2014; age and gender, Jyrkinen &

McKie, 2012).

Already in their 2008 review, O’Neil and colleagues drew attention to the fact that the

majority of samples in extant studies mainly included white, highly educated female

professionals and therefore neglected a substantial part of the female workforce. Thus,

previous findings on the topic are likely not generalizable to the majority of women’s careers.

However, intersectional samples have received increasing attention in recent years, and in

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this section, we present illustrative examples of studies that have adopted an intersectional

lens.

3.5.2. Current research

3.5.2.1. Intersectionality as a source of career barriers

There is evidence that women with two or more minority or typically discriminated-

against social characteristics – in terms of sexual orientation, ethnic origin or religion – face

additional career barriers. For example, Kameny and colleagues (2014) discovered that

women and/or people of color who work in behavioral sciences in the USA experience

additional workplace barriers, such as institutional and cultural barriers. Beyond employees’

personal experiences and perceptions, Kamenou et al. (2013) investigated employers’

perceptions of ethnic minority women employed in Scotland and showed that these

perceptions constituted career constraints for these women at the individual, organizational

and contextual levels. McCluney and Rabelo (2019) illustrated another major concern for

Black working women: the conditions of visibility. The authors demonstrated how four types

of (in)visibility, namely, precarious visibility, invisibility, hypervisibility, and partial

visibility, are imposed on Black women. Unlike previous research advocating for visibility to

advance careers (e.g., Mainiero, 1994), the authors showed that visibility could be harmful to

Black women’s careers and offered practical ways to reduce these tensions in organizations.

Other intersectionalities have also been examined. For example, Marks, Tate and

Taylor (2020) examined the role of social class in the relationships among educational

barriers, career barriers and coping self-efficacy. They found that the presence of meaning in

life did not moderate the relationship between educational barriers and coping self-efficacy

when they controlled for social class; however, when they did not control for social class, the

relationship was significant. Parnell and colleagues (2012) showed that bisexuals and

lesbians experienced additional barriers “related to sex discrimination, career–child conflict,

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and choosing nontraditional careers”. Women with disabilities have also been shown to

experience unique career challenges, as depicted by Lindstrom and colleagues (2019). The

authors provided support for the development of curricula that address the career

development needs of women with disabilities and showed that these types of programs can

enhance women’s personal empowerment, self-realization and self-efficacy.

Furthermore, the intersection of gender and religion has been shown to present unique

challenges for women’s careers. Arifeen and Gatrell (2020) developed a new theoretical

construct, namely, ‘glass chains’, which sheds light on the internal and personal barriers to

British Pakistani Muslim women’s career ambitions. Drawing on interviews with 37 highly

educated religious women, the authors emphasized the role of the ‘ethical self’, often related

to faith and family values, in women’s career development, and how staying true to one’s

ethical self may constrain women’s career ambitions. Similarly, Syed, Ali and Hennekam

(2018) used a qualitative approach to investigate the multilevel factors that influence gender

equality in Saudi Arabia, such as religio-cultural factors, the power of wasta, family honor,

social class, family status and individual identity. The findings showed how different macro-

and meso-level factors, including societal norms and religious beliefs, impacted Saudi

women’s careers and underlined the importance of women’s agency and resilience.

3.5.2.2. Intersectionality as a determinant in women’s career strategies and development

Additionally, the intersection of several characteristics that are part of one’s social

identity provides unique challenges that are likely to trigger different career meanings and

strategies. Drawing on interviews, Tomlinson and colleagues (2013) examined how White

women and Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) women in legal professions differed in their

career strategies. They found that BME tended to assimilate, unlike White women, who were

more likely to play the game and to reform the system. Yang (2014) also found unique career

meanings and patterns for Hmong American women, for example, they were strongly

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committed to helping others and their communities in their careers. Furthermore, Kitchenham

and Domene (2019) explored the unique meaning behind the career development success of

women who were raised in out-of-home care settings in Canada. They found that career

success for these women was associated with economic security, a supportive work

environment and a suitable career fit.

3.5.2.3. Intersectionality and occupational motives and interests

Women’s career scholars also shed light on the role of intersectionality in women’s

occupational motives and interest. In a recent study, Goldfarb (2018) investigated the motives

behind Haredi women’s occupational choices. The results revealed four main occupational

motives: intrinsic motives, calling motives, extrinsic motives relating to job conditions and

extrinsic motives related to the effect of choices on society. Above all, female interviewees

indicated that the most important motive for them was to let their husband study Torah. Thus,

the study uncovered the role of religion in ultra-orthodox women’s occupational decisions

and their broader career development. Sanchez and colleagues (2017) explored the factors

that influence women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority medical students’ interest

in academic careers. Using mixed methods, they found several factors that were critical to

their academic interest, including institutional culture and climate, influential others such as

professors and principal investigators, and the timing of exposure to academic medicine.

3.5.3. Research gaps

Although an increasing number of scholars have integrated the intersectional

perspective into their research, we still lack studies that investigate the personal experiences

of women who have more than one social characteristic that may put them at a disadvantage

in their careers. We believe that there is much to uncover about this very complex and

multilayered phenomenon, from the perspectives of employees themselves but also from

employers’ and managers’ point of view, using dyadic or multilevel research designs.

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4. “Looking ahead”: A path forward for research on women’s careers

Stemming from the five perspectives described above and the identified research

gaps, we propose an agenda for future research on women’s careers. In the following

sections, we delineate four directions to move the field forward, and we illustrate ways to

overcome the research gaps. The four directions include (1) providing a greater account of

time in empirical examinations and conceptualizations of women’s careers; (2) unpacking the

role of women’s intersectional identities in their career development; (3) adopting an

intervention perspective to reduce gender biases that are harmful to women’s career progress;

and (4) taking a holistic approach to study women’s careers.

4.1. Greater account of time

First, our review reveals that the incorporation of time in studies on women’s careers

remains relatively rare. We echo the numerous calls in the management literature to further

integrate temporal considerations in conceptual frameworks, research designs and research

questions (e.g., Cole et al., 2016; Fortin et al., 2014). Out of the 167 studies we reviewed,

only 18 adopted longitudinal designs; however, research suggests that careers are inherently

dynamic. Indeed, a career is defined as “the pattern of work-related experiences that span the

course of a person’s life” (Greenhaus et al., 2010, p. 10); therefore, longitudinal

investigations of women’s careers are needed to fully capture and understand the dynamics of

their career experiences. For instance, women may encounter different types of career events

across their career stages, which may produce long-term career effects. Perhaps an early

career event will engender a series of career decisions that will alter women’s career

progress. Moreover, the timing of their reactions to such events may differ; reactions may

occur immediately or be delayed and manifest only once a threshold is reached. Adopting a

truly temporal approach would help obtain a better understanding of these experiences and

their downstream career outcomes for women. For instance, future research could answer

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important research questions, including how past experiences influence women’s future

career decisions or how women’s work experiences upon their return to work following

childbirth influence their career progress. The examination of work experiences at critical

career points may shed light on the factors that impact women’s career development in the

long run.

In a recent paper, Grandey and colleagues (2020) suggested that women face unique

career challenges at different points in time due to objective body changes. Specifically, the

authors argued that women will experience the “3 Ms” over their life span, namely,

menstruation, maternity and menopause. The 3Ms and their associated stigmas negatively

influence women’s career advancement because they violate ideal worker expectations. Of

interest, Grandey and colleagues underlined the fact that each life phase intersects with

different career phases: menstruation is associated with the entry career phase but span most

women’s careers, maternity usually occurs in the early-mid career phase, and menopause

happens in the mid-late career phase. Each phase comes with its unique challenges at work,

as women experience discrepancies between their body changes and organizational

expectations over time. Thus, we propose that each phase, which is so unique to women’s

careers, needs to be empirically and carefully examined. Women’s work experiences across

phases are likely to differ, and these evolving work experiences can have direct implications

for women’s career outcomes.

Complementing an objective temporal approach, future studies could also integrate

subjective time in their investigations. Subjective time manifests in different forms across

individuals and refers to how individuals personally experience time (Tang et al., 2020). We

suggest that this personal approach to time has the potential to shed light on important

mechanisms at stake in women’s careers. Specifically, studying the intersection of objective

and subjective time could help us understand how and why women make certain career

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choices at specific points in time in their careers, as both types of time happen simultaneously

(Shipp & Jansen, 2021). For example, women’s temporal orientation is likely to influence

their choices throughout their careers. Indeed, we can expect that a woman who is short-term

oriented will make different decisions than one who is long-term oriented because the former

is concerned with immediate career consequences, whereas the latter is concerned with future

career outcomes. For example, a woman who is long-term oriented might refuse to take a

part-time position when returning to work after maternity leave because she fears the

potential negative career consequences associated with this decision, while a woman who is

short-term oriented might be seduced by this option, which may facilitate her work/family

balance at the time of her return. In addition, the integration of subjective time in studies on

women’s careers could allow researchers to investigate new and important research

questions, such as the following: How do perceptions of past experiences influence women’s

career aspirations? How does women’s perceived control of time influence their career

attitudes? How do expectations influence women's career behaviors?

4.2. Greater intersectionality

A concern highlighted in our review, in line with O’Neil and colleagues’ research

(2008), is that studies continue to draw vastly on samples lacking diversity and use them to

form the basis of generalizations to all women’s careers. Indeed, many studies in this review

relied only on samples of highly educated women and therefore failed to provide insights into

the career experiences of different groups of women. We encourage scholars not only to

adopt an intersectional approach methodologically but also to integrate intersectionality in the

theories and frameworks they use when studying women's careers. In doing so, researchers

can inform us on the differences and similarities in organizational outcomes for different

categories of women (Atewologun, 2018); therefore, they are likely to provide more accurate

representations of women’s career experiences. For example, it is likely that some women are

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more likely to experience certain types of discrimination than others. Furthermore, this

approach could be used to make comparisons across samples and move beyond the sole

representations of oppression to explore when intersections provide advantages. In doing so,

scholars will be able to answer research questions such as can – and, if so, when and how –

do intersections provide career advantages versus penalties. Perhaps being a woman with

specific social characteristics (e.g., White middle class) could provide some advantages in

specific contexts. At the same time, sexual orientation, race and religion, which have become

more visible in society in recent years, may result in extra penalties for women in many

contexts. Further, it appears that some typically discriminated-against attributes are studied

more than others. For example, there is evidence that overweight women face adverse

discrimination in the workplace (Roehling, 2002), but they constitute one of the understudied

groups in career research.

4.3. Integration of biased-reduction interventions

Our research overviewed the many ways in which gender bias can manifest at work

over the course of a woman’s career, such as sexual harassment (e.g., Fernando & Prasad,

2019) and biased assessments (e.g., Hoobler et al., 2014). However, there is little research on

ways to reduce all forms of gender biases in organizations, as suggested above. Given the

influence of specific biases on women’s career outcomes, it is paramount to take action. In a

recent conceptual paper, Kossek and colleagues (2017) highlighted several interventions that

may help attenuate explicit and implicit gender biases within organizations. The authors

provided examples such as “increasing the proportion of women in leadership roles, using

cluster hiring to reduce tokenism and stigmatization, leadership development promoting

equality in selection and appraisal, and reducing ambiguity in evaluation and rewards”. We

propose that for researchers to identify the most appropriate interventions, they need to

identify companies that are (almost) gender equal and unpack their most critical practices for

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women’s career advancement; researchers also need to run experiments on the effectiveness

of different types of interventions at different career points across individuals and

organizations. Once the most appropriate practices are identified, the following step would be

to implement them. Finally, scholars should assess the effectiveness of tailored interventions

to reduce gender career inequality and make adjustments.

While there is a strong consensus on the need for interventions to promote gender

career equality within organizations, the form and timing of the application of these

interventions may differ across contexts, organizations and groups of individuals.

Specifically, women at specific career stages may require different sets of interventions.

Research suggests that women are faced with different types of biases across their career life;

therefore, different arrangements might be required at different points in their careers. For

example, there is evidence that women of reproductive age may suffer from the “maybe

baby” expectation of colleagues (Gloor et al., 2018), while older women are more adversely

affected by age discrimination than older men (Neumark et al., 2019). Additionally, in line

with the call to integrate greater intersectionality within research studies, different groups of

women may need different sets of interventions. Indeed, as suggested by Shapiro and

colleagues’ research (2013), not all women necessarily encounter the same type of workplace

biases; therefore, bias-tailored interventions are required. For example, recent studies show

that Asian American women have been victims of racism and discrimination at work since

the COVID-19 outbreak (Croucher et al., 2020), while other studies indicate that Black

women are disproportionately more likely to be sexually harassed at work than women from

other racial and ethnic groups (Rossie et al., 2018).

4.4. Need for adopting a holistic approach

Finally, we echo the suggestion stated by Sullivan and Al Ariss (2021) in their review

on career transitions: a holistic approach is needed to obtain a comprehensive understanding

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of women’s career experiences. Specifically, we encourage scholars to integrate all or several

of the five perspectives we identified in future studies to spark knowledge on the dynamics of

women's careers. While we organized the extant literature into five distinct perspectives for

the sake of clarity, we recognize that the perspectives are interconnected and overlapping.

Indeed, we suggest that the five perspectives can provide insights and value concurrently, and

the factors identified in each perspective can interact over time. For instance, experiences at

work and relationships simultaneously influence the decision-making process over time, and

these experiences might differ for women with different social characteristics. As such,

several of the articles we reviewed could in fact fall under several perspectives: some of the

studies in the relational and decision-making perspectives were interrelated, as professional

and family links can conjointly influence one’s career choices. For example, Savela and

O’Brien’s research (2016), which examined the roles of instrumentality and work-family

expectations in predicting leadership aspirations and occupational engagement, could be

categorized as pertaining to both the decision-making and relational perspectives. Moreover,

some studies from the gender bias perspective had implications for how people make career

decisions.

Over time, professional and personal connections, as well as prejudicial experiences at

work, are likely to influence women’s career attitudes and decisions. The nature of women’s

relationships with family and work may differ, and thus, their social links may have distinct

career impacts. Notably, different categories of persons may have contrasting career

experiences. Specifically, some categories of women may be more likely to experience

gender bias at work than other women. For instance, recent data suggest that LGBT+ women

and women of color have been more likely to face challenges at work, such as being

confronted with inappropriate comments about their communication style or being subjected

to sexual jokes, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Deloitte, 2021). In adopting

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a holistic approach to women’s careers, scholars can provide important insights into the

career experiences of women and thus help us develop a better understanding of the

dynamics behind gender career inequality.

5. Limitations

With this study, we aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the extensive

literature on women’s careers published since the review by O’Neil and colleagues that

appeared in 2008. We used an inductive approach, analyzing 167 publications that revealed

five distinct perspectives that map the current knowledge on women’s careers. These

perspectives allowed us to examine the emerging trends, explore research gaps, and

recommend a future research agenda. However, many important aspects remained outside the

scope of this review. For example, we limited our search to papers that explicitly aimed to

advance the understanding of women’s careers. We recognize that this approach may have

excluded some papers with indirect implications for careers, e.g., papers focusing on women

on boards. Furthermore, we did not systematically review the methodological aspects of the

studies included, nor did we attempt to offer a comprehensive theory-based model on

women’s careers. Recognizing the limitations of this review, we hope that future research

will overcome them, taking this review as a starting point.

6. Conclusion

Since O’Neil and colleagues’ review in 2008, some progress – albeit slow – has been

made in reducing gender inequality at work, work practices have evolved, and a substantial

body of literature on women’s careers has been published. Given these recent developments,

there was a need to take stock of recent research on the career experiences of women. Thus,

we reviewed research on women’s careers published in top-tier management, applied

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psychology and specialist career journals. We classified these articles into five distinct

perspectives following an inductive approach. New research has examined previously

neglected aspects of women’s careers, such as the career impact of work experiences during

pregnancy, and has started to conduct truly temporal investigations of their careers and to use

subjective measures of work and career outcomes. Our review provides a fresh look at the

literature on women’s careers and offers several directions for future studies wishing to

investigate women’s career experiences.

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CHAPTER 3. (In)justice episodes around maternity leave: How

women going on and returning from maternity leave experience,

make sense of, and react to justice-related experiences

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the following venues:

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2021). How fairness experiences at work around maternity leave

are linked with evolving career experiences and career motives of new mothers. Paper

presented at the symposium “Women’s careers in the 21st century: New perspectives and

insights”, Academy of Management, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2021). Fairness experiences around maternity leave: Investigating

the evolving experiences and career attitudes of new mothers. Paper presented at the

symposium “Dynamics of organizational justice perceptions around three pivotal periods for

careers”, International Society for Justice Research, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2021). Maternity as tipping point: A longitudinal interview study

with women around the time of their maternity leave. Paper presented at Aston Business

School Research colloquim, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2021). How fairness experiences at work around maternity leave

are linked with evolving career experiences and career motives of new mothers. Paper

presented at WHU-LUMS-TSM joint workshop, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2021). L’expérience du congé de maternité: Le rôle des

perceptions de justice sur les aspirations et choix professionnels. Paper presented as part of

the symposium “Regards croisés sur la carrière professionnelle des femmes: Un parcours

comportant de nombreux défis”, 31st AGRH Congress, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2020). An investigation of career motives and justice dynamics at

the time around maternity leave: Presentation of preliminary findings. Paper presented at

European Academy of Management, online.

Desjardins, C., Fortin, M. (2019). Looking forward, looking backward: Different perspectives

of fairness on maternity leave. Paper presented as part of the symposium “Women's Career

Journeys: The impact of work and life events”, 19th EAWOP Congress, Turin, Italy.

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Abstract

A substantial body of research shows that becoming a parent and spending time on maternity

leave are associated with severe career penalties for women, especially if they are highly

educated. In the present research, we investigate what happens during this crucial period of

time from women’s own perspectives by conducting a qualitative longitudinal study among

35 highly skilled women from the moment following pregnancy disclosure up to several

months after their return to work after maternity leave. We take a person-centric

organizational justice perspective to gain insights into women’s evolving experiences at work

and to investigate how justice-related events at the time around maternity leave may impact

women’s career attitudes and decisions. Overall, our findings suggest that there are a number

of typical and recurring injustice events that women may experience at this critical period of

time. Beyond events, our respondents also report justice omissions, which we define as an

absence of action giving rise to a fairness judgment. We draw on the term justice episodes to

describe how justice events and omissions interlink over time, whereby injustice events could

trigger a justice omission and a justice omission could result in a series of injustice events.

Over time, women’s (in)justice experiences have important implications for their career

aspirations, career attitudes and decisions. Taken together, these findings highlight the

importance of and provide concrete advice for promoting fair practices for supporting women

at this pivotal time for their careers.

Keywords: injustice event, justice omission, justice episode, maternity leave, working

mothers

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1. Introduction

There is overwhelming evidence that maternity is a critical time and often a turning

point in women’s careers (for a review, see Grandey et al., 2020). Following the birth of a

child, women are perceived as less committed to their work and less promotable than women

without children (Correll et al., 2007); they are less likely to become managers, and their

earnings tend to drop (Kleven et al., 2019). A recent stream of research has shown that

women may start to experience differences in treatment during pregnancy, which can

influence their career attitudes and trajectories. For example, interpersonal experiences at

work during pregnancy, such as others’ work-interfering help, can impact women’s intention

to quit the workforce postpartum (Jones et al., 2020). Perceived (lack of) career

encouragement might also explain women’s turnover intentions during pregnancy (Paustian-

Underdahl et al., 2019). Finally, a lack of organizational support upon return from maternity

leave has been found to have effects going beyond the transition back to work for both

women and their partners (Little & Masterson, In press).

Given that work experiences during the transition to motherhood may play a pivotal

role in how women continue their careers, we need to develop a better understanding of how

women experience and make sense of the treatment they receive at work around the time of

their maternity leave and how this experience affects their career ambitions and decisions

over time. In the present research, we adopt an organizational justice lens and choose a

person-centric approach (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) to investigate women’s work experiences

during the critical period of maternity leave. Women’s experiences of (in)justice events at

that time and their perceptions of them may explain some of the hidden mechanisms behind

women’s career patterns following childbirth.

Specifically, we seek to investigate the evolving justice experiences and related

reactions of highly educated women at work at the time around their maternity leave. By

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doing so, we aim to extend the literature on women’s careers as well as on organizational

justice in several ways. First, we provide an overview of the typical injustice events that

women encounter at work around this critical time, thereby extending our knowledge on

women’s personal work experiences from the time they announce their pregnancy up to their

return to work after maternity leave. Second, we introduce a neglected justice phenomenon,

namely, justice omissions, which refers to the absence of action that gives rise to unfairness

judgments. Such omissions often become visible only after the passage of time and

sometimes in the context of events triggering the salience of the omission, especially under

conditions of heightened uncertainty. We describe the temporal dynamics of interrelated

justice events and omissions as justice episodes (Whiteside & Barclay, 2015), which refer to

a situation in which a single justice event occurs, and unravel additional subevents and entity

assessments. Our analysis of justice episodes sparks another central contribution of the

present work, namely, the role of autobiographical memories in justice judgments.

Specifically, we examine how, when and why women recall events from earlier phases of

their work experience and how these memories influence their present fairness assessments.

Finally, we specify how the justice dynamics described above influence women’s career

attitudes and decisions at this critical period for their careers, with concrete implications for

organizational practice and future research.

2. Theoretical background

2.1. (Justice) Experiences at the time around maternity leave

Pregnancy is known to be one of the most challenging times for women in their

careers (King & Botsford, 2009). Numerous studies suggest that many women face prejudice

throughout their pregnancy and after childbirth upon return to work. For instance, pregnant

employees are likely to experience negative stereotypes at work, such as being viewed as

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incompetent (Masser et al., 2007), as well as discrimination, including lower pay (Budig &

England, 2001). Women exposed to these pressures sometimes react by trying to prove their

commitment to work in unhealthy ways, for example, by being present outside of work hours

and even when they are unwell, a phenomenon that has been called “pregnancy

presenteeism” (Gatrell, 2011). There is evidence that the experienced prejudice becomes

more pressing over the course of pregnancy (Lavaysse et al., 2017). It is therefore not

surprising that pregnancy disclosure is often associated with heightened concerns and

uncertainty for expectant workers: Research shows that women’s concerns about the

treatment they will receive at work during their pregnancy can result in anticipated

discrimination and in turn shape women’s disclosure behaviors such that when anticipated

discrimination is moderate or high, women tend to engage in signaling rather than revealing

strategies (Jones, 2017) (i.e., rather than purposefully communicating their pregnancy,

women tend to “test” their supervisor and coworkers by sending hints to assess their reactions

because they want to gather information before revealing their pregnancy).

Beyond what is known about experiences during pregnancy and upon reentry, there is

growing evidence of the pivotal long-term effects that pregnancy and maternity leave can

have on women’s careers. In particular, highly educated women are known to pay a high

price for going on maternity leave (England et al., 2016), typically falling behind their male

or childless colleagues in terms of numerous career outcomes, until the end of their working

lives (Eurofound, 2015, 2012). Furthermore, mothers may suffer from maternity-related

prejudice throughout their whole career lifespan (Kahn et al., 2014), despite recent evidence

suggesting that having children can in fact be beneficial for workers’ performance (Dumas &

Perry-Smith, 2018).

Beyond the well documented discrimination and disadvantages that women

experience during pregnancy and when they have a child, there is also evidence that women’s

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career ambitions and attitudes often shift at the time around childbirth (e.g., Cabrera, 2007;

Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005; Yates, 2020). According to the media, when they become

mothers, some women decide to opt out of organizations for family reasons, including to

raise children (Belkin, 2003; Story, 2005). While some of these publications seem to imply

that women’s changing life priorities are responsible for such shifts, recent research hints at a

link among work experiences during pregnancy, work reentry and subsequent career

decisions: Little and Masterson (In press) highlight the role of perceived organizational

support for stress and work-family conflict experienced by returning mothers and their

partners, and Jones et al. (2020) illustrate that interpersonal experiences at work (including

work-interfering help) during pregnancy can affect women’s turnover intentions when

returning to work postpartum. This recent work underlines the importance of studying how

women personally experience and make sense of the treatment they receive at work at the

time around their maternity leave, not only during pregnancy but also upon their return to

work. To date, relatively little is known about the underlying mechanisms behind women’s

changing career attitudes and decisions and how eventual career attitude shifts are linked to

experiences at work from pregnancy and beyond. Such knowledge is crucial for practitioners

and policy makers who wish to improve gender career equality.

To analyze women’s work experiences and reactions at the time around maternity

leave, we draw on the organizational justice framework. We choose this framework because

justice assessments are central to how people make sense of their work environment, and

justice judgments have been shown to be a robust predictor of work attitudes in a variety of

settings (Colquitt et al., 2001). Of particular relevance to our chosen research focus is that the

power of justice is particularly high in uncertain times, when there is “unpredictability of

future events or the inconsistency between important cognitions, experiences, or behaviors”

(van den Bos & Lind, 2002, p. 5). Uncertainties (whether or not they are work related)

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heighten people’s sensitivity to justice and fairness (van den Bos & Lind, 2002), and justice

and fairness have also been shown to help people deal with uncertainty (Lind & van den Bos,

2002). Indeed, maternity leave is associated with unpredictability in a number of ways.

Women know that during their absence, the job may change, others may take over some of

their responsibilities, and they may become out of touch with their networks. At the same

time, they often have nagging doubts regarding how they can reconcile their changing family

situation with work demands upon return. Therefore, women are likely to be particularly

attentive and sensitive to any (in)justice events they may encounter around the time of their

maternity leave. In line with our focus on evolving experiences and attitudes around the time

of maternity leave, we focus on specific justice events, as research shows that anchoring

events in the context of social exchange relationships can alter and have long-lasting

consequences on relationships (Ballinger & Rockmann, 2010) and related justice judgments

and reactions to these justice experiences, as they unfold around the time of this critical

career transition.

2.2. About justice events

A justice event is a specific incident that “can give rise to a fairness judgment, often

related to one or more types of justice” (Jones & Skarlicki, 2013, p. 139). Justice events can

be related to outcomes, procedures and work interactions (Rupp & Paddock, 2010).

Specifically, they pertain to the perceived fairness of outcomes (distributive justice), of

processes and procedures to allocate resources (procedural justice), of interpersonal treatment

(interactional justice) and of the provision of information and explanation in time

(informational justice). Many studies have investigated the perceived fairness of specific

types of work events, such as the fairness of layoff procedures (Wiesenfeld et al., 2000),

performance evaluations (Greenberg, 1986), and recruitment processes (Madera, 2012).

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Several theoretical advances have been made to suggest how justice events aggregate over

time. We highlight two seminal models here.

The first model by Jones and Skarlicki (2013) conceptualizes how justice events

influence entity fairness perceptions over time. Specifically, Jones and Skarlicki suggest that

justice events can trigger different cognitive processes to make a fairness judgment

depending on whether the event is considered consistent or inconsistent with the expectations

one holds from the perceived source of the event (perpetrator), i.e., the entity involved. For

example, is a rude remark something one would expect from this manager? When the event is

deemed consistent, it is unlikely to trigger deeper sense-making activity and unlikely to

change the entity justice judgment. However, when the event is perceived as inconsistent, the

individual is likely to engage in sense-making activities to find an explanation for why this

event happened and what it implies for the entity involved. In turn, entity fairness perceptions

may be reassessed.

The second dynamic model of organizational justice was developed by Rupp and

Paddock (2010), who built on affective events theory (AET, Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to

develop a multilevel model of organizational justice. AET suggests that work events give rise

to an affective reaction, which in turn influences one’s attitudes and behaviors. In particular,

justice-related events have been demonstrated to elicit an affective reaction (e.g., Rupp &

Spencer, 2006; Spencer & Rupp, 2009). Thus, the main tenet of Rupp and Paddock’s (2010)

model is that discrete justice events relating to work outcomes, procedures and interactions

trigger affective reactions that influence the formation and change of fairness perceptions

about specific entities over time. These perceptions in turn form the basis for an

organizational justice climate.

Going beyond the processing of justice events as they occur, individuals have the

ability to mentally time travel (Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007, p. 299), which allows them to

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“mentally project themselves backwards in time to re-live or forwards to pre-live, events”.

All discrete (in)justice events are stored in the individual’s memory, and most can be

retrieved. However, the same event might be recalled differently as time goes by or not

recalled at all, depending on present justice experiences and perceptions. Remembering past

events may also trigger the anticipation of future justice events. In turn, these anticipations

can influence the formation of fairness perceptions of specific justice events in the present.

Autobiographical memory (Brewer, 1986), defined by Fivush (2011: 560) as a “form of

memory that moves beyond recall of experienced events to integrate perspective,

interpretation, and evaluation across self, other, and time to create a personal history”, allows

individuals to try to build continuity between the experience of past, present and future

justice events.

This is particularly relevant in the context of ongoing work relationships, in which

justice events at work tend to happen (Ballinger & Rockmann, 2010). This is illustrated by

research suggesting how past unfair (versus fair) experiences with a supervisor can influence

the perceived fairness of subsequent neutral communication with the same supervisor or a

new supervisor (van den Bos et al., 2005). In this research, following unfair experiences with

a supervisor, subordinates were more likely to react negatively to messages communicated by

the old supervisor as opposed to a new supervisor. In contrast, those who experienced fair

events in the past were likely to react more positively to the messages coming from the old

supervisor than the new supervisor. Additionally, subordinates tended to react more

positively to neutral communication from a new supervisor when they had previously

experienced unfairness.

Moreover, research illustrates that the memory of past justice events can be

reconstructed to align with present justice experiences. For instance, Lilly, Virick, and

Hadani (2010) explored the direction and evolution of justice perceptions over a two-year

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period, and while they found no variation in interpersonal justice of an event over time, they

discovered that subordinates with a low level of procedural justice perceptions at time 1 had

increased procedural justice perceptions over time. The authors argue that this fluctuation

could be explained by the interference of work decision outcomes such that individuals

remodeled their memories of past justice experiences to create consistency with their current

justice assessment of the work situation.

Furthermore, there is evidence that individuals' anticipations of justice events can

influence their justice perception formation. Indeed, anticipated justice experiences can

impact experienced justice events in the present (Shapiro & Kirkman, 2001). Research

suggests that the relationship between anticipatory interpersonal and informational justice

and experienced justice is strengthened when an individual experiences high levels of

perceived uncertainty (Rodell & Colquitt, 2009). The practical relevance of justice

anticipations is illustrated by Bell, Wiechmann and Ryan (2006), who surveyed job

applicants about their expectations of justice in a selection process and found that justice

expectations were directly related to applicants’ subsequent attitudes and intentions.

The full importance of justice events for employees and for organizations can,

however, only be understood when considering the accumulation of justice events over time.

For instance, Robbins, Summers, and Miller (2000), based on their finding of ten-month lag

effects of procedural justice on turnover intentions, argue that reactions to (in)justice events

may manifest only retrospectively once individuals have repeatedly experienced unfair

procedures or interpersonal treatments and a threshold has been reached. However, Robbins

et al. (2000) did not find the same pattern for distributive justice. Reactions to distributive

justice in the form of turnover intentions tended to be more instantaneous.

We conclude that although scholars have explored some of the dynamics behind

justice events, both conceptually (e.g., Jones & Skarlicki, 2013; Rupp & Paddock, 2010) and

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empirically (e.g., Ambrose & Cropanzano, 2003; Lilly et al., 2010), we lack person-centric

investigations of such events, especially around critical career transitions. Currently, little is

known about how justice events at work are personally experienced, made sense of, and

remembered over time. Gaining a better understanding of individuals’ “lived-through

experience” (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) of (in)justice events could help us better understand the

temporal dynamics that translate specific injustice events into various work- and career-

related outcomes over time.

Maternity leave is a time when women experience important work events, including

pregnancy disclosure and workplace reentry, yet comprehensive investigations of women’s

perceptions of such work events at this critical period of time are lacking; these perceptions

may hold important implications for women’s career outcomes. Specifically, in the present

research, we investigate women’s experienced (in)justice events at the time around their

maternity leave to obtain a better understanding of how their experiences, sense-making,

attitudes and reactions evolve during this critical time for their careers.

Therefore, we start our research with the following questions:

Research question 1: What types of justice-related events do women experience at the time

around their maternity leave?

Research question 2: How do women interpret and make sense of (in)justice events at the

time around their maternity leave?

Research question 3: How do women’s personal experiences of (in)justice events at the time

around their maternity leave affect their career intentions and choices?

We choose a longitudinal person-centric approach to investigate these questions.

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3. Method

3.1. Sample

For our study, we recruited employed women in France who were pregnant or

enrolled in an adoption process and who were planning to return to the same organization

after maternity leave. In line with our focus on the experiences of highly educated women,

we looked for participants who had a higher education degree. We recruited participants by

using social media platforms (Facebook and LinkedIn), posting flyers in places such as

echography centers and nursery stores, and contacting potential participants via personal

networks. Women who expressed interest in participating in this study were directed to

complete a prescreening questionnaire to determine their eligibility. Eligible respondents

were contacted via email to arrange participation and were given further information about

the study, including a consent form to be returned. All interviewees gave their consent.

Before the first interview, participants were also asked to answer a prestudy questionnaire.

For their participation, they received a 10€ gift voucher per interview and an additional 10€

for completing four interviews, allowing them to receive 50€ worth of gift vouchers for full

participation5.

Overall, we interviewed 35 working women. A variety of profiles were represented,

including employees in both the private (N=26) and public (N=9) sectors working in diverse

industries, such as retail, banking, higher education, aeronautics, consultancy and medical

research. Their organizational tenure ranged from seven months to ten years, and their job

tenure ranged from four months to ten years. Thirteen of the participants had managerial

responsibilities over at least one subordinate. Sixteen interviewees were first-time mothers,

5 We only present the first three rounds of interviews in this paper.

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thirteen were second-time mothers, five were third-time mothers and two were fourth-time

mothers. The participants were between 26 to 41 years old.

3.2. Study design and data collection

We conducted a series of semistructured interviews with each participant from the

time before going on maternity leave up to several months after their return to work.

Specifically, participants were interviewed at three points in time: after their pregnancy

disclosure and before their departure on maternity leave (time 1), before their return to work

(time 2), and finally a month or so after their return (time 3). In France, maternity leave is

mandatory and remunerated, and it typically lasts 16 weeks.

Given that the interviewees were scattered all over France and that we wished not to

inconvenience our pregnant participants, most interviews were conducted online or on the

phone. Overall, the interviews lasted from 15 minutes to just over one hour. At time 1, the

mean length was 39 minutes and 45 seconds; at time 2, it was 33 minutes; and at time 3, it

was 31 minutes. Interviews with all participants were conducted in French by the first author,

except for the interview with one participant who preferred to be interviewed in English.

Interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis by an external transcriber. To ensure

accuracy, a sample of transcripts was checked by the researchers by listening to the original

tapes and going over the corresponding transcripts.

The interviews were semistructured, with a predefined set of core questions.

Additional questions were added to obtain more detailed descriptions of specific events or

attitudes. Themes discussed during the interviews included work relationships with

supervisors and colleagues, work and childcare arrangements and career aspirations. These

themes were addressed across the three waves of interviews to identify any changes that may

have occurred over time. Specifically, we attempted to elicit accounts of specific events at the

three time points of data collection by asking tailored questions. For example, all

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interviewees were asked to recall and describe the event of announcing their pregnancy at

work during the first interview. Similarly, during the third wave of interviews, we questioned

them about any incidents with a supervisor or colleagues that may have occurred since their

return to work. Interviewees were not specifically asked about their views of fairness or

justice, but justice-related issues and experiences emerged naturally as the working mothers

explained their work experiences and arrangements.

3.3. Coding process

We conducted directed content analysis, which allows the validation or conceptual

extension of a theoretical framework or theory (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). As recommended

by Miles and Huberman (1994) and using a deductive category application approach

(Mayring, 2004), a provisional “start list” of codes was created based on the research

questions and interview guides. This initial list of codes included cross-wave categories such

as work events, work relationships, career aspirations, work arrangements and childcare

arrangements. New codes were identified as we went through several full sets of interviews

(i.e., including wave 1, wave 2, wave 3). We met at several points in time through the coding

process to make adjustments to the coding list and recoded all interviews after no more new

codes emerged. All interviews were thematically coded using NVivo 12.

Following the procedure by Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton (2013), we identified first-

order concepts in interviewees’ narratives that we then translated into second-order themes.

For example, one participant reported an episode with her supervisor who denied a promised

salary increase: “But of course, since I went on maternity leave, a raise was out of the

question”. We labeled this as a “distributive injustice event”. We then looked for patterns

across themes and combined them into aggregate dimensions. For instance, the second-order

themes Justification, Evolving career aspirations and attitudes, and Career withdrawal were

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assembled to form the aggregate dimension “Responses to injustice”. Our overall data

structure is depicted in Figure 1.

Given the longitudinal design of our study, the data were analyzed using two

approaches: first at the between-person level, i.e., across participants, and second at the

within-person level across the waves of data collection, allowing the investigation of the

participants’ evolving fairness experiences and career motives, career attitudes and career

decisions. To analyze change across waves, we assembled specific categories (e.g., career

aspirations) in chronological order and coded them accordingly as recommended by Saldaña

(2003).

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Figure 1. Data structure

1st order concepts

Distributive and

procedural events

Justice

episodes

2nd

order themes Aggregate dimensions

§ But of course, since I went on maternity leave, a raise was out of the question.

§ They didn't ask me how I wanted to split the load, or what I wanted to keep, and they decided in my absence.

Justice-related

mental time

travel

Interpersonal and

informational events

Distributive and

procedural omissions

Interpersonal and

informational omissions

Repeated event

Responses to

injustice

Evolving career

aspirations and attitudes

Career withdrawal

§ We quickly get the remark, "You're already leaving at this time?"

§ We've had several meetings on salary increases, they've never talked about that.

§ I feel that when I announced my pregnancy, there was no one who did anything...

§ I was supposed to have my HR interview, but she didn't call me back at all.

§ I emailed them just to see how I was doing with my accounts, etc., and I never heard back from them.

§ We are not necessarily very aware, we don't really know how it works, we really have to go and search.

§ There had been precedents during the lockdown § My supervisor told me that she didn't take a parental leave

or anything when she had her children

§ Once they did a trick on me too... § It was the last few months that made me change my mind.

(New) recalled event

§ I think there will be remarks like there were during my pregnancy

§ I have this comment in my head, I wonder what they will tell me Anticipated (in)justice

events and omission

Justification

§ It may have caused me to stop [working] earlier than expected, but that's my fault, it's up to me to deal with it

and know my body § There was a big conflation, and I think it's probably due to

clumsiness

§ To not leave home in the morning with a gut feeling § I have a hard time accepting the behavior they had, because

it's a lot of stress and you don't need that. So if I can change jobs, I will change jobs

§ My decision is made, I will leave § I had made the decision to stop working for this

organization, and that I wanted to resign

§ Knowing pretty much the department's schedule, I don't think it's going to happen

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4. Findings

In the following sections, we begin by presenting the type of injustice events

interviewees experienced at the time around their maternity leave, from the time following

their pregnancy announcement and before going on maternity leave to up to three months

after their return to work. Next, we introduce the concept of justice omissions that emerged

from our data and present its interconnectedness with injustice events over time. We also

review the types of omissions participants encountered across the three waves. Then, we

explore our participants’ “mental time travel” (memories and future expectations) at the time

around their maternity leave and its role in forming justice judgments and anticipations.

Finally, we discuss how these justice experiences were linked with career responses among

our respondents and present a model that emerged from these findings.

4.1. Injustice events at the time around maternity leave

While participants shared different narratives about their maternity leave, most

reported having experienced injustice events during this period of time that could be critical

for their careers. Overall, 31 out of our 35 interviewees reported at least one injustice event.

A total of 134 events were reported (across the three interview waves).

Following the dimensions of the classical framework of organizational justice

(Colquitt, 2001), we categorized each justice event according to their distributive, procedural,

interpersonal or informational nature. Often, the events recounted by our participants

represented more than one dimension. Specifically, we found that distributive and procedural

issues were tightly linked in our dataset. For example, the allocation of bonuses often entailed

distributive and procedural concerns. Similarly, interpersonal and informational issues were

typically connected, as personal encounters related to both interactions and communication of

information. For this reason, we decided to organize injustice events faced by women across

waves into two main categories, as depicted in Table 1: The first category includes

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distributive and procedural events, and the second includes interpersonal and informational

events. Notably, some events include both distributive/procedural and

interpersonal/informational aspects.

Across waves, many of the injustice events reported concerned flexible work

arrangements. We also noticed that at time 1, following the pregnancy announcement and

before maternity leave, events were often related to a lack of consideration of women’s

constraints during pregnancy, as well as interpersonal offenses. While in most cases, the

direct supervisor was the perpetrator of the injustice event, upper management was also

mentioned by the participants, especially in the case of informational injustice events.

Colleagues were the third source of injustice events, typically in relation to interpersonal

interactions.

Distributive and procedural injustice events. As depicted in Table 1, we identified a

considerable number of distributive and procedural events in participants’ narratives of their

personal experiences at work at the time around their maternity leave. At time 1, typical

distributive and procedural events were related to work arrangements. Many of the

participants wanted to take advantage of a labor agreement provision granting pregnant

women the right to leave work one hour early each day. However, most of the interviewees

could not exercise this right because of their workload, as illustrated by Julie6: I am entitled,

normally, legally, to one hour a day. Let's be honest, I don't take it. And yet, in the letter I

sent to announce my pregnancy, I had indicated that I wanted to take the different

arrangements that were possible (...) in spite of everything, for him [supervisor], everything

must continue as before, so the workload remains the same. Another example was provided

by Mary who said: You see even now, pregnant, I was supposed to finish at 4:30 pm, and

sometimes they schedule meetings at 6:00 pm, so you don't finish at 4:30 pm.

6 We use pseudonyms to protect our participants’ identities.

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At time 2, typical events included descriptions of sidelining attempts and of

promotions and bonuses that were not granted. For example, Manon was told that she would

not receive her promised salary increase: We agreed on a percentage of increase, and for me,

it was good. The next week, she [supervisor] called me back to tell me that it wasn't possible,

that we weren't going to do that, and that we would renegotiate when I get back from

maternity leave. Similarly, Alice described, I was supposed to become an expert consultant

because I am a senior consultant (...) I ticked all the boxes, and normally, I was supposed to

get paid 170 euros extra per month. And in fact, I didn't get it, but at the last moment (...)

they never talked about having to be the best consultant to get a salary raise. We had several

meetings about salary raises; they never talked about that.

At time 3, typical injustice events referred to project and task reallocations and

sidelining, restrictions in work arrangements, and missed pay raises. For instance, Elisabeth

discovered that some of her work projects had been reallocated to colleagues: To see that

there are projects that I had initiated personally and that now, it is completely the

responsibility of someone else... I was told that they did not need me anymore; it is a little

hard. Similarly, Gabrielle noticed that her supervisor and her colleague were trying to

remove her from a project she also originally initiated: At the moment, there is an attempt to

remove me from certain projects, and I do not like that at all. In addition, she added, It

surprises me, but not so much, explaining that it had already happened to her in the past.

Interpersonal and informational injustice events. The participants also reported

numerous interpersonal justice events during the maternity leave period (see Table 1). We

noticed that many of the participants were confronted with guilt-inducing remarks from their

supervisors, particularly before their maternity leave (i.e., time 1). An example was provided

by Mary, who reported what happened when she returned to work following a pregnancy-

related sick leave: She [supervisor] couldn't stand the fact that I was on sick leave; she was

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pressuring me to know when I could start again. She really wasn't correct, and when I came

back, I got some really unacceptable remarks, like I only thought of myself, I was selfish to

have been off, stuff like that. Another example was given by Ines, who described how a

member of the upper management suggested that mothers are responsible for the penalty they

face once they return to work following childbirth: I just remembered something my director

told me, but this is a classic example of a man's attitude: it's the women who put up barriers,

who themselves think they are not capable because they have a family life, because the job is

hard. Moreover, several interviewees faced sexist comments from their colleagues or upper

management relating to the belief that participants would not return to work after their

maternity leave. For example, Charline said, "I have colleagues who will make remarks such

as "So, when do you lay?", but they are 40 or 50 years old, they are not on the same team as

me; I meet them at the coffee machine... The ones who say, "Well, we won't see you anymore!

You're going to stay at home!"

While women had less contact with their colleagues and their supervisors during their

maternity leave, some participants still reported interpersonal justice events during the time 2

and time 3 interviews. Julie’s narrative provided an example of perceived unfair interactions

with her supervisor and upper management regarding the fact that she was not able to find a

childcare arrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic: They think that we could have found

a nanny; that's clearly what we were told. That's why they refused my spouse's work

arrangement request. They feel that we could have found another form of childcare while

waiting for the nursery. When returning to work, many interviewees also had to face

comments from their colleagues or supervisor regarding the work arrangements they had

taken. For instance, Clémence’s colleagues regularly made remarks related to the fact that she

now worked part time: But my colleagues tease me a bit when I leave at 2 pm, like "I'm going

to have kids too" or "It's cool to have kids", that kind of thing. Some colleagues even

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commented on the perceived character of the baby of an interviewee. Elisabeth recalled a

moment when she was teleworking, and her colleagues asked to see the baby on camera

during an online meeting: My colleagues wanted to see the baby on camera, and if you put a

baby in front of a computer, she or he is not very smiley, and they said, "She's not smiley, like

you".

A few informational events were also reported by the participants, especially during

their maternity leave. For example, Manon described a conversation with her supervisor

about the leave pension: At the time of this discussion about the salary, she [supervisor] had

said to me, "You have to realize that your leave, we pay half of it, so it's expensive for us",

and I know that's not true7.

7 In France, the maternity leave pension is in fact funded by the national health insurance

office (i.e., CPAM), and companies do not pay for it.

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Table 1. Type of injustice events encountered across waves

Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3

Distributive and

procedural

injustice events

- Yearly (12 months)

objectives are set for the

year despite the employee

going on maternity leave

because the supervisor

expects the interviewee to

work during her leave

- Supervisor refuses telework request or accepts

it only with heavy

counterparts

- Supervisor pushes the

employee to overwork

during her pregnancy

- Meetings are set outside of

legal working hours

- Interviewee cannot avail of

pregnancy-related legal

right because of intense workload

- Expected promotion not

given

- Supervisor refuses

employee’s leave request

- Supervisor imposes leave

days during the COVID-19

pandemic under the pretext

that the person has children

- Interviewee is asked to

work during a pregnancy-related sick leave

- Supervisor micro manages

interviewee following a

pregnancy-related sick

leave

- There is a lack of

transparency on bonus and

promotion allocation and

distribution

- Expected promotion or/and

salary increase are not given

- Job position is modified

without consideration or consultation of the absent

employee

- Interviewee is required to

work while on leave

- Interviewee’s job position is

advertised on recruitment

websites

- There is a lack of

transparency on organizational childcare

attribution

- The interviewee is forced to

take vacation days at specific times of the year

- Promised recruitment of

support staff is denied

- Supervisor is reluctant to

accept work arrangement

request (part-time position)

- Upper management and

supervisors refuse that the

interviewee telework upon

her return to work and during

one of the COVID-19 related

lockdown

- The interviewee is ousted

from some important projects

that she used to lead

- Task and project are

(re)allocated without

consideration or consultation

of the returning employee

- The interviewee is sidelined from projects

- Supervisor restricts the

application of telework

arrangements, even though it

goes against legal worker

rights (instead of one

day/week, her supervisor

only allows her to telework

one day/month)

- Important meetings are

scheduled when the interviewee is on leave (part-

time position) or outside of

legal work hours

- Promotion is not granted due

to maternity leave

- Bonus is not granted due to

maternity leave

- Bonus allocation procedures

are changed

- Heavy organizational

procedure to get promoted

- Upper management

pressurizes the employee to

change departments

- Interviewee is the only

person from the board who is

not offered the same status as

the other (male) board

members

Interpersonal and

informational

injustice events

- Supervisor makes

unpleasant remarks

following a pregnancy-

related sick leave

- Colleagues and supervisor

harass the interviewee

following a pregnancy-

related sick leave

- Supervisor does not

acknowledge pregnancy

and corresponding legal/contractual provisions

- Supervisor and colleagues

make benevolent sexist

remarks

- Supervisor expresses her

- Supervisor communicates

misinformation on maternity

leave pension

- Supervisor provides no

explanation on the fact that

the interviewee’s job position

was advertised on

recruitment websites

- Upper management send a

coercing message to justify

imposed leaves or telework

refusal

- Upper management blames

the interviewee for not

having found a childcare

option yet

- Supervisor makes a remark

on telework arrangements

- There is a lack of

transparency on telework

arrangement options

- Supervisor and HR manager

makes fun of employees who

telework

- Supervisor, colleagues and

clients make comments on the interviewee’s part-time

arrangements

- Colleagues make patronizing

remarks on working mothers’

ability to adequately balance

work and family

- Colleagues makes an

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doubts regarding the fact

that the interviewee can

take care of a child

- Supervisor and colleagues

make remarks on the fact

that the interviewee leaves

work on time

- Supervisor makes

unpleasant remarks on

teleworking arrangements - Supervisor makes a

disdainful remark on the

interviewee's work

- Supervisor and upper management have an

inappropriate reaction to

pregnancy announcement

- Supervisor repeatedly

insists that interviewee

justify why she cannot

attend specific events

- Upper management,

supervisor, colleagues

make sexist remarks

- Supervisor coerces

interviewee regarding her maternity leave within the

first weeks of

announcement

- Supervisor blames the

interviewee for intending

to take a parental leave or

for taking a part-time

arrangement

- Supervisor pressurizes

interviewee not to take a

parental leave

- Information communicated

by HR staff on maternity

leave modalities is

insufficient

- Supervisor or colleagues

solicit the interviewee during

her leave

- Supervisor harasses

interviewee with 15 calls

within a day

- Supervisor's secretary calls

the interviewee to find where

she is because the

administration forgot she was

on maternity leave

unpleasant comment on

interviewee’s baby

- Colleagues blame the

interviewee for being absent

for so long

- Supervisor makes sexist requests and comments

- Supervisor blames the

interviewee for returning to

work full-time

- Upper management likes to

reaffirm their power over

interviewee's work

arrangement requests

- Colleagues make

inappropriate remarks on

interviewee’s lack of childcare solution during the

pandemic

- Supervisor requests that

interviewee’s partner take

care of the child

- Upper management blames

the employee for resigning

from her job

- Upper management blames

interviewee for conversations

she shared with colleagues

- Supervisor laughs at the

interviewee who feels

emotionally overwhelmed

- Colleague blames the

interviewee for not making

enough progress on a project

Upper management makes

sexist remark on mothers

- Colleagues comment the fact

that the interviewee leaves

work earlier than them

4.2. Justice episodes: How injustice events and justice omissions are interwoven over

time

We noticed that justice manifestations at work at the time around maternity leave

could take more subtle forms than observable injustice events. We term such types of justice

manifestations justice omissions and define them as the absence of action from an entity,

giving rise to a fairness assessment. We observed that omissions were particularly salient

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before the participants went on maternity (time 1) and upon their return to work (time 3).

Nineteen of the participants reported omissions with regard to the allocation of outcomes,

procedures, information provision and work interactions. Table 2 presents illustrations of the

justice omissions encountered across waves.

Our data show that justice omissions are typically linked to justice events: We found a

two-way relationship that materializes over time such that (in)justice events can trigger a

justice omission, and a justice omission can trigger one or a series of injustice events.

Specifically, we discovered that injustice events and justice omissions can stem from the

same underlying issue but manifest differently over time and, as such, can form a justice

episode. One example of a typical justice omission reported by several interviewees at time 1

involved the lack of recognition of the participants’ pregnancy, as Elisabeth described: I feel

that when I announced my pregnancy, no one did anything. This identified justice omission

later resulted in a distributive injustice event for the interviewee: I continued to work on my

projects, alone, and in May-June, I had a two-week sick leave, precisely because I

overworked. Similarly, Mary described that her supervisor failed to adjust her work deadlines

following pregnancy-related sick leave, which led her to work extra hours to complete her

work on time: When I came back, no file was advanced. Except for the deadlines, they did not

adjust them compared to my colleagues. So, I had to work like crazy when I came back.

Likewise, experiencing an injustice event could shed light on a more insidious justice

omission. For example, Charline first described a procedural injustice event: I was told at the

beginning of the week that I had to train him, while I am leaving for my maternity leave on

February 1st. That is to say, in 2 weeks. She found it upsetting that her supervisor did not

make arrangements beforehand and as such pointed out a justice omission from her

supervisor: I thought it was a pity that there was not more anticipation. When you get

pregnant, you usually tell your employer after four months, or five at the most, so they have

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quite a lot of time to anticipate the absence. Importantly, not only was the event seen as an

injustice, but our respondents also judged the omission as unjust on its own. Furthermore,

Andréa emailed the HR department during her pregnancy to request a scheduling adjustment

that is part of labor agreements for pregnant employees in France. She did not receive any

answer and therefore could not benefit from this arrangement. In any case, I can’t take it until

someone writes back to me. She deplored the lack of consideration from the organization: We

have the impression of not being considered very much.

Several interviewees bemoaned the lack of guidance upon their return to work. For

instance, Sarah was disappointed that her HR contact did not schedule a meeting upon her

return to work: I was supposed to have my HR interview, but she didn't call me back at all. I

was the one who had to tell her that an interview was necessary... Because it's been 7 months

since I left, and I've had a lot of trouble finding a time slot. She shared the difficulties she

faced when returning to work and working reduced hours: I only worked 3.5 days a week

from my return to work until the vacations, and it was complicated because I was asked to do

the same amount of work as before, in a shorter period of time, and I was not efficient. Due

to this lack of adjustment and communication of her new arrangements to her clients, she

received a complaint from her client: He said, "But she is working part time?!" Her return-to-

work experience generated high levels of stress for her and pushed her to overwork: I get to

work much earlier. I leave, well, at the same time as before, but I get to work earlier. I don't

take much of a lunch break between 12 and 2 pm. Finally, many of the omissions identified

when interviewees returned to work were linked to the lack of communication on possible

maternity-related work arrangements and on the important events that occurred at work

during the absence of the participants because they were on leave for several months.

Gabrielle deplored this: We didn't do what I would have thought was the right thing, which is

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"Tell me what happened during the last 5 months, sparing me what I need to be spared, of

course, but tell me what happened".

Overall, most of the justice omissions identified were concerned with the lack of

consideration of the new constraints associated with pregnancy and maternity, as well as with

flexible work arrangements. The main sources of such omissions were the supervisor, upper

management and the HR department. As described above, justice omissions interacted with

injustice events over time such that a justice omission could lead to injustice events and an

injustice event could later result in a justice omission. Together, these interactions between

events and omissions formed a justice episode, as they originated from the same underlying

issue.

Table 2. Type of justice omissions encountered across waves

Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3

Distributive and

procedural justice

omissions

- Supervisor does not

anticipate or organize the interviewee’s

maternity leave

- Supervisor does not

adjust the interviewee’s

work deadlines after

pregnancy-related leave

so she needs to work

very long hours

- Supervisor does not

consider pregnancy

constraints in task appointments

- Supervisor fails to

extend the interviewee’s

teleworking

arrangements and thus

she needs to renew her

requests continuously

- Workload and work

objectives are not adjusted to interviewee’s new work

arrangements

- Supervisor does not

consider interviewee’s

constraints when imposing

work arrangements (e.g.,

forced telework)

- Supervisor does not

consider interviewee’s

constraints in task allocation

- In the context of an office move during maternity

leave, failure to provide IT

equipment for the

interviewee

- Supervisor fails to schedule

a return-from-leave

appointment

Interpersonal and

informational justice

omissions

- HR does not answer the

interviewee’s questions

on pregnancy and maternity related

provisions

- Upper management

provides no answer on

email announcing

pregnancy

- There is a lack of

- There is no discussion of

job position modification

between the supervisor and the concerned employee

- Upper management does not

communicate any

information on maternity

related provisions

- The supervisor does not

introduce the returning

employee to new colleagues

- Supervisor provides no

information to the returning

employee on things that

happened at work during

maternity leave (e.g.,

organizational changes)

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communication and

transparency regarding

pregnancy and

maternity related

provisions

- Upper management fails

to consider the pregnant employee

- There is no discussion

with supervisor on

pregnancy-related

arrangements

- Supervisor does not inform

clients that interviewee

works part time now

- There is no communication

on breastfeeding

provisions, on maternity-

related legal and contractual provisions

- Upper management forgets

to include the interviewee

in emails and only

communicates with her

supervisor and colleagues

- Supervisor is not concerned

about the daily life

experiences and health of

interviewee and her child

4.3. Justice memories and anticipations

The participants engaged in autobiographical memory and shared life narratives that

connected their past, present and future to form a coherent whole (Fivush, 2011).

Specifically, we found that the women’s present and anticipated experiences at work were

influenced by their memories from past justice experiences. Participants’ narratives

accounted for both backward and forward mental time travel (Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997).

We uncovered two main types of past time traveling in our data: While several women

repeatedly mentioned the same specific events across waves, others retrieved justice events

that happened in the past only in the later phases of data collection, as if these events only

became relevant retrospectively. Some of the retrieved events even happened prior to the

study, and some happened during pregnancy (i.e., relating to time 1) but had not been

reported by the participant during the interview at time 1.

Across waves, interviewees reported unfolding events of an interpersonal, procedural,

and distributive nature. For example, at time 2, Manon described a series of injustice events

(including interpersonal, procedural and distributive aspects) that happened at time 1 and

altered her perceptions about her supervisor’s fairness: There had been precedents during the

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lockdown. I had found that she was not a good person, and I did not want to continue

working with her. Another example was provided by Clémence, who remembered at time 3 a

remark her supervisor made about a requested work arrangement before going on maternity

leave: My supervisor just told me that she didn't take a parental leave or anything when she

had her children. In line with Rupp and Paddock’s (2010) model, these accounts confirm that

events and entity fairness are closely linked in the participants’ minds.

One interviewee (Alice) started to recall events at time 2 as she experienced important

injustice events of a distributive nature during her maternity leave. Specifically, when she

determined that she would not be granted the promotion she was expected to receive, she

retrieved from her memory additional injustice events that occurred before she went on

maternity leave. She received a bonus but was asked to reimburse part of it back to the

organization: Once they played a trick on me too... in fact, they set up a work challenge that

lasted 3 months (...) every month there were 3 winners. I won all 3 challenges. In December,

they called me in, and the N+2 told me, "I'm going to tell you something; you're not going to

be happy... you see, the challenges? In fact, we had a tax audit, and we hadn't deducted the

payroll taxes... now we have to pay back the taxes, so we're going to deduct them from your

pay”. After evoking several present and past events that she or one of her close colleagues

experienced, she concluded, That's why. They couldn't get me to change my mind. She was

aware that the perceptions she used to have of her organization had totally shifted: I thought

to myself, "She [interviewer]'s going to think I'm completely incoherent or bipolar. It was the

last few months that made me change my mind. Indeed, and in coherence with Jones and

Skarlicki’s model, a more effortful processing appears necessary if the event is deemed

inconsistent with the previous judgment of the entity. However, adding to the mechanisms

that Jones and Skarlicki (2013) described in their model, the participants engaged in active

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memory search to find additional past events that conformed with a possible new entity

evaluation.

Some interviewees started reporting injustice events that happened in the past,

especially interpersonal events, before returning to work, and they used them as a basis to

form predictions about future interpersonal treatment. For example, Zoé remembered a

statement by the CEO of her company regarding the COVID-19 work arrangement for a four-

day work week: He said, "And then, how do people come back to normal work settings? It

won't be possible, they [employees] will be used to having a lot of free time!" I told myself

that this was such a far-fetched thought. Hearing this remark created a lot of uncertainty for

this participant who started to anticipate unfair interpersonal treatment upon her return to

work (time 3): I have this comment in my head. I wonder what they will tell me. Similarly, at

time 2, Anna recalled an event that had happened during her pregnancy but that she had not

mentioned at time 1. She, however, used this event as a basis for forming expectations about

the treatment she would receive from her supervisors once she returned to work: I think there

will be remarks like there were during my pregnancy, a little sexist. Like "If you get upset, it

is the hormones; it's because you're pregnant", that kind of thing.

New injustice events could also lay the ground for injustice anticipation. For example,

Elisabeth’s colleagues made an unpleasant remark on her baby’s attitude upon her return to

work, as described above. The interviewee was very upset by this comment but refrained

from sharing her thoughts because she anticipated additional unfair treatment: I'm really

pissed off. But again, I let it go, because, honestly, there's no point in it... I think that at work

it’s sometimes better to let it go, because if you get angry, and even more so when you're a

woman, they're going to say, "That one, she's hysterical; she's on her period".

Interestingly, mental time travel could also be observed in relation to justice

omissions. During her maternity leave, Andréa anticipated a justice omission about not

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having a return-from-leave interview planned with her supervisor upon her return: My

supervisor, I think she'd like to. But, knowing pretty much the department's schedule, I don't

think it's going to happen. At time 3, this anticipated omission became an actual omission,

which left the participant feeling out of place: At the beginning, you feel a little bit like you're

on the sidelines. I think I'm okay now, but it took me a good month to feel like I belonged

again. In turn, this experience translated into different injustice events including the lack of

transparency in task allocation and inappropriate schedules of team meetings: I'm not there,

[so] we ask another person (...) the person who is there can inherit a file, and because I'm

necessarily less there, I end up with fewer [files]. This example provides evidence that justice

omissions can also trigger mental time travel. Specifically, it offers an illustration of the

interconnectedness of anticipated omissions, justice omissions and injustice events and

explains how they are likely to unfold over time.

The ability to mentally time travel is critical for understanding the dynamics

underlying justice episodes. We noticed that autobiographical memory functions could link

different injustice events and justice omissions together into one episode in the participants’

minds -- even when these events and omissions may not have seemed interconnected for an

outsider. For instance, through mental time travel, additional injustice events from the past

were sometimes woven into the same justice episode retrospectively when interviewees

looked back at their past justice experiences to align them with present experiences.

Therefore, our findings suggest that justice experiences that belong together as a justice

episode can change over time. Moreover, a justice episode could also be extended forward

when future justice omissions and events were already anticipated, as suggested above.

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4.4. Responses to (in)justice experiences

4.4.1. Justification of injustice episodes.

Perhaps surprisingly, not all reported injustice events and episodes seemed to trigger

negative judgments and attitudes toward the source of the injustice (typically the supervisor

or the organization). Indeed, some interviewees attempted to justify interpersonal, procedural

and distributive injustice events at the time around their maternity leave. For example,

Charline faced sexist remarks from her coworkers during her pregnancy (i.e., at time 1), as

highlighted in the section “Interpersonal injustice events”, and she tried to find excuses for

her coworkers’ behaviors: It makes me laugh. Often, they are old people. They have forgotten

that women have finally gained some rights. Additionally, during her pregnancy, Sophie was

pushed to overwork before going on maternity leave. Far from having resentful feelings

toward her organization, she blamed herself: It may have caused me to stop [working] earlier

than expected, but that's my fault; it's up to me to deal with it and know my body.

Additionally, prior to disclosing her pregnancy, the same interviewee had been offered a

promotion opportunity. However, her supervisor retracted his offer upon her pregnancy

announcement, and she made sense of this event as follows: I lost that opportunity... let's say

I put it off, not because my manager tells me I'm not capable, that's not what he says at all.

It's just a timing issue. While many participants provided explanations for justice-related

episodes, only one participant showed that she was conscious of the fact that she used

justification to make sense of her supervisor’s managerial practices during her pregnancy.

Regarding being asked to work by her supervisor while on sick leave during her pregnancy,

Zoé said, I think it's a pretty unique situation for the company. The managers are a bit

stressed, well... I am trying to excuse them. During maternity leave, i.e., time 2 in our

interview schedule, two participants even engaged in justification of anticipated (in)justice

experiences when returning to work -- we could term such a phenomenon “anticipated

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injustice justification”. For example, Barbara feared future treatment by her supervisor, but

she was also resigned: Since she doesn't have children, I am wondering: "Is she going to be

tough?". But I understand. I understand because I was in the same position before. In a

similar vein, one interviewee anticipated a justice omission at time 2. Andréa anticipated that

she would not have a return-from-leave interview planned with her supervisor when returning

to work and in anticipation tried to provide an explanation: My supervisor, I think she'd like

to. But, knowing pretty much the department's schedule, I don't think it's going to happen.

We noticed that interviewees provided justifications at time 3, particularly when they

reentered their organization after maternity leave. They included explanations about

procedural, interpersonal and sometimes distributive injustice events. For example, Andréa

saw that her former projects and work tasks were reallocated by her supervisor to a new

colleague, and she explained, I think she [supervisor] wants to make sure I'm paying attention

and keeping my balance. But it feels like "I'm putting other people in charge". Similarly,

Clémence gave a justification for her supervisor’s unpleasant comment when she could not

come to work because her baby was sick: I know she was a little stung when I called her and

told her I couldn't come to work. But deep down, she didn't really mean it. Sarah even made

sense of how not being offered additional work responsibilities could actually be beneficial

for her: I tell myself that not having responsibilities is not a big deal; I feel like it’s even

better!

While many of the participants who tended to justify specific injustice events by their

supervisors and colleagues continued to provide potential justifications across waves, a few

interviewees stopped providing justifications for their supervisors’ perceived unfair practices.

For example, Gabrielle tried to provide an explanation for an injustice interpersonal event

that occurred at time 1 when her supervisor made an inappropriate remark on teleworking

arrangements: There was a big conflation, and I think it's probably due to clumsiness.

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However, we noticed that she no longer provided such justifications at time 3 when

encountering similar remarks. It is possible that participants who stopped making excuses for

unfair treatment had finally adjusted their entity justice judgments; therefore, the experienced

injustice events were no longer in dissonance with their entity justice evaluations. This seems

to be an important extension of the processes underlying event and entity justice dynamics

described by Jones and Skarlicki (2013).

Eva provided an example of how justification of injustice events may unfold over

time. At time 2, she saw her job offered to her replacement, and she reacted as follows: That

kind of atmosphere doesn't suit me. When someone makes a decision about my job without

informing me, I don't appreciate it. While she felt very disappointed at time 2, she offered

justifications for this same injustice event at time 3: I realized that he [supervisor] had

absolutely no idea what my work was about. Out of panic, he made decisions that he thought

were right. He didn't mean it badly. In doing so, this participant tried to make sense of the

injustice event that had happened during her maternity leave and to find explanations, as she

planned to remain within her organization for a few more years. However, despite the

explanations described above, the event that occurred at time 2 was associated with future

turnover intentions for the participant: It's pretty heavy; it's a lot of stress, a lot of hours, a lot

of work... it's very interesting, but it's interesting as long as you learn. If I'm done learning, in

3 years, there's no point in putting up with it.

Importantly, and as illustrated by Eva’s narrative, we noticed that injustice event

justification was associated with substantial evolution in career aspirations and attitudes over

time for the participants. For instance, some interviewees described a drop in both career

aspirations and expectations at time 3. Specifically, Zoé reported at time 1, I'd like to stay in

this field, grow in skills, and get management responsibilities (...), [to be] in charge of a

small team. However, at time 3, when asked about her current aspirations, she answered, The

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main objective for now is not to be on the job market in 2021, so it's a very short-term

aspiration, for now. Several interviewees also mentioned turnover intentions upon their

return to work (i.e., at time 3). For example, Andréa clearly expressed her desire to find a

new job when interviewed upon her return to work: to change jobs, to find something that is

more motivating on a daily basis.

4.4.2. Evolving career aspirations and attitudes.

We found several patterns in our data in terms of career responses over time and in

relation to justice episodes. Some of our respondents also made explicit links between the

(in)justice episodes they encountered and specific career responses. A first overall pattern

that we noticed was a decrease in career aspirations across the waves of data collection for

many participants. For example, to the question of what her career aspirations were for the

future, Gabrielle gave the following answer at time 3: to not leave home in the morning with

a bad gut feeling. Meanwhile, at time 2 she still wanted an exciting job, nice colleagues, and

a satisfying salary. Her answer at time 3 came after she felt left out of work projects and had

several altercations with her supervisor, particularly about teleworking and project

assignments. Similarly, Elisabeth also experienced injustice events at time 3, including being

sidelined from work projects and having to deal with sexist remarks from colleagues and

supervisors and reproaches from colleagues for time spent on maternity leave. When she was

asked about her career expectations upon returning to work (i.e., time 3), she said,

Professionally, I would like to continue doing what I am doing today. As long as I'm given

little things to do, I'm fine. However, at time 1, she mentioned that she desired to take on a

few bigger projects and have a small team. Similarly, we noticed a decrease in career

aspirations for one participant who encountered a justice omission at time 3. Although during

pregnancy and maternity leave, Sarah reported that she was looking for a job that is

interesting, where I am not bored, at time 3 she stated, Right now, it's about getting back on

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track. I'm looking at the short term now. At this same period of time, she complained about

the fact that her supervisor failed to adjust her workload although she had worked part time

since returning to work.

Beyond withdrawal from career aspirations, our analyses also suggest that injustice

episodes could lead to more immediate withdrawal attitudes within the current role and even

withdrawal from the job altogether. Eva provided one example. During her maternity leave,

her replacement had been offered her job by her supervisor, as described earlier. In response

to this event, Eva mentioned her desire to require teleworking arrangements: I also think that,

in relation to everything that happened during my replacement, the lack of communication,

etc., I was a little bitter. And I wanted to try this opportunity [teleworking], this right that we

have, to know if it was really good or not. Additionally, several participants reported

intentions to quit their jobs with their current employer as a result of injustice episodes.

During her pregnancy, Mary encountered different types of injustice events, including

distributive, procedural and interpersonal injustice. In particular, she faced harassment by her

supervisor and colleagues following pregnancy-related sick leave. She clearly made the link

between these events and her intention to quit her organization: I have a hard time accepting

the behavior they had because it's a lot of stress and you don't need that. So, if I can change

jobs, I will change jobs. During her maternity leave, she planned to “take it easy” when going

back to work: Given the little understanding I received during my pregnancy, I feel I have

given enough, so for now, I will do the job, I will stay, but I will take it easy. At time 3, her

intentions to quit her job remained: I am looking more than actively to change [jobs]. In

addition, she described how her attitude to hours at work had evolved over the maternity

period: Before, it was fine for me to work Monday-Friday and to pick up my son at 6 pm.

Now, I don't even want to do that anymore. I even want to be able to stay with them on

Wednesday, at the end of the day, at 4:30 pm. In a similar vein, Elise experienced several

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interpersonal injustice events with her supervisor upon her return to work. Justice issues

revolved around the work organization within the team and the allocated workload. After

these events, Elise reported at time 3, I'm starting to think that maybe it would be good to

look [for a job] closer to home. In addition, she added, As long as my job was satisfying and I

was fulfilled, I was fine. But now, I find that it's becoming more and more ordinary. If it’s

going to be like that, I might as well be right next door. Finally, Andréa provided an

interesting example of evolving career aspirations and attitudes across the three waves: At

time 1 she indicated, My relatively short-term objective is to be able to supervise projects and

then to really experience management. However, at time 2, she mentioned, To take pleasure

in what I do. To have intellectual stimulation and to have the feeling to do something useful

and relevant. In addition, at time 3, when she saw important projects and tasks reallocated to

a new colleague, she struggled to find meaning in her job: From a professional point of view,

I already had a hunch, but it does make me want to find a job that has more meaning.

4.4.3. Career withdrawal as the ultimate response to injustice.

In addition to interviewees engaging in withdrawal attitudes following injustice

episodes, despite the relatively short timeframe of our study, we observed several actual

withdrawal behaviors over time. Indeed, for several participants, experiencing important

injustice events resulted in several forms of withdrawal behaviors. For example, Camilla had

high career ambitions at time 1 and was hoping to be offered her manager’s position when he

left; however, she was not interviewed for the job on the basis that she left work too early: I

had this conversation for the job. They went so far as to put a number on it. They said, "Well,

no, you should stay until 7:30 pm”. In response, she decided to request a part-time

arrangement during her maternity leave: I decided to work part time; it's a right. They're

going to adjust my workload, they're going to take things away, and when I have to leave at

5:30 pm, I'm going to leave, and that's it. Lola also decided to take action after experiencing

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several injustice episodes with her supervisor. At time 1, she mentioned, In the future, I

would like to become a store manager. When she returned to work, she decided to request a

job transfer because of the complicated nature of the relationship with her supervisor: I

thought that by changing managers, it would be good for me to have a fresh start. She

mentioned, Staying in my current job suits me and being able to change stores, to see

something else, to have a new team, maybe a renewed motivation, that will allow me to

continue, for the moment, in this way.

A few participants even handed in their resignation. Indeed, it was the participants

who experienced the strongest forms of injustice who decided to leave their organizations.

For instance, Alice made the decision to apply for a new job during her maternity leave after

facing several injustice events as well as witnessing injustice to colleagues. At time 2, she

was denied a promised promotion and regretted the lack of transparency of promotion

attributions and of project allocation processes. She described not only her own injustice

experiences but also those that she witnessed; for example, one of her colleagues was

reprimanded for arriving 2 minutes late to work, which made her anticipate receiving the

same future treatment upon returning to work. She said, I applied somewhere else because in

terms of the range of hours and in terms of their ability to adapt to us and our family lives,

it's not easy with them. I had expectations, but now I understood how it worked. My decision

is made; I will leave. At time 3, Alice notified her employer of her resignation, and she

justified this decision as follows: The reason for my resignation was simply that I had asked

for a raise (which she did not receive). Again, she anticipated that injustice would occur

again in the future and declared, So I prefer to leave right now. Similarly, Manon experienced

a shift in her career aspirations after experiencing several injustice events, and she decided to

quit her job. At time 1 she mentioned, As I am about to have a second child, I tell myself that

I will stay in this job, as long as it allows me to be stable during the year to come, the

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maternity leave, the return of the leave, which is also a bit tiring… However, at time 2, her

promised salary increase was refused, and more importantly she saw her job advertised on a

recruitment website without being informed beforehand. Therefore, she took the decision to

resign: I didn't want to continue working with her [supervisor]. I had made the decision to

stop working for this organization and that I wanted to resign.

Taken together, these examples illustrate that injustice episodes can -- even over a

relatively short timespan from the announcement of a pregnancy until shortly after the return

from maternity leave -- lead to powerful career-relevant responses, as depicted in Figure 2.

Often, it is the accumulation of several events or omissions that individuals link together in

their mind, combined with the anticipation of future injustices based on these same events

and omissions, that appear to lead to the most powerful career responses, including reduced

career ambition, reduced commitment to the organization, reduced work hours, turnover

intentions, and ultimately resignation. While participants who provided justifications for

injustice events and justice omissions across waves tended to experience a decrease in career

aspirations and sometimes had turnover intentions at times 2 and 3, participants who engaged

in the most severe forms of actual career withdrawal behavior, such as reduced work hours

and resignation, never engaged in justification.

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Figure 2. Justice episode dynamics around maternity leave and career-related responses

Pregn

ancy

Matern

ity leave R

eturn

to work

(In)Ju

stice episod

e

Career resp

onses

Ch

ildb

irth

Tim

e

Recalled past injustice

episode

Experienced (in)justice

episodes E

xperienced (in)justice episodes

Experienced (in)justice

episodes

Withdraw

al attitudes

Withdraw

al behaviors

Career aspiration

drop C

areer aspiration drop

Withdraw

al attitudes

Withdraw

al behaviors

Career aspiration

drop

Withdraw

al attitudes

Recalled past injustice

episodes

Anticipated justice

episode

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5. DISCUSSION

The aim of this study was to explore women’s personal experiences at work at the

time around their maternity leave and the consequences of such experiences on career

outcomes. While there is little doubt that women experience a motherhood penalty (e.g.,

Correll et al., 2007; Heilman & Okimoto, 2008), we know surprisingly little about what

happens during the transition period to motherhood from women’s own perspectives. In our

study, we chose an organizational justice perspective to address this gap and adopted a

person-centric approach to qualitatively and longitudinally investigate the justice experiences

of women at work around the time of their maternity leave. Overall, our findings suggest that

maternity leave is a time when working mothers are likely to experience a number of

“typical” injustice events and justice omissions that in women’s minds are woven together,

forming justice episodes. These episodes, and how they are made sense of, can lead to

subsequent career responses. Our research offers important theoretical and practical

implications that we discuss thereafter.

First, our study is one of the first to provide a person-centric description of the

experiences faced by women at work around the time of their maternity leave. We present

women’s accounts of the typical injustice events they encountered around this important

career transition. Specific injustice events following pregnancy disclosure (time 1) typically

differed from events encountered during maternity leave (time 2) and upon return to work

(time 3). Experiences of such injustice events at this critical time period were shown to

trigger specific career responses over time, from reduced career aspirations to turnover

intention and actual resignation. This finding suggests that typical “patterns” exist across very

different organizational contexts. While the existence of some of these patterns is daunting,

the silver lining is that such shared patterns are an obvious opportunity for creating

organizational guidelines and codes of conduct and providing training for front-line managers

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and HR staff. For example, one of the recurring issues upon return to work is the restriction

of teleworking requests and implementation, which could be easily avoided by providing

greater flexibility in work arrangements for returning employees.

Furthermore, our findings add to our understanding of the justice dynamics at the time

around maternity leave by describing the interplay of injustice events and justice omissions

over time. Justice omissions, which have previously been neglected by research, are

important justice manifestations that take more subtle forms than observable injustice events.

We found previous theoretical work that hinted at the possibility of such dynamics: Fortin

and Fellenz (2008) drew on Lukes’ (2005) power exercise framework to identify three

categories of managerial practices that shape and manage employees’ fairness perceptions.

The second category, “preventing”, suggests that (in)justice may also manifest in more subtle

forms and thus may not be directly perceptible. For instance, “issues that are not talked

about” (p. 422) may prevent employees from taking action and thus are likely to go unnoticed

by classical survey research approaches. Nevertheless, the authors expected that these

manifestations would likely result in attitudinal responses (Fortin & Fellenz, 2008). Despite

this observation, the literature has largely neglected the investigation of such justice

manifestations that are less salient than justice events at first glance but that – intertwining

with injustice events – can create powerful justice episodes leading to important

consequences. Our findings highlight the importance of studying justice omissions over time

and provide more concrete information on the type of justice omission likely to be

experienced by women at the time around maternity leave, when they might occur, and how

they are made sense of.

We argue that the interplay of justice omission and injustice events forms a justice

episode. Whiteside and Barclay (2015) introduced the term justice episode to describe the

phenomenon by which an initial justice event can trigger new events and entity assessments.

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We propose that justice episodes may also involve justice omissions. Whiteside and Barclay

(2015) stated that a justice episode “often involves a series of transactions with the

environment that are all organized around a central theme” (p. 37), and our findings suggest

that injustice events and justice omissions usually stem from the same underlying issue. They

are temporally intertwined; for example, injustice events can trigger the perception of justice

omissions, and justice omissions can bring about or enable injustice events. Importantly, not

only the injustice event but also the justice omission may be viewed as unfair. This

observation holds important implications for our understanding of the emergence of injustice

experiences over time, and our knowledge on justice dynamics is likely to remain incomplete

if we neglect justice omissions.

This study contributes to the helpful foundations of Rupp and Paddock (2010) and

Jones and Skarlicki (2013) in their models of justice dynamics by shedding light on the

mechanisms underlying event and entity justice dynamics. As suggested by Jones and

Skarlick (2013), individuals engage in sense-making activities when they gauge a specific

justice event as being inconsistent with their expectations of an entity. Our results suggest

that individuals may use their autobiographical memory and retrieve past (in)justice events to

make sense of a new event. Over time, this is likely to result in a reassessment of the fairness

of an entity to bring consistency between injustice experiences and the entity fairness

evaluation. Finally, we provide empirical insights into the interconnectedness of events and

entity evaluations. In line with Rupp and Paddock’s (2010) model, we found evidence that

injustice events and entity assessment are closely linked in the participants’ minds and have

important career implications.

Our research sheds light on the motivated nature of temporal justice dynamics in the

context of career transitions by providing accounts of participants’ system justification at

times around their maternity leave. System justification theory suggests that people are

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motivated to view the system (i.e., organization) they work for as fair (Jost & Banaji, 1994).

Therefore, employees are typically motivated to provide justifications for unfair treatment,

even when they are disadvantaged, because they want to believe that their system is fair (Jost,

2019). Our study offers insights into when and how women engage in system justification.

Specifically, we provide information on the specific injustice events and justice omissions

that triggered system justification for our participants and how their system justifications

evolved over time and within persons. In line with system justification theory, we noticed

that participants who engaged in justification tended to view their supervisors as fair and did

not wish to “unsettle” this reassuring belief. However, our findings show that despite

engaging in system justification to provide plausible explanations for perceived unfair

treatment from a supervisor, the participants’ career aspirations and attitudes could still suffer

from the experience of injustice events and justice omissions over their maternity leave

period. That is, while some participants engaged in system justification across waves, they

also experienced a decrease in their career aspirations and increasing turnover intention over

time; other participants stopped relying on system justification after experiencing a series of

injustice events and justice omissions, which also resulted in decreased career aspirations and

turnover intentions. Indeed, as suggested by system justification and motivated justice

theorizing (Barclay et al., 2017), when evidence of the unfairness of the system becomes so

blatant that it cannot be ignored, then the motivated belief that the system is fair (the illusion

of objectivity) cannot be upheld.

Our research also provides one of the first person-centric studies of autobiographical

memory dynamics (or mental time travel), which plays an important role in motivated justice

dynamics at work. Such possibilities are theoretically raised by Barclay et al. (2017), who

suggest that memories are an important part of motivated justice reasoning. Our empirical

results indeed show intimate linkages among injustice events, justice omissions, justice

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memories and anticipations of justice treatment. They also provide information on how one

triggers the others. Specifically, our findings suggest that new injustice events can trigger

memories of past injustice events and/or justice omissions and that past injustice events

and/or justice omissions can be used to anticipate future justice experiences. As sequences of

events and omissions are woven together through autobiographical memory functions,

sometimes previous events are “added” to the sequence of elements that make up a justice

episode (e.g., remembering something that one’s manager said long before the maternity

leave started). Therefore, justice episodes not only extend into the future but also can extend

into the past as memories are added that fit into current motivated sense-making activities.

For example, when injustice episodes triggered withdrawal attitudes and, in particular, the

wish to quit the organization, the participants became motivated to justify this decision and

attitude and reinforced their new injustice assessments of the organization or supervisor by

remembering past experiences, which were often seemingly unrelated.

Furthermore, our research also contributes to the literature on discrimination at the

time around pregnancy announcement and extends our knowledge of the typical

discriminatory events that women face and the strategies that they use to disclose their

pregnancy. While Jones (2017) investigated the role of anticipated discrimination in

employees’ pregnancy disclosure strategies and subsequent experienced discrimination, we

explored women’s justice experiences, which involved perceived discrimination and their

consequences on women’s career attitudes, not only during pregnancy but also during

maternity leave and upon reentry. Our findings reveal that whereas women perceived

discrimination while pregnant (e.g., pregnancy-related harassment), they also did so upon

their return to work. These experiences had direct implications for women’s career behavior

withdrawal. Taken together, our findings might provide a reflection on how the

organizational justice and discrimination literature can be cross-fertilized. In particular, our

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research offers a salient illustration of how injustice events, which often involve

discrimination, and justice omissions can form the breeding ground for discrimination.

Finally, this study sheds light on what happens at the critical point of maternity leave

at a micro level and from the subjective viewpoint of the persons involved. This information

is helpful to explain some of the macro trends that have been observed by sociologists and

labor economists, as mentioned in the introduction – widening the “gender scissors” around

the birth of a first child (e.g., Kleven et al., 2019). Indeed, the career reactions we observe

(both attitudinal and behavioral) are very powerful, even though we examined only a short

time window in our study. Specifically, they relate mainly to withdrawal, and we know that

concrete withdrawal decisions in mid-career (e.g., reducing hours, reducing ambitions,

decreasing responsibilities) can lastingly change the course of a career (Williams et al.,

2013).

6. Practical implications

Given that justice experiences at the time around maternity leave have damaging

consequences on women’s career attitudes and decisions, organizations that want to retain

women and wish to promote gender equality need to promote fair and supportive practices,

especially around the time of maternity leave. The identified typical injustice events

encountered by women across the three waves of data collection offer concrete guidelines on

the practices to avoid during the maternity leave period. A surprising number of the observed

injustices are actually prohibited by law in the European Union and in France as part of the

legislation on discrimination and harassment. Other practices and omissions did not

correspond to legal or contractual requirements and rights. A very first step may therefore

simply consist of thoroughly informing managers of these legal frameworks and signaling the

importance of adhering to them.

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Beyond providing information on practices to avoid when managing an employee at

the time around her maternity leave, our study also offers concrete suggestions of actions to

implement during this critical period of time for the careers of women. As an initial step, we

suggest that women have to be provided with all necessary information regarding the legal

dispositions available during their pregnancy (time 1) and regarding breastfeeding

arrangements upon return to work (time 3). Furthermore, many interviewees complained

about the lack of anticipation of their maternity leave; therefore, we encourage managers to

take the time to organize, conjointly with the employee, her absence to reduce uncertainty

levels associated with maternity leave. Upon return to work, many returning employees

decide to take advantage of specific work arrangements, such as part-time work, but these

arrangements are rarely associated with a workload adjustment; therefore, managers need to

make an effort to align the workload to mothers’ new work arrangements.

Moreover, given that maternity leave is a time when women’s central career motives

may change, we encourage managers to organize a return-to-work interview with the

returning employee to identify her possibly changing career motives that may require

adjustments in terms of work arrangements and yearly objectives. This interview will also be

an opportunity for exchange with the returning mother to identify her current career goals and

interests and reduce the likelihood of making assumptions about her life and career priorities,

which very often originate from gender role beliefs (Eagly & Wood, 2016) and can be a

source of damaging career consequences for working mothers.

Table 3 presents a concise summary of the typical injustice events and omissions we

observed in the present study, with concrete and practical propositions that organizations and

managers may wish to implement to counter each of them.

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Table 3. Propositions to counter the most common (in)justice events and omissions around

maternity leave

Common injustice events Related propositions During pregnancy

Meetings set outside of working hours

Interviewees cannot take pregnancy-related

provisions because of intense workload/

Employees are pushed to overwork during

pregnancy

Telework requests refused

Sexist remarks related to maternity

1. Schedule meetings only between 9h30am

and 5pm

2. Adjust employees’ workload following

pregnancy disclosure so that they can

take advantage of pregnancy-related

provisions and so that their work activities are in line with medical

recommendations during pregnancy.

3. Offer and facilitate flexible work

arrangements to employees throughout

their pregnancy to facilitate pregnant

women’s work.

4. Provide voluntary training to all

employees to bring awareness on the legal framework surrounding interactions

at work and encourage for the fair

treatment of all employees, mothers included. Organizations can also consider

displaying posters to highlight the

punishable nature of these remarks.

During maternity leave

Lack of transparency on promotion and bonus

allocations/Missed promotions and bonuses

Being contacted by colleagues and supervisor

while one leave

5. Communicate in advance clear and

detailed information on criteria to meet to

receive a bonus or to get promoted/ Strictly apply the provisions of the

Gender Equality Index (France), which

states that if raises were given during the

employee’s absence, she must also receive a salary raise upon her return to

work.

6. To avoid contacting the absent employee

while she is on leave, it is important to

anticipate and organize her departure.

Upon return to work

Restriction in teleworking requests and

arrangements

Projects and tasks reallocated without

consideration or consultation of the returning

employee

7. Offer and facilitate flexible work

arrangements to the returning employee

to help her balance her professional and family lives.

8. A conjoined organization of maternity

leave between the manager and the

employee could help anticipate issues of

this nature upon reentry. A return-from-leave interview may also provide an

opportunity to discuss project and task

assignments and make adjustments if

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Comments from colleagues and supervisors on

new work arrangements

necessary.

9. Voluntary training to employees and

managers could bring awareness on

work-family challenges and reduce biases towards working mothers.

Common justice omissions Related propositions During pregnancy

Lack of communication on important

information related to pregnancy and maternity

leave provisions

No anticipation and organization of maternity leave

No consideration of pregnancy in tasks appointments

10. Provide a booklet with all the

information related to pregnancy,

maternity leave and breastfeeding provisions following pregnancy

announcement.

11. Carefully and conjointly with the employee organize her absence during

maternity leave. This would help

reducing employee’s uncertainty as well as the likelihood of (in)justice

experiences to occur.

12. Align work tasks with recommended medical practices during pregnancy.

Upon return to work

Workload is not adjusted to the new work arrangements of the returning employee

Lack of communication on events and

organizational changes that happened during the

leave

13. Adjust workload to meet new work arrangements such that working reduced

hours is coupled with a reduced workload

(i.e., reduced-load work)

14. Schedule a return-from-leave interview

to communicate any important

information to the returning employee. This meeting can also be a moment when

to discuss the employee’s career

priorities and desires, and task and project allocations.

7. Limitations

Naturally, the present study has limitations, some of which indicate interesting

avenues for future research. First, although our sample presents some diversity in terms of

organization types (e.g., private versus public), industries and number of children, we can of

course not claim that our sample is representative of all highly skilled working women in

France and less so of all highly trained working women in the world. There is scope for a

greater diversity of profiles, organizations and cultures to be studied. For instance, even

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though we did not exclude same-sex couples from our study, we were not able to recruit

women in same-sex relationships, and similarly, even though we opened our study to women

who adopted children, none of our participants went through an adoption process.

Additionally, France is a country where pregnancy leave is relatively short but fully paid for

by the state, and maternity is highly regulated. It is likely that other legal and institutional

contexts will bring about different types of injustice events and omissions.

8. Conclusion

Researching women’s personal experiences at work at the time around maternity

leave is of paramount importance if we want to unveil the underlying workplace mechanisms

that put women at a career disadvantage once they become mothers. Our research sheds light

on the typical (in)justice episodes women face at work from the time they announce their

pregnancy up to when they reenter organizations following maternity leave and provides

meaningful information on how women experience and make sense of these justice

experiences over time. We find that injustice events and justice omissions have harmful

consequences on women’s career aspirations, attitudes and behaviors over time and as such

may reinforce gender career inequality in organizations. These findings hold significant

implications for organizations and managers wishing to better handle the period of maternity

leave for their female employees.

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CHAPTER 4. All at Home: The Gender Effect of Work and

Childcare Interruptions during Telework

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the following venues:

Fortin, M., Desjardins, C., German, H., Ohana, M. (2021). Double-disadvantage for female

teleworkers in times of COVID-19: How work-to-childcare interruptions affect women

differently than men. Paper presented at the symposium “Poorly understood challenges that

women face at work”, Academy of Management, online.

Fortin, M., Desjardins, C., German, H., Ohana, M. (2021). All at home: the gendered effect

of work and childcare interruptions during telework and the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper

presented at Aston Business School Research colloquim, online.

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Abstract

The general trend towards telework has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and

many parents have been teleworking and taking care of their children at the same time and in

the same space. One well-illustrated yet less-understood consequence of these new

arrangements has been an exacerbation of gender differences, even among dual-career

couples, in terms of both productivity and wellbeing. The present research sheds light on this

phenomenon by focusing on cross-domain interruptions between childcare and work. In a

daily diary study with 339 teleworking parents, we find that the career goals of men and

women and the downstream outcomes of work engagement and emotional exhaustion are

negatively affected by childcare-to-work interruptions. The effects of work-to-childcare

interruptions are, however, different for men compared to women, with only women’s

perceived daily balance being negatively affected by such interruptions. Interestingly, men

even benefit from some positive effects of these interruptions, which allows them to

experience more daily authenticity and challenge, while women do not. These findings

illustrate how the daily experiences of teleworkers contribute to growing gender gaps in

terms of career and wellbeing with important implications for organizations aiming to

promote gender equality.

Keywords: work interruptions; working parents; work-nonwork interface; telework; gender

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1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to the large-scale introduction of full-time

telework, which has eliminated the spatial and temporal separation between the work and

family spheres for teleworking employees. As schools have closed in many countries, parents

of young children have found themselves juggling childcare and work responsibilities. These

new arrangements have been found to exacerbate gender inequalities around the globe (Lokot

& Bhatia, 2020) because typically, women have handled most of the childcare—even among

dual-earner couples (Feng and Savani, 2020; Shockley et al., 2020). Researchers have linked

this observation with stronger declines in productivity (Lee & Tipoe, 2020) and mental health

(Bilodeau et al., 2020) for women than for men.

Although there remains little doubt that the pandemic has affected work, career and

health outcomes for both men and women, we need to understand the mechanisms that

explain how and when telework can be harmful versus rewarding for parents. Investigations

of the experience of mothers and fathers in telework can help us understand precisely why

and how new ways of work affect men and women differently, not only in the context of

COVID-19 but also beyond. Such knowledge is important for organizations and researchers

who wish to promote gender equality at work and who aim to protect the wellbeing of

working parents.

The present research was conducted during the first COVID-19 wave in France (i.e.,

in April 2020), when childcare institutions were closed and many employees switched to

100% telework arrangements. We investigated the daily experiences of teleworking mothers

and fathers of children aged six years and younger with a focus on interruptions between the

work and childcare spheres. The temporal and spatial blurring of these two spheres is a petri

dish for interruptions, which are defined as the ‘unexpected suspension of the behavioral

performance of, and/or attentional focus from, an ongoing work task’ (Puranik et al., 2020, p.

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817). As the experience of being interrupted at work has been shown to vary from day to day

(Derks et al., 2021), we used a diary approach to capture daily cross-domain interruptions.

More specifically, we differentiate between daily perceived experiences of childcare

interrupting work, referred to as childcare-to-work interruptions (CWIs), and of work

interrupting childcare, referred to as work-to-childcare interruptions (WCIs).

The effects of interruptions need to be understood in the context of a person’s goal

system (Leroy et al., 2020). For example, interruptions can be seen as frustrations or

welcome breaks depending on one’s motivated interpretation of them. We are interested in

the effects of cross-domain interruptions on the perceived fulfillment of central work and

career goals. Specifically, we draw on the well-established career goal taxonomy developed

by researchers on the kaleidoscope career model (KCM) (Mainiero & Gibson, 2018, p. 363),

which differentiates between authenticity, balance and challenge. Authenticity refers to being

‘true to oneself and one’s values’; balance refers to meeting ‘demands and expectations from

both work and family domains simultaneously’, and challenge corresponds to seeking

‘stimulation, learning, and skill growth to increase personal capability’. In the present

research, we investigate the effects of CWIs and WCIs in telework and home childcare

situations on the daily fulfillment of these career goals. We further illustrate the practical

relevance of daily variations in interruptions and effects on career goals by including

downstream outcomes, namely, work engagement and emotional exhaustion.

Furthermore, drawing on the gender role perspective (see Gutek et al., 1991), we

argue that the relationship between interruptions and the fulfillment of career goals may be

different for men than for women. According to traditional role expectations, childcare

remains a more central role for women, who are often seen as neglecting their families if they

pursue an ambitious career. In contrast, men tend to be seen as caring breadwinners if they

focus on advancing their careers. Following this perspective, women may be less open to

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moving their attention away from their supposedly primary task—looking after their

children—therefore exacerbating the negative effect of WCIs on their experienced fulfillment

of daily work and career goals. Similarly, men may be less open to moving their attention

away from work, therefore exacerbating the negative effects of CWIs.

Our research makes several important contributions to the literature. While the

emerging literature on work interruptions has, to date, been dominated by within-domain

interruptions, our results underline the need to investigate cross-domain interruptions, which

may trigger somewhat different patterns of experiences and reactions. Although the pandemic

context of the present study —‘when work and home are in the same sphere for both men and

women’ (Shockley et al., 2020, p.2) — may seem like an extreme case, cross-domain

interruptions more generally gain importance in the context of flexible work arrangements

and telework (Delanoeije et al., 2019).

Furthermore, the investigation of cross-domain interruptions can shed new light on

both the positive and negative effects of interruptions. As Puranik et al. (2020) highlighted in

their recent review, while the downside of interruptions is well documented, the potential

‘upside’ of interruptions remains less understood (c.f., Crawford et al., 2010). A direct

consequence of cross-domain interruptions is that they draw one’s attention away from one

life domain and to another, with possible positive or negative effects on goal fulfillment in

both of these domains depending on one’s own motive structure and role understanding.

Finally, the present research also speaks to the observed phenomenon of increasing gender

gaps during the COVID-19 crisis. Our study suggests that the daily differences in how

interruptions during telework are experienced may explain downstream career and wellbeing

consequences for men and women. These findings have implications with regard to how

organizations support parents of young children and women’s careers.

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2. Theoretical background

2.1. Telework of working parents in times of COVID-19

Telework enables employees to perform their work outside of their employers’ office

using information technology to communicate and operate (Baruch, 2001). The use of

telework has increased dramatically over the past few decades (Allen et al., 2015), and there

is evidence that this trend is set to continue (Eavis & Haag, 2021). The lockdown measures

introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated this trend and provided a unique

teleworking context: many employees switched to working 100% from home. The most

extreme effects of such measures may be felt by those who care for young children as schools

and daycares closed in many countries.

Cross-domain interruptions between the work and home spheres (in both directions)

have been shown to increase in telework contexts (Delanoeije et al., 2019). We follow the

definition of Puranik et al. (2020), according to which the unexpected suspension of the

behavioral performance of and/or attentional focus from an ongoing task represent

interruptions. Our focus on cross-domain interruptions is important because they tend to incur

higher transaction costs than within-domain interruptions (Ashforth, 2000) and are one of the

features that differentiate traditional work environments from more flexible ‘alternative work

arrangements’ (Spreitzer et al., 2017). In our study, we focus on interruptions between the

work and the childcare spheres, which are two central domains for working parents with

young children. Cross-domain interruptions between these two domains are bound to arise

when parents are teleworking while their children are at home. First, when children are at

home, they demand parents’ attention and help, for example, when they are hungry or bored

or hurt themselves. For a working parent, this often requires a behavioral switch away from

work tasks. Additionally, children making noise or running around can lead to parents

becoming distracted, even when they continue their work task. Second, work also interferes

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with childcare. For example, in an attempt to meet their family demands, employees may try

to do some of their work outside of regular office hours, such as during early mornings or

after children’s bedtime (see Mustafa & Gold, 2013), yet their colleagues and supervisors

may contact them at other times. Given the widespread pressure to be responsive at all times

(Matusik and Mickel, 2011), parents may also feel the need to respond to ‘urgent’ emails and

phone calls even while performing family tasks. Even if parents do not respond behaviorally

to these interruptions, knowing that an answer is expected can distract their attention away

from their childcare.

We draw on boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000) to get a better understanding of

how boundary violations, materialized by cross-domain interruptions, may affect mothers and

fathers’ work outcomes. Boundary theory describes how individuals navigate between work

and family spheres by performing micro role transitions. The unique context of the COVID-

19 pandemic and the related work and family arrangements have created greater permeability

between work and family boundaries and have therefore favored cross-domain interruptions

(Kossek et al., 2012). In particular, when individuals face “spatial/time constraints, meaning

contradictions and dual commitments” (Ashforth et al., 2000, p.481) because they are

involved in the work and the family roles simultaneously, interruptions costs are higher

(Burke, 1991). For example, teleworking parents under lockdown have to care their children

during working hours and thus perform dual commitment, they are also confronted to spatial

and time constraint because they usually cannot simultaneously be in a work meeting and

care for their children, at the same time they are likely to experience meaning contradiction

because they face discrepancies between their work and parent identities. In conclusion,

teleworking parents in times of lockdown experience multiple cross-domain interruptions

between work and childcare and the unique characteristics of these interruptions are likely to

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impact parents’ work outcomes. In the present research, we consider how CWIs and WCIs

affect important outcomes through their effect on the daily fulfillment of career goals.

2.2. Career goals - long term and daily

Our focus on the fulfillment of career goals is particularly relevant in the context of

understanding how the daily experiences of teleworkers may translate into career outcomes

that can have lasting effects beyond the lockdown period. To categorize career goals, we

draw on the KCM (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005), which argues that people make career

choices according to three main goals: whether their decisions are true to who they are

(authenticity), their ideal work/life balance (balance), and the opportunities for work

challenges and career advancement (challenge). These three goals typically shift over one’s

career, like the changing colored patterns in a twisted kaleidoscope, with parameters gaining

importance or receding into the background at different times. Recent research has shown

that the satisfaction of core needs that people seek to fulfill at work and in their careers

fluctuates in a meaningful way on a daily basis and affects important wellbeing and

performance outcomes (De Gieter & Hofmans, 2018; Hewett et al., 2017; van Hooff

&Geurts, 2015). On a daily level, employees seek to fulfill their career goals through

corresponding behaviors and tasks. For example, working on a project with high visibility

and tight deadlines may bring about daily challenges, working on a daily task in line with

one’s core values can translate into experiencing authenticity, and being able to leave work

early to spend time with one’s children may help fulfill the balance goal.

2.3. Interruptions and career goals

CWIs and WCIs likely impact the fulfillment of individual career goals on a daily

basis. Generally, interruptions have psychological costs, such as increased effort expenditure

(Derks et al., 2021). One reason for this is that there are several cognitive demands linked to

such interruptions (Puranik et al., 2020). For example, interrupted employees need to keep

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the disturbed task in their memory and then require cognitive resources to retrieve it

(Altmann & Trafton, 2002). The switching from one domain to another also results in the

division of attentional resources, which leads to a high mental workload (Tan & Richardson,

2011) and the tendency to keep thinking about the disrupted task even after starting a new

task (Leroy, 2009). These additional demands also result in increased time demands and,

therefore, increased work load (Baethge et al., 2015).

In particular, CWIs and WCIs can be considered as barriers that obstruct career goal

attainment (Hirschi et al., 2019). Cross-domain interruptions under lockdown settings can

occur unpredictably and cannot always be acted on easily and as such may prohibit goal

fulfillment. However, and as suggested by Hirschi and colleagues (2019), the scope of the

inhibition of such a barrier will depend on both the nature of the interruption as well as on the

individual’s desired (work or family) goal. Thus, cross-domain interruptions are likely to

produce different work and career outcomes depending on one’s goal structure.

Specifically, the experience of CWIs can bring about additional cognitive demands

and attentional conflicts that are unrelated to the task at hand, preventing individuals from

feeling like they are ‘true to themselves’, or authentic, in their work role. Indeed, Mitchell et

al. (2008) found that work interruptions impeded self-regulation toward one’s work goals.

This mechanism may be reinforced by parents’ lingering thoughts about their children when

finally returning to work. The cognitive demands and attention conflicts linked with CWIs

also make it difficult on a daily level to fulfill the work goal of challenge, which typically

requires strong task focus and dedication. The satisfaction of challenge often resides in the

completion of complex tasks, and the literature suggests that these tasks are the ones most

likely to suffer from interruptions (Speier et al., 2003). Finally, because CWIs hinder goal

achievement in the work domain, they can lead to the perception of a failed equilibrium

between the two domains, i.e., a frustration of the balance goal. As Delanoeije et al. (2019)

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argue, frequent cross-domain transitions make it harder for employees to fulfill their work

tasks that day as the psychological and behavioral switches required for the transitions can

reduce the time left to fulfill work demands, thus making a successful equilibrium between

both domains less likely. Thus, we formulate

Hypothesis 1 (H1a-c): CWIs are negatively related to the daily fulfillment of (a)

authenticity, (b) balance and (c) challenge.

WCIs represent the opposite crossing of spheres: WCIs come from within the work

sphere and interrupt a sphere outside of work, i.e., childcare. WCIs also represent a

disturbance of balance between the work and family domains (Sullivan & Baruch, 2009), as

they cast doubt on whether the childcare space can be protected from work demands. As

employees need to interrupt their childcare to perform work tasks, this is costly in terms of

time and resources and hinders the fulfilment of the parent role, making a perceived

equilibrium between both domains less likely. We therefore propose

Hypothesis 2 (H2): WCIs are negatively related to the daily fulfillment of balance.

The relationship between WCIs, authenticity and challenge, however, may be more

complicated, with arguments for both a positive and a negative relationship between WCIs

and these career goals. Like all interruptions, WCIs come at a cognitive cost, resulting in

divided attention, additional time and effort required for memory storage and retrieval, and

high mental workload. These may make it more difficult for an employee to experience the

fulfillment of authenticity and challenge goals. Conversely, WCI interruptions bring attention

back from the nonwork domain to the work domain and may therefore reorient an individual

toward career-oriented behaviors, helping the individual recalibrate his/her attention and

behavior in such a way that his/her fulfillment of authenticity and challenge is more likely.

For example, being interrupted by the phone call of a supervisor who wishes to consult the

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employee on an urgent and complex work issue might contribute to the feeling of meeting

challenge goals on that particular work day. Similarly, WCIs may positively impact

authenticity fulfillment if the interruption triggers feelings of meaning and purpose. For

example, being asked for one’s help or expertise might bring additional meaning to one’s

work day, and this feeling is likely to translate into authenticity fulfillment. We therefore

formulate not a hypothesis but rather an exploratory question: are WCIs negatively or

positively related to the daily fulfillment of authenticity and challenge?

2.4. Interruptions and work engagement

Work engagement has been defined as a work-related state of mind distinguished by

its ‘vigor, dedication and absorption’ (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). In line with the findings

on goal satisfaction and work outcomes (for a review, see Van den Broeck et al., 2016), we

argue that work engagement is one of the likely daily outcomes resulting from the fulfillment

of career goals: when the goals of authenticity, balance and challenge are fulfilled, this results

in a positive spiral as employees are likely to further engage in their work to sustain such goal

fulfillment. This is supported by Ouweneel et al. (2012, p. 1133), who posit that individuals’

expectations of ‘their capabilities to control and achieve their work-related goals results in

more involvement at work’. For example, if parents’ desires for challenge and authenticity

are achieved, we expect that this positive psychological reward will encourage them to invest

more time, energy and dedication in their work. In contrast, following the logic of expectancy

theories of motivation (e.g., Vroom, 1964), if individuals’ career goals are unmet, they may

reduce work engagement since they see their investment as not leading to contentment with

their career goals.

Following this argumentation and H1, we suggest that career goal fulfillment

mediates the relationship between interruptions and work engagement. CWIs distract

employees from the pursuit of their career goals (i.e., the fulfillment of authenticity, balance

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and challenge goals) and therefore cause decreased work engagement: the more parents feel

interrupted by their children while trying to work, the less likely parents are to meet their

goals of authenticity and balance and challenge at work. This results in a negative spiral, with

work activities perceived as less instrumental to goal attainment, which in turn affects their

work engagement.

Similarly, we argue that WCIs have downstream effects on work engagement through

their effects on career goals. Frequent WCIs make parents struggle in their attempt to meet

the childcare expectations they set for themselves, affecting their fulfillment of balance. In an

attempt to rebalance, parents are likely to reduce their work engagement. For the career goals

of authenticity and challenge, if these goals are indeed better fulfilled because of

interruptions that are perceived as contributing to work goals, then we expect that this

fulfillment will result in higher work engagement. Conversely, if authenticity and challenge

are reduced as a result of interruptions that are seen as goal impeding, then we expect this

reduction to lead to lower goal fulfillment and, in turn, lower work engagement. Thus, we

hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 3 (H3a-c): The daily fulfillment of (a) authenticity, (b) balance, and (c)

challenge mediates the relationship between CWIs and work engagement.

Hypothesis 4 (H4a-c): The daily fulfillment of (a) authenticity, (b) balance, and (c)

challenge mediates the relationship between WCIs and work engagement.

2.5. Interruptions and emotional exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion is defined as involving ‘feelings of being emotionally

overextended and exhausted because of one’s work’ (Maslach et al., 1986, p. 194) and is

often measured as the negative antithesis of work engagement (Maslach et al., 2001). In light

of the demonstrated potential negative health effects of telework (Mann & Holdsworth,

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2003), we include emotional exhaustion in our study as a result of cross-domain interruptions

in telework via career goal (non)fulfillment. As with work engagement, we expect that the

effects of CWIs and WCIs on career goal fulfillment will consequently be related to the level

of emotional exhaustion of the interrupted employee and that career goal fulfilment mediates

the relationship between cross-domain interruptions and emotional exhaustion. The

theoretical rationale is that CWIs, which require the cognitive transition from the role of

parent to that of employee and represent additional time pressures for parents, will interfere

with a parent’s pursuit of daily career goals, which, in turn, can increase the strain

experienced from daily job demands. Indeed, this line of reasoning is supported by a recent

longitudinal study by Giebe and Rigotti (2020), who find that time pressure thwarts

autonomy career goals, which leads to an increase in emotional exhaustion. Similarly, Haar et

al. (2018) find that daily need satisfaction mediates the relationship between family-work

conflict and burnout (emotional exhaustion and cynicism).

Specifically, the daily fulfillment of each of the three career goals considered in the

present study is expected to be negatively related to daily emotional exhaustion. First, when

WCI interferences lead to unmet balance goals (as argued above), parents are likely to

experience frustration in being unable to achieve their goals. Emotional responses are a

consequence of frustration with unfilled goals and lack of control over work (Maslach &

Leiter, 1997). Pines (1993) asserts that burnout, of which emotional exhaustion is a symptom,

can result when an individual’s work-related goals are obstructed (i.e., interrupted), and the

resulting failure can be perceived by individuals as a lack of personal accomplishment

(Snyder, 1994). If authenticity and challenge are fulfilled through WCIs, then we expect this

to result in lower emotional exhaustion. In contrast, if the fulfillment of these goals is

lessened, this can result in increased levels of emotional exhaustion. Therefore, we

hypothesize the following:

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Hypothesis 5 (H5a-c): The daily fulfillment of (a) authenticity, (b) balance, and (c)

challenge mediates the relationship between CWIs and emotional exhaustion.

Hypothesis 6 (H6a-c): The daily fulfillment of (a) authenticity, (b) balance, and (c)

challenge mediates the relationship between WCIs and emotional exhaustion.

2.6. Gender effects of cross-domain interruptions

As resources are limited, time spent focusing attention on one domain (work or

childcare) reduces the time spent on another domain (Hunter et al., 2017). The perception of

an interruption as goal obstructing will therefore also depend on the centrality of each

domain. Drawing on gender role theory (Gutek et al., 1991), we argue that CWIs and WCIs

may therefore have a differential effect on men’s versus women’s work experience.

Traditional gender roles suggest that fathers are the main breadwinners and mothers

the primary caregivers for children – a gendered pattern that is still visible today, even in

societies that are comparably lower in gender discrimination. For example, in their recent

study on Finnish and Canadian lawyers, Choroszewicz and Kay (2020) describe how –

despite the rise of the dual career couple – gender inequalities are reproduced. The findings

illustrate that a traditional professional model in which work prevails over family still persists

and that gender expectations among employees who wish to be seen as worthy of promotion,

and even legal rights such as parental leave and flexible work arrangements, are offered

differentially to men versus women. During the COVID-19 pandemic, gender roles have not

only persisted but become even more visible. Shockley et al. (2020) found that many dual-

earner couples have followed a traditional gender division of labor during lockdown, where

mothers have been in charge of most of the childcare. Similarly, Collins et al. (2021)

discovered that women have reduced their work hours four to five times more than men since

the closure of schools and daycares. We argue that such gender roles may not only have an

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effect on the time that men, compared to women, spend on childcare but may also have a

seemingly more subtle effect on their daily experiences of CWIs and WCIs.

We draw on the gender role perspective (Gutek et al., 1991) to understand how

women’s experiences with CWIs and WCIs may differ from those of men. This perspective

argues that gender role beliefs influence people’s perceptions of the social roles of women

and men, e.g., as parents and employees (Eagly & Wood, 2016). Traditionally, women are

expected to be the primary caregivers, while men are expected to be the breadwinners (Gutek

et al., 1991). Individuals typically internalize the societal beliefs that make up gender roles

and regulate their behaviors accordingly. This may affect how CWIs and WCIs are perceived

by men compared to women: previous research has suggested that interruptions have a more

negative impact on an individual to the extent that they are seen as less central to his/her role

(Rosen et al., 2019) and to the extent that they affect the domain seen as more central (Derks

et al., 2021). If men’s primary gender role is indeed focused in the work sphere, then

interruptions from the childcare sphere (CWIs) should be particularly troubling for them

because they perceive a goal obstruction away from their primary role (work). Similarly, we

reason that WCIs may have particularly negative effects on the perceived fulfillment of

career goals for women, whose primary gender role as caregivers is threatened by WCIs.

Women may perceive these interruptions from the work domain as a family sacrifice (Nsair

& Piszczek, 2021) and therefore find it more difficult than men to shift their attention away

from childcare tasks and are less likely to perceive the attentional diversion caused by WCIs

as welcome stimulation and instead perceive it as an obstruction to their primary role.

We therefore hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 7 (H7a-c): The relationship between CWIs and daily fulfillment of (a)

authenticity, (b) balance and (c) challenge is moderated by gender such that it is

stronger for men than for women.

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Hypothesis 8 (H8a-c): The relationship between WCIs and daily fulfillment of (a)

authenticity, (b) balance and (c) challenge is moderated by gender such that it is

stronger for women than for men.

3. Method

3.1. Design, procedure and participants

In March and April 2020, participants were recruited via social media platforms

(Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn). Individuals were eligible to participate if they were 18

years old or older, had a higher education degree, lived in France, were employed,

teleworked full-time during the study period and had at least one child who was six years old

or younger. We chose participants with a higher education degree because the career

penalties of having a child have been shown to be particularly pronounced among highly

educated women (England et al., 2016). Furthermore, we chose parents of children of six

years or younger because in France, age six is when children move from the ‘maternelle’

(play school) to the more formal school and when they supposedly become more

independent. Overall, 367 respondents of the prescreening questionnaire fulfilled these

criteria and were invited via email to take part in our study. After completing a welcome

questionnaire, participants were sent a daily diary questionnaire during one work week,

Monday through Friday, at 4 pm each day to be completed before 2 am the next day. For

their participation in the study, participants could receive up to €60. The total number of

participants who took part in the study was 339. After removing participants with incomplete

data and those who answered fewer than three questionnaires, the final sample consisted of

287 participants who answered 1,309 daily surveys. Among them, 68% were female, and the

mean age was 37 years. On average, participants had 1.7 children.

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3.2. Measures

Survey items were answered on a 7-point scale, from totally disagree (1) to totally

agree (7).

CWIs and WCIs: were adapted from the perceived interruptions scale of Sonnentag

et al. (2018). The initial scale focused on interruptions caused by ‘emails and other online

messages’. We tailored the items to childcare and work interruptions. For CWIs, we used

three items, including ‘Today, my children disturbed me while I was working’. For WCIs, we

used three items, including ‘Today, my work disturbed me while I was looking after my

children’. Across the five days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha was .87 for CWIs and .77 for

WCIs.

The daily fulfillment of career goals was assessed using the authenticity, balance

and challenge scale developed by Sullivan et al. (2009). Each parameter was measured using

four items reformulated to capture the daily experiences of participants. Example items

included the following: for authenticity, ‘Today, while working, I made steps towards what I

want to accomplish in life’; for balance, ‘Today, I achieved balance between work and

family’; and for challenge, ‘Today, I was very goal directed’. Across the five days, the mean

Cronbach’s alpha was .77 for authenticity, .63 for balance and .77 for challenge.

Work engagement was measured on a daily basis to reduce memory and social

desirability bias (Kahneman et al., 2004). We used four items from Schaufeli et al. (2002),

which were reformulated to refer to the daily level. Items included ‘Today, I felt strong and

vigorous while working’. Across the 5 days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha was .88.

Emotional exhaustion was assessed using four items adapted from the Burnout

Inventory of Maslach et al. (1986), adapted to the daily level. Items included ‘Today, I felt

like I was at the end of my rope’. A daily measure of emotional exhaustion enables us to

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more accurately capture emotional states (Bolger et al., 2003), and across the five days, the

mean Cronbach’s alpha was .82.

Control variables: We controlled for age, whether the respondent perceived

himself/herself as the main breadwinner in his/her family, the number of subordinates, and

the number of children, as all of these variables may affect the experience of working at

home. Because the introduction of these control variables did not impact our results, for the

sake of parsimony, we did not include them in the final model (Becker, 2005).

4. Results

4.1. Analytic strategy8

Because our data have a nested structure (daily reports on the first level nested within

individuals on the second level), we tested our hypotheses through multilevel structural

equation modeling (MSEM) using Mplus 8. Prior to testing the hypotheses, multilevel

confirmatory factor analyses (MCFAs) were conducted to examine the measurement model

and to empirically distinguish the variables in our models. The parameters were estimated

using maximum likelihood estimation. The within part of the model included the

relationships between CWIs and WCIs and the career goal variables (authenticity, balance,

and challenge) with random slopes. The career goal variables were also related to work

engagement and emotional exhaustion to test the mediation hypotheses. The between part of

the model included gender to test for moderation. We calculated indirect effects to assess

mediation and estimated the distribution of each indirect effect with a 95% confidence

interval. Simple slope analyses for multilevel models were used to further explore the

interactions (Preacher et al., 2006).

8 We controlled for potential cyclical patterns in our data (Gabriel et al., 2019) and we found

no influence of the day of the week on our results, therefore we present them without

acknowledging the day of response.

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4.2. Variance decomposition

We first checked the intraclass coefficient (ICC1) of each of the variables assessed in

the daily questionnaires. The coefficients ranged from .42 (CWIs) to .60 (emotional

exhaustion), indicating that all variables varied substantially both within and between

persons. All intraclass coefficients are displayed in Table 1. Accordingly, our daily approach

was appropriate.

Table 1. Means, SDs, Intraclass Coefficients, and Correlations Variable Mean SD ICC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 CWI

3.70

1.73

.42

-

.66***

-.06

-.26

-.15

-.19-

.27

-.09

2 WCI

3.42 1.63 .50 .44*** - -.12 -.34 -.11 -.18 .47 -.09

3 Authenticity

3.36 1.27 .59 -.06* .01 - .22 .77 .75 -.15 .06

4 Balance

4.40 1.18 .46 -.19*** -.19*** .28*** - .25 .23 -.18 .03

5 Challenge

3.69 1.29 .51 -.11** -.00 .58*** .33*** - .78*** -.24 .17

6 Work engagement

3.95 1.35 .45 -.14*** -0.03 .49*** .16*** .54*** - -.31*** -.07

7 Emotional exhaustion 2.78 1.48 .60 .24*** .19*** -.14*** -.20*** -.16*** -.31*** - -.18

8 Gender 1.32 .47 - - - - - - - - -

Notes: ⁎⁎ p < .01. ⁎⁎⁎ p < .001. ICC=intraclass coefficient. Gender coding: Female=1 ; Male=2. CWI=

Childcare-to-Work Interruptions. WCI= Work-to-Childcare Interruptions.

4.3. MCFAs

We conducted MCFAs to examine the construct validity and independence of our

variables. The model contained seven factors: CWIs, WCIs, authenticity, balance, challenge,

work engagement and emotional exhaustion. The multilevel measurement model in which all

items of all variables loaded on their respective latent factors showed an acceptable fit to the

data (χ2 (556)=1906, p<.001, RMSEA=0.04, CFI=0.90, SRMRwithin=.05, SRMRbetween=.09).

Three additional MCFAs were conducted to examine the discriminant validity of our

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variables. We tested other models in which the items of the two perceived interruption

variables, the three career goal variables and, finally, the work and wellbeing outcome

variables loaded on a single factor. None of these three models showed an acceptable fit to

the data, and the seven-factor model had a significantly better fit than did these alternative

models (detailed results available upon request). The two perceived interruption variables, the

three career goal variables and the two work and wellbeing outcome variables can thus be

empirically distinguished despite their conceptual overlap.

4.4. Hypothesis testing

Figure 1 summarizes the unstandardized coefficient estimates of our mediation model.

Figure 1. Mediation model Notes: Dotted lines indicate a nonsignificant path (p > .05). Nonsignificant coefficients are not reported for

clarity. Loglikelihood = -13958.764. Akaike (AIC) = 28089.528. Bayesian (BIC) = 28534.752. CWI=

Childcare-to-Work Interruptions. WCI= Work-to-Childcare Interruptions.

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4.4.1. Perceived interruptions and career motive fulfillment

As shown, CWIs are negatively related to authenticity (=-.05, p<.05), balance (=-.09,

p<.001) and challenge (=-.09, p<.01), supporting H1a, H1b and H1c, respectively. WCIs are

negatively related to balance (=-.08, p<.01), supporting H2, whereas the relationships

between WCIs and authenticity and challenge are not significant.

4.4.2. Perceived interruptions, career goal fulfillment, and outcomes

All three career goals are significantly related to work engagement (authenticity =.32,

p<.001; balance =-.14, p<.001; challenge =.53, p<.001), and only balance and challenge are

related to emotional exhaustion (=-.11, p<.01 and =-.17, p<.001, respectively). In addition,

we tested for indirect effects from perceived interruptions on work engagement and

emotional exhaustion using the MODEL CONSTRAINT option in Mplus (see Table 2). The

indirect effects of CWIs on work engagement via authenticity, balance and challenge are -

.02, .01 and -.05, respectively, and significant, supporting H3a, H3b and H3c. In addition, the

indirect effects of CWIs on emotional exhaustion via balance (indirect effect = .011, p<.05)

and challenge (indirect effect =.015, p<.01) are significant, supporting H5b and H5c,

respectively. Consistent with the nonsignificant path between authenticity and emotional

exhaustion, the corresponding indirect effect of CWIs on emotional exhaustion was not

significant (p=.90). Thus, H5a is not supported. Regarding WCIs and consistent with the

absence of a relationship between WCIs and authenticity and challenge, only the two indirect

effects via balance on engagement (indirect effect = .011, p<.05) and emotional exhaustion

(indirect effect = .09, p<.05) are significant. Thus, H4b and H6b are supported, while H4a,

H4c, H6a and H6c are not.

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Table 2. Indirect Effects Path Indirect p 95% CI

effect Low High

CWI – Authenticity - WE

-.017

.023

-.033

-.002

CWI – Authenticity - EE

.000 .899 -.005 .004

CWI – Balance - WE

.013 .005 .004 .023

CWI – Balance - EE

.011 .016 .002 .019

CWI – Challenge - WE

-.048 .001 -.076 -.019

CWI – Challenge - EE

.015 .008 .004 .026

WCI – Authenticity - WE

.011 .223 -.007 .030

WCI – Authenticity - EE

.000 .899 -.003 .003

WCI – Balance - WE

.011 .023 .002 .021

WCI – Balance - EE

.009 .045 .000 .018

WCI – Challenge - WE

.016 .330 -.016 .049

WCI – Challenge - EE -.005 .336 -.016 .009

Notes: Confidence intervals not containing 0 are significant. CWI= Childcare-to-Work Interruptions. WCI=

Work-to-Childcare Interruptions. WE= Work Engagement. EE= Emotional Exhaustion

4.4.3. Gender effects of CWIs and WCIs on career goal fulfillment

We then tested a model that integrated gender as a moderator of the relationship

between perceived interruptions and career goal fulfillment. None of the interaction effects

between CWIs and the career goal fulfillment variables are significant (see Table 3).

Therefore, H7a, H7b and H7c are not supported. Contrary to CWIs, the interaction effects

between WCIs and authenticity, balance and challenge are significant (=.129, p<.05; =.127,

p<.05 and =.107, p<.05, respectively), supporting H8a, H8b and H8c. Following Preacher et

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al. (2006), we plotted these interactions. As presented in Figures 2 and 4, the relationships

between WCIs and authenticity and between WCIs and challenge are stronger for men than

for women. Simple slope tests reveal a significant positive association between WCIs and

authenticity for men (β=.126, p<.01) and a nonsignificant association for women (β=-.003,

p=.93). The same pattern is found for the relationship between WCIs and challenge, with a

significant positive association for men (β=.105, p<.05) and a nonsignificant association for

women (β=-.002, p=.96). The interaction effect between gender and WCIs on balance is

plotted in Figure 3, showing that the negative effect of WCIs is stronger for women than for

men. Simple slope tests reveal that WCIs are negatively related to balance for women (β=-

.123, p<.001) and that the effect for men is not significant (β=.004, p=.93).

Table 3. Interaction Effects Interaction Coefficient S.E. p

Gender x CWI on Authenticity

-.050

.043

.25

Gender x CWI on

Balance

-.031 .051 .54

Gender x CWI on Challenge

-.059 .047 .21

Gender x WCI on Authenticity

.129 .051 .01

Gender x WCI on

Balance

.127 .056 .02

Gender x WCI on Challenge

.107 .053 .04

Notes: CWI= Childcare-to-Work Interruptions. WCI= Work-to-Childcare Interruptions.

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Figure 2. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with authenticity

Figure 3. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with balance

2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

WCI

Authenticity

WOMEN

MEN

2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

3.9

4.0

4.1

4.2

WCI

Balance

WOMEN

MEN

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Figure 4. Plots of the moderating effect of gender on relationships of WCI with challenge

5. Discussion

Taken together, our findings suggest that interruptions to work can have both positive

and negative effects on parents’ daily perceived fulfillment of career goals and that gender

roles can influence the experience of such interruptions. We show how seemingly subtle

daily gender differences in how interruptions are experienced can provoke a double penalty

for women: women’s daily experience of balance is impacted more negatively by WCIs than

are those of men, and in addition, women do not benefit from the same motivational effects

of WCIs. Perhaps work interruptions can sometimes provide a welcome and stimulating

break from childcare activities, especially when looking after very young children. In this

way, our study also contributes a new aspect to the nascent research on work interruptions,

which to date has focused almost exclusively on the dark side of interruptions (for a recent

2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

3.0

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

WCI

Challenge

WOMEN

MEN

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exception, see Puranik et al. (2020) who showed that the social interaction that is often linked

with the interruption can have benefits for wellbeing). Our study suggests that cross-domain

interruptions from the work to the family spheres can contribute to the perceived attainment

of career goals.

Women do not seem to experience this positive (perceived) goal attainment effect of

WCIs. In line with gender role theory, women may not welcome the attentional switch away

from childcare toward work. Future studies can investigate the precise mechanisms for this

gender difference: it is possible that emotional triggers, such as guilt, and behavioral

differences (e.g., types of childcare duties taken on by each gender) play important roles.

Furthermore, future research should also shed light on the effects of WCIs in the childcare

sphere (e.g., satisfaction with the parental role, relationship with child, or parental burnout).

Therefore, the present research highlights the importance of studying the effects of

interruptions in the context of one’s life roles and goal structure. It seems that the same type

of interruption can either facilitate or thwart career goals. This research could usefully be

extended by taking into account additional potential moderating factors, such as family

boundary management preferences, individual attributes such as trait polychronicity, or

interruption characteristics such as duration or complexity.

Interestingly, we do not find the expected gender differences for CWIs, the reason for

which may be that both men and women have equally strongly internalized the ‘ideal worker’

norm and, indeed, that working mothers are what some previous researchers have called

‘dual-centric’, placing ‘a high identity on both work and family roles and have dual

investment in each’ (Kossek & Lautsch, 2012, p. 159), therefore muting the differences

suggested by gender role theory in the work sphere. In our study, both men and women

showed significant negative effects of CWIs. These findings highlight the importance of

childcare arrangements for working parents. In our study, we do not focus on the absolute

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number of hours worked, but the present results suggest a larger penalty for the parent who

provides more childcare, i.e., the woman in most cases (Collins et al., 2021). To investigate

this issue in more detail, we also suggest that future studies measure the objective frequency

of interruptions.

Our study finds the expected downstream effects on work engagement and emotional

exhaustion, highlighting the important consequences that cross-domain interruptions can

have on performance-related outcomes and wellbeing. The different effects of WCIs

therefore put women at a disadvantage in terms of wellbeing and career progression. Perhaps

the experience of the (non)fulfillment of career goals constitutes a push-out factor for women

in the long term. Indeed, failing to fulfill important career goals on a daily basis may result in

goal reorientation for working mothers. Specifically, Hirschi and colleagues (2019) suggest

that if barriers constraining goal attainment, i.e., WCIs, are not malleable and they cannot be

compensated by other resources, individuals are likely to turn to action strategies associated

with goal withdrawal and to reorient their work and family goals. The risk is that women’s

reduced balance goal fulfillment will result in goal disengagement for them over time and

they may revise and adopt new work and family goals, associated with career decisions that

could be harmful for their careers. Gaining an understanding of these poorly understood

experiences will provide helpful knowledge on how organizations can better support working

mothers day-to-day, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic but also beyond.

The present research illustrates the challenges inherent in new ways of working,

which often weaken boundaries between spheres of life. Our results suggest that cross-

domain interruptions are an important factor to be considered in work design and work

arrangements. The overall negative effects of CWIs suggest that in times of crisis—whether a

global pandemic or a family crisis—it is important to help employees more flexibly manage

their work time so that they are less affected by interruptions by children. Conversely, WCIs

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may sometimes have positive consequences in terms of the fulfillment of career goals. How

can organizations help all employees, especially women, benefit from these potential

upsides? Perhaps the positive consequences will become more likely when employees have

more autonomy in terms of work hours and when they can more proactively manage how and

when they are (and can be) interrupted, making them more open and ready to switch roles.

However, the present study also highlights the harmful effects of WCIs, especially through

their negative effect on balance, therefore suggesting that organizations and employees

should generally aim to limit cross-domain interruptions.

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CHAPTER 5. Conclusion

By integrating different streams of research, this thesis aims at better understanding

the work experiences of women, with a special focus on two important career transitions,

namely the Covid-19 pandemic and maternity leave. Specifically, this thesis draws on and

organizes the multidisciplinary literature on women’s careers and then contributes to this

literature via two empirical studies. The studies investigate how pregnant women and

mothers of young children experience and make sense of justice episodes and interruptions at

work, and how these experiences affect important work and career outcomes. Relying on

three distinct papers, this research addressed the following sub research questions:

Paper 1 (Chapter 2): How has the literature on and our knowledge of women’s careers

evolved over the last decade?

Paper 2 (Chapter 3): What types of justice-related events do women experience at the time

around maternity leave, and how do they interpret and make sense of these events? How do

these (in)justice experiences affect their career intentions and choices?

Paper 3 (Chapter 4): How are daily cross-domain interruptions between work and childcare

experienced by teleworking mothers and fathers of young children, and how do these

experience affect their career motive fulfillment, wellbeing and work attitudes?

Taken together, the three papers offer joint theoretical and managerial contributions that I

will detail in the following sections, after presenting a brief summary of each paper.

1. Synthesis of the papers

The first paper (Chapter 2) examines the evolution of the literature on women’s

careers over the past decade and provides insights on the current knowledge of this topic.

Building on the review by O’Neil and colleagues (2008), we conducted an integrative

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literature review on research looking at women’s careers, published after 2008 in peer-

reviewed management, applied psychology and career journals. From this review, we

developed five distinct perspectives that categorize the current literature and we identified

their associated research gaps. We also delineated four major directions for future research on

women’s careers.

The second paper (Chapter 3) draws on the organizational justice framework and

adopts a person-centric approach (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) to investigate women’s evolving

justice experiences at the critical period of their maternity leave. We conducted a series of

three semi-structured interviews with 35 highly educated women from their pregnancy

disclosure up to several months upon work reentry. We found that women typically

experience injustice events at this critical period of time, but also justice omissions, which we

define as an absence of action which in turn gives rise to a fairness judgment. Injustice events

and justice omissions are typically linked in our participants’ narratives such that one can

trigger the other, and as such form a justice episode (Whiteside & Barclay, 2015). Overall,

injustice experiences at this time of heightened uncertainty led to important career

withdrawal amongst our participants, including decreased career aspirations, increased

turnover intentions and several resignations during the course of our study.

Finally, the third paper (Chapter 4) investigates the influence of cross-domain

interruptions between the work and childcare spheres on parents’ career and work outcomes.

In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, we conducted a diary study among teleworking

parents of young children over five consecutive days and we explored the differential impacts

of interruption experiences on women and men. We found that the experience of work-to-

childcare interruptions differed for women and men. While men experienced a motivational

effect of work-to-childcare interruptions such that they saw their daily levels of challenge and

authenticity fulfillment increased, women did not. What is more, women experienced

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decreased daily balance fulfillment when confronted to work-to-childcare interruptions,

which had implications for their work engagement and emotional exhaustion.

2. Theoretical contributions

2.1. Contribution to the literature on women’s careers

This thesis makes several contributions to the literature on women’s careers. First, our

multidisciplinary literature review takes stock of the past thirteen years of research on

women’s careers, and its evolution over that time, thus providing an overview and

organization of the state of the art on the topic of women's careers. This work allowed us to

formulate suggestions on how to move the field forward by providing directions for future

research, including important research questions that are yet to be tackled. With these

perspectives and directions, we hope to inform women’s career scholars in the management,

applied psychology and career disciplines.

Second, by presenting one of the first person-centric (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) and

longitudinal investigations of women’s work experiences at the time around maternity leave

and when caring for babies, infants and pre-school children, this research contributes to

developing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the gendered career patterns

that can be observed following childbirth (Coudin et al., 2019; Cukrowska-Torzewska &

Matysiak, 2020). Specifically, it highlights how organizational practices, and the way women

make sense of them, can constitute “push” factors that drive women out of their jobs and

organizations. While in the second paper (Chapter 3) we looked at injustice experiences that

often entailed severe forms of discrimination, more subtle work experiences, such as work-

to-childcare and childcare-to-work interruptions, could also induce harmful career

consequences for women as suggested in the third paper (Chapter 4).

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This research illustrates how work experiences even over relatively short time periods

can have meaningful and long-lasting impact on women’s careers. On a career scale,

maternity leave is a relatively short time, however our findings show that events and

experiences at this critical time point can lead to very powerful career responses and effects.

Even what happens at the level of the day can harm women’s career-relevant motive

fulfillment, wellbeing and job engagement, as suggested in Paper 3 (Chapter 4), which can

result in goal reorientation in the long term for women (Kirschi et al., 2019) and therefore

damage their careers.

This research illustrates the usefulness of the organizational justice framework to

investigate the link between work experiences and career decisions in the context of women’s

careers. In the longitudinal interview study (Paper 2), we found that both past, present and

anticipated justice experiences were directly related to women’s evolving career attitudes and

decisions. While most of our participants’ narratives provided evidence that injustice events

could lead to the most severe forms of career withdrawal over time, we noticed that justice

omissions, which were also considered unfair by the interviewees, could result in some form

of career withdrawal as well, such as a drop in career aspiration. Thus, the framework of

organizational justice can be usefully applied to new investigations of women’s work

experiences in order to better explain their career patterns.

Further, this thesis contributes to our understanding of women’s career decision

processes. Building on the concept of autobiographical memory (Brewer, 1986) that “moves

beyond recall of experienced events to integrate perspective, interpretation, and evaluation

across self, other, and time to create a personal history” (Fivush, 2011, p.560), this research

suggests that women can engage in mental time travel to inform (or justify) a career decision.

In particular, our findings suggest that women retrieve past events – which are not always

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related to current work experiences – to justify their work and career decisions, but also

anticipate injustice events to provide further explanations for their decisions.

Further, we provide insights on how the interaction of career motives and injustice

experiences can influence women’s career outcomes. As suggested by Kossek and colleagues

the (2017), “opting-out” and “push-out” factors that explain women’s career outcomes are

not mutually exclusive, but often coexist. While popular wisdom often suggests that women’s

career decisions following childbirth are largely informed by their changing career motives

and their desire to spend time with their newborn, our research details, examples, and

illustrates recurring patterns of how injustice experiences at work can lead to withdrawal

attitudes. For example, some women downgraded their ambitions from wanting managerial

responsibilities before maternity leave to simply wanting some individual work tasks

assigned to them when returning from leave, as a result of experiencing these injustice events

and justice omissions. It is important to note that many of our participants explicitly referred

to experienced injustice events to justify their withdrawal decisions. This research therefore

provides insights into how push and pull factors may interact over time, illustrating that

pushes (e.g., powerful injustice experiences) can lead to career motive shifts (e.g., decreased

challenge motive, increased balance motive), which, in turn, are likely to both pull and push

women out of jobs and organizations.

2.2. Contributions to organizational behavior

The second and third papers (Chapters 3 and 4 respectively) are particularly relevant

to the organizational behavior discipline. The second paper contributes to the literature on

organizational justice by exploring justice temporal dynamics at the critical time of maternity

leave. Thereby, it furthers knowledge on the notion of justice episodes (Whiteside & Barclay,

2015) by integrating a new concept, justice omission, and by showing how injustice events

and justice omissions unfold over time. Additionally, this paper is one of the first empirical

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studies that observe the evolution of motivated justice cognition and system justification

effects over longer time periods, through a person-centric approach (Weiss & Rupp, 2011).

This research also helps to integrate the important aspect of discrimination into

organizational justice. While there is little doubt that the two are necessarily connected, very

few studies in the organizational justice literature have paid attention to discrimination, and

the use of standardized scales has often prevented the more extreme forms of injustice to

become salient. If we truly want to understand workplace motivation dynamics through an

organizational justice lens, it is important to take into account these more extreme events (as

also suggested by Fortin et al., 2020).

Further, this research can be linked to the topic of abusive supervision. Our findings

derived from the longitudinal interview study suggest that abusive supervision can take new

forms at specific periods of employees’ life such as maternity leave. Up to date, research on

abusive supervision has paid little attention to this influential temporal aspect and we believe

that it constitutes an important avenue for future research.

The third paper sheds light on the differential impact of cross-domain interruptions

between work and childcare for women and men, and informs us on the previously

understudied bright side of interruption in specific contexts. For instance, the results suggest

that men’s perceived career goal fulfillment can benefit from interruptions coming from the

work sphere while caring for the children, which in turn have positive downstream work and

wellbeing outcomes. We hope that these results will encourage scholars to further investigate

the conditions under which work interruptions can benefit employees.

Taken together, the results of Papers 2 and 3 contribute to the literature on work-life

balance. Issues raised by our participants at the time around their maternity leave often

related to balance issues (e.g., teleworking, flexible work arrangements). Paper 3 is also

concerned with finding balance between the work and childcare spheres at the critical period

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of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study provides insightful information on who, why and how

being interrupted by work while taking care of children can be beneficial or harmful for

career goal attainment and work engagement and thereby raises interesting questions for

future research on telework.

3. Managerial implications

There is overwhelming evidence that becoming a mother tends to put women at a

career disadvantage, typically for the rest of their life (Kahn et al., 2014). Furthermore, the

latest figures on the gender gap show that during the period impacted by COVID-19, progress

toward closing the global gender gap is scaling back (World Economic Forum, 2021). The

present research explores two periods of time that have been shown to exacerbate career

inequalities between women and men (Correll et al., 2007; Lokot & Bhatia, 2020) and our

findings have important implications for organizations that wish to make steps toward gender

career equality. In particular, the present work provides clear suggestions on how to help

working mothers balance their professional and familial responsibilities, and highlights which

work practices need to be avoided versus encouraged in order to reduce gender inequalities at

work.

Taken together, the results of this research suggest that mothers of young children

need more work flexibility and autonomy in order to better balance their professional and

familial responsibilities. Indeed, our research shows that issues raised at the time around

maternity leave often related to work arrangements (see Paper 2, Chapter 3). For instance,

many of the interviewees reported injustice events and justice omissions in relation to

teleworking requests and applications during pregnancy and upon work reentry, as well as

pregnancy and breastfeeding provisions that were often not granted. Additionally, the

observed negative impact of work-to-childcare interruptions on mothers’ work and career

165

outcomes also suggest that women need more flexibility in the way they arrange their work

schedules under teleworking settings (Chapter 4). Noteworthy, mothers’ need for greater

flexibility and demand of greater autonomy in time management do not necessarily mean

lower work investment. In fact, many of our participants were ready to work very hard, some

of them even worked harder than before having a child, and used for example their lunch

breaks to make up for time “lost” during their maternity leave. The traditional workplace

norms that many of them faced, however, equated their demands for flexibility with

“laziness”, which consequently led to discouragement. Therefore, not only do we encourage

organizations to provide greater flexible work arrangements with clear modalities of request

and application, we also call for flexibility in the application of these arrangements.

Further, our findings indicate that it is not sufficient to provide legal access to work

arrangements such as telework. Employees need to be comforted by the fact that they can

freely request and benefit from these accommodations. Thus, this research stresses the need

to train managers on work-life balance issues as their attitudes and behaviors toward family-

friendly policies have a strong influence on employees’ likelihood to use these policies

(Russo & Morandin, 2019). In particular, there are important aspects to integrate in these

trainings to bring awareness on mothers’ daily work and family challenges. We show that

working mothers of young children face many difficulties in juggling between work and

childcare responsibilities: For example, they have important time constraints associated with

the opening hours of childcare services and may thus violate the ideal work expectations to

meet these constraints; they may need to engage in breastfeeding activities when at work

upon return to work following childbirth; they are likely to be interrupted by childcare when

their child is sick and may therefore have to suddenly leave work to take care of her or him.

A better understanding of issues relating to work-life balance may lead to a reduction of work

interruptions – which have been shown to be detrimental to women’s work and well-being

166

outcomes – and to decreased perceived injustice around maternity leave as many of our

participants reported injustice in relation to their desired (as opposed to actual) work

arrangements. Given the motivation that many of our participants showed, if managers

respect these constraints, they are likely to help maintain the sustained full commitment and

motivation of working mothers.

Beyond bringing work-life balance awareness among managers, we suggest that

work-life balance value needs to be reflected in the organizational culture through

corresponding practices. Given that managers often represent the organization in their

subordinates’ minds, it would be interesting if managers became role models and work-life

balance advocates by "walking the talk", i.e., setting the example (e.g., they should not send

messages outside office hours, or at least make clear that they do not expect employees to

answer before they return to work). That way, mothers and parents in general would feel less

guilty for having to ask for a specific work arrangement (e.g., breastfeeding provisions upon

work reentry or teleworking accommodation during pregnancy and the early years of the

child) or for leaving work earlier than other (often childless or male) colleagues. Stress

associated with arriving to work on time may also be reduced. Finally, we also encourage

managers to focus more on results and less on presenteeism. Unfortunately, the mere

presence at the workplace during late hours is often still equated with amount of work

performed, as experienced by some of our interviewees who were disadvantaged when it

came to bonus payments and promotion opportunities due to the fact that they availed

themselves of the opportunity to do some of their work from home. Therefore, we suggest

that not only employees need to be given the right to telework, the work they do from home

also needs to be acknowledged as much as the work done at the office.

167

It should be noted that while we focused our research on women in particular, the

managerial implications detailed above would also benefit men who wish to better balance

their work and family life.

4. Limitations and future research opportunities

This research has several limitations that require acknowledgement. Some of these

limitations represent interesting directions for future research on the topic of women’s

careers, which supplement the suggestions already detailed in each paper.

The first limitation of this research lies in the fact that one of the studies (Chapter 4)

was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus the results may not be generalizable to

ordinary work settings – even though they may provide insights into important work

dynamics associated with huge social shocks. While we argue that our study of this “extreme

case” can illustrate interesting effects and gender differences that are likely to play a role

beyond the pandemic (especially as many employees are operating a shift toward more

flexible and teleworking work arrangements in their professional life), we also encourage

scholars to study the effects of cross-domain interruptions in other work settings, i.e., when

schools and childcare institutions are open. Further, an additional possible limitation in the

design of this diary study is that we analyzed our data within the same day which limits its

internal validity in terms of drawing causality conclusions and avoiding common method

bias, however common method bias is unlikely to explain the interaction effects observed.

Moreover, as we focused our research on highly educated women, who are known to

experience the highest penalty for having children and taking leave time (England et al.,

2016), we recognize that our results may not be generalizable beyond this population.

Women with different social characteristics may be faced with different work experiences at

these two critical time periods, and they may also differ in the way they make sense of these

168

experiences and in their reactions to them. Furthermore, different characteristics (e.g., being a

pregnant woman and being Black) may interact, causing different forms of discrimination to

occur. For example, we already know that Black women have different maternity experiences

(e.g., Knight et al., 2009), so it is reasonable to envision that these differing maternity

experiences may also affect their work experiences at the time around maternity leave.

Therefore, we encourage scholars to conduct similar research with more diverse groups of

women in order to compare their experiences. Comparative research between different

populations of women will be useful for generating greater generalizability as well as gaining

understanding on the diverse experiences of women at work.

Our research covers relatively short periods of time out of a full career, therefore

longitudinal studies over longer periods are needed to determine the impact of (in)justice

experiences on women’s careers in the long term. Although we already have some initial

evidence of this link (e.g., Powell, 2021), it would be interesting to further investigate the

long-term career effects of women’s decisions at the time around maternity leave as well as

how they make sense of their own past reactions and the ensuing outcomes retrospectively. It

is also worth mentioning that the career outcomes we measured in our studies are known to

have long-term career effects for women (e.g., Blair-Loy, 2003). Further, the effects of work

experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic over longer periods of time will also be useful.

We already see that women’s careers suffer from the COVID-related work and childcare

arrangements but less is known about the long-term impact of the daily dynamics described

in Paper 3 (Chapter 4) on women’s careers and how they will carry over into the crisis’

aftermath.

Finally, one of the delineated directions for future research outlined in the first paper

(Chapter 2), namely intervention-based research, is also highly relevant for the situations

studied here. Such research could test whether the implementation of the recommendations of

169

paper 2 (see Table 3 of Chapter 3) lessens uncertainty levels and reduces the likelihood of

injustice experiences for women at the time around their maternity leave, which may in turn

reduce career withdrawal attitudes at this period of time. The results of such studies could

have very strong implications for gender career equality.

5. Final conclusion

This research originated from the desire of my co-authors and I to better understand

the micro mechanisms underlying the motherhood penalty, a phenomenon that has been made

worse with the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken together, the three distinct, yet interrelated,

papers of my thesis were concerned with investigating the role of women’s, and in particular

mothers’, personal experiences at work in their career outcomes. Specifically, this research

presents important insights into women’s justice and interruption experiences at two critical

career transitions, i.e., the time around their maternity leave and COVID-19 crisis, and it

offers ways for organizations to address these challenges and work toward creating greater

gender career equality.

170

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Appendices

Appendix 1. Women’s careers review data structure

See following page

208

Articles (1st order concepts) 2nd order themes Aggregate dimensions

Stavrou and Ierodiakonou 2011

Family connections

Relational

van der Horst, van der Lippe and

Kluwer 2014

Lewis, Harris, Morrison & Ho 2015

Arifeen & Gatrell 2020

Moors, Malley & Stewart 2014

Hirschi, Herrmann, Nagy & Spurk 2016

Nair & Chatterjee 2020

Savela & O'Brien 2015

Porfeli & Mortimer 2010

Cho & Ryu 2016

Dishon-Berkovits 2014

Kossek, Su & Wu 2017

Karam & Afiouni 2017

Hodges & Park 2013

Palladino Schultheiss 2009

Pas, Peters, Doorewaard, Eisinga &

Lagro-Janssen 2014

Braunstein-Bercovitz, Frish-

Burstein & Benjamin 2012

Lewis, Harris, Morrison & Ho 2015

Ferriman, Lubinski & Benbow 2009

Dunn, Rochlen & O'Brien 2013

Bikos and Kocheleva 2013

Livingston 2014

Ullrich, Pluut and Büttgen 2015

Clarke 2015

Trotman Reid, Cole & Kern 2011 Askaru, Liss, Erchull, Staebell &

Axelson 2010

Yassour-Borochowitz &

Wasserman 2018

Spagnoli 2020

Afiouni & Karam 2014

Syed, Ali & Hennekam 2018

Ortiz-Walters, Eddleston and

Simione 2010

Work relationships

Terjesen and Sullivan 2011

Okurame and Fabunmi 2014

Ramaswami, Huang and Dreher 2014

Ramaswami, Dreher, Bretz and

Wiethoff 2010

Ramaswami, Dreher, Bretz and

Wiethoff 2010

Cohen-Scali 2014

O'Neil, Hopkins and Sullivan 2011

Shortland 2011

Chen, Doherty and Vinnicombe 2012

209

Greguletz, Diehl and Kreutzer 2018

Work relationships Relational

Chang, Baek and Kim 2020

Woehler, Cullen-Lester,Porter and

Frear 2020

Walsh, Fleming & Enz 2016

Shortland 2014

Austin and Nauta 2016

Yeoward and Nauta 2020

Young, Rudman, Buettner &

McLean 2013

O'Neil, Brooks and Hopkins 2018

Abalkhail 2020

Chen, Friedman and Simons 2014

Gibson & Lawrence 2010

McGinn & Milkman 2013

Lee, Kesebir & Pillutla 2016

Al Dabbagh, Bowles & Thomason 2016

Vincent-Höper, Muser & Janneck 2012

Blondeau & Awad 2018

Career attitudes and decisions

in male-dominated fields

Decision-making

Sainz, Fabregues, Rodo-de-Zarate,

Martinez-Cantos, Arroyo & Romano 2020

Fouad, Singh, Cappaert, Chang &

Wan 2016

Durante, Griskevicius, Simpson,

Cantu & Tybur 2012

Singh, Fouad, Fitzpatrick, Liu,

Cappaert & Figuereido 2013

Afiouni 2014

Buse, Bilimoria & Perelli 2013

Cabrera 2009

Major career events

Kim, Jang & Baek 2019

Nair & Chatterjee 2020

Hwang, Bento & Arbaugh 2011

Paustian-Underdahl, Mandeville &

Little 2019

Flynn, Feild & Bedeian 2011

Impact of women's family life

on their career attitudes and

decisions

Savela & O'Brien 2015

Grant-Vallone & Ensher 2010

Pas, Peters, Doorewaard, Eisinga &

Lagro-Janssen 2014

Dikkers, van Engen & Vinkenburg 2010

Wechtler 2018 Self-expatriation motives

Thorn 2009

Yeagly, Subich & Tokar 2010 Leadership intentions

Darouei & Pluut 2018

Al-Darmaki 2012 Help to decision-making

Phang, Fan & Arbona 2018

210

Leaper & Starr 2019

Workplace mistreatment

Gender bias

Fernando & Prasad 2019

Gloor, Li, Lim & Feierabend 2017

Brownstone, Holliman, Gerber &

Monteith 2018

Hoobler, Lemmon & Wayne 2014

Biased assessments Bono, Braddy, Liu, Gilbert,

Fleenor, Quast & Center 2016

Inesi & Cable 2015

Garcia, Earnshaw & Quinn 2015

Problem of (in)visibility Bennett, Hennekam, Macarthur,

Hope & Goh 2019

Fernando, Cohen & Duberley 2019

Block, Cruz, Bairley, Harel-Marian

& Roberson 2019

Stereotype threat

Cadaret, Hartung, Subich &

Weigold 2017

Lin & Deemer 2019

Deemer, Thoman, Chase & Smith 2014

Ezzedeen, Budworth & Baker 2015

Shapiro, Williams & Hambarchyan 2013

Jones, Clair, King, Humberd &

Arena 2020

Tharenou 2010

Gendered occupational and

market segregation

Cooper, Baird, Foley & Oxenbridge 2020

Scholarios & Taylor 2011

Cardador 2017

Daraouei & Pluut 2018

van Osch & Schaveling 2020

Tassabehji, Harding, Lee &

Dominguez-Pery 2021

Abalkhail 2017

Cho, Park, Han & Ho 2019

Wells & Kerwin 2017

Afiouni & Karam 2019

Treanor & Marlow 2019

Evans & Diekman 2009

Tonoyan, Strohmeyer & Jennings 2019

Sidani, Konrad & Karam 2015

Syed, Ali & Hennekam 2018

Lawson, Crouter & McHale 2015

Darouei & Pluut 2018

Hogue, DuBois & Fox-Cardamone 2010

Webster, Adams, Maranto, Beehr 2018

Gender roles/stereotypes Forret, Sullivan & Mainiero 2010

Hideg, Krstic, Trau & Zarina 2018

Jakob, Isidor, Steinmetz, Wehner &

Kabst 2019

211

Benschop, van den Brink,

Doorewaard & Leenders 2013

Gender roles/stereotypes

Gender bias

Bedford 2015

Duberley & Cohen 2010

Nyström 2010

Pas, Peters, Doorewaard, Eisinga &

Lagro-Janssen 2014

Hüttges & Fay 2015

Hodges & Park 2013

Al-Asfour, Tlaiss, Khan &

Rajasekar 2017

Gender discrimination

Dubbelt, Rispens & Demerouti 2016

Cocchiara, Kwesiga, Bell & Baruch 2010

Santos 2016

Smith, Caputi & Crittenden 2012

Omair 2010

Dreher, Carter & Dworking 2019

Kossek, Su & Wu 2017

Paustian-Underdahl, Mandeville &

Little 2019

Wille, Wiernik, Vergauwe,

Vrijdags & Trbovic 2018

Scalise, Sukumaran, Merson,

Pursell, Grossman, Johnson &

Elliot 2019

Career stages

Temporal

Simosi, Rousseau & Daskalaki 2015

Giraud, Bernard & Trinchera 2019

Hüttges & Fay 2015

Harman & Sealy 2017

Kelan 2014

McDonald 2018

Han & Rojewski 2015

Nyström 2010

Moors, Malley & Stewart 2014

Lawson, Crouter & McHale 2015

Maddox-Daines 2016

Mainiero & Gibson 2018

Birkett, Carmichael & Duberley 2017

Newton & Stewart 2010

August 2011

Asirvatham & Humphries-Kil 2019

McMahon, Watson & Bimrose 2012

Fernando & Cohen 2011

Lawson, Lee, Crouter & McHale 2018

Career trajectories and

dynamics

Klug, Drobnic & Brockmann 2019

Evers & Sieverding 2014

Biemann, Zacher & Feldman 2012

Dlouhy & Biemann 2018

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Gluber, Biemann & Herzog 2017

Career trajectories and

dynamics

Temporal

Ferriman, Lubinski & Benbow 2009

Stumpf & Tymon 2012

McCabe, Lubinski & Benbow 2020

Paustian-Underdahl, Mandeville &

Little 2019

The critical period of

pregnancy and maternity-

leave

Jones, Clair, King, Humberd &

Arena 2020

Spector & Cinamon 2017

Hideg, Krstic, Trau & Zarina 2018

Gross-Spector & Cinamon 2018

Kameny, DeRosier, Taylor, McMillen, Knowles & Pifer 2014

Career barriers

Intersectional

Kamenou, Netto & Fearfull 2013

McCluney & Rabelo 2019

Marks, Tate & Taylor 2020

Parnell, Lease & Green 2012

Lindstrom, Hirano, Ingram,

DeGarmo & Post 2019

Arifeen & Gatrell 2020

Syed, Ali & Hennekam 2018

Villanueva-Flores, Valle-Cabrera &

Bornay-Barrachina 2014

Gali Cinamon 2009

Tomlinson, Muzio, Sommerlad,

Webley & Duff 2013

Career strategies and

development

Yang 2014

Kitchenham & Domene 2019

Stebleton, Diamond & Rost-Banik 2020

Scheuermann, Tokar & Hall 2014

Fernando & Cohen 2011

Kelan 2014

Goldfarb 2018 Occupational motives and

interests Sanchez, Poll-Hunter, Spencer,

Lee-Rey, Alexander, Holaday,

Soto-Greene & Sanchez 2017

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Appendix 2. Interview guide for the first interview

Guide d'Entretien

1ère vague

Merci d’avoir accepté d’échanger avec moi. Je suis doctorante en Gestion des Ressources Humaines

au sein de l’établissement Toulouse School of Management. Cet entretien intervient dans le cadre du projet JuDy où une équipe de chercheuses et moi-même nous intéressons à l’expérience des femmes

au travail au moment du congé maternité.

Les informations obtenues au cours de cet entretien seront utilisées pour la rédaction d’articles académiques et lors de présentations durant des conférences en management cependant les citations

seront choisies de telle façon qu’il ne sera pas possible de vous identifier.

Il est complètement confidentiel; c’est à dire que vos réponses ne seront jamais associées à votre nom. Soyez assurez que les données recueillies seront sauvegardées dans un fichier ne contenant par

votre nom.

A titre indicatif, l’entretien devrait durer entre 30 minutes et 1 heure. J’aimerais, si cela ne vous

dérange pas, enregistrer nos échanges, afin d’être sûre de ne pas trahir vos propos lors de leur retranscription puis analyse. Je souhaite vous informer que vous pouvez demander l’arrêt de

l’enregistrement à tout moment ainsi que le retrait de certaines données.

LA CARRIÈRE ET LES ASPIRATIONS PROFESSIONNELLES

§ Pouvez-vous décrire brièvement votre carrière à ce jour ? (Quand avez-vous commencé à

travailler pour cette entreprise ?) § Quelles sont vos responsabilités professionnelles et vos tâches quotidiennes ?

§ Aimez-vous votre travail ? Qu'est-ce qui est le plus important pour vous dans votre travail ?

§ Pourquoi avez-vous choisi ce métier ?

§ Aujourd'hui, quelles sont vos aspirations pour l'avenir ? § Avez-vous des attentes par rapport à votre carrière professionnelle ?

§ A votre retour de congé de maternité, quelles sont vos attentes ?

NORMES ET DISPOSITIONS RELATIVES À LA MATERNITÉ

§ Quand et comment avez-vous informé votre superviseur ou votre RH de votre grossesse ?

§ Quelle a été leur réaction ?

§ L'annonce de grossesse a-t-elle donné lieu à des négociations avec l'organisation ?

§ Pouvez-vous nous parler des arrangements de travail conclus avec votre organisation concernant votre congé de maternité ?

§ Prévoyez-vous des changements à votre horaire de travail ? - Par exemple, retour à temps

partiel. § Vos arrangements sont-ils typiques ?

§ Pourquoi avez-vous pris ces dispositions ?

§ Que pensez-vous de ces arrangements ?

RELATIONS DE TRAVAIL ET ENVIRONNEMENT

§ Comment définiriez-vous votre relation avec votre superviseur ?

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§ Avez-vous perçu un changement dans votre relation depuis que vous l’avez informé(e) de votre grossesse ?

§ Comment définiriez-vous votre relation avec vos collègues ?

§ Avez-vous perçu un changement dans votre relation depuis que vous les avez informés de

votre grossesse ? § Votre organisation vous permet-elle de concilier facilement travail et vie familiale ?

LES ÉVÉNEMENTS ET LES CHOIX IMPORTANTS DE LA VIE ET DE LA CARRIÈRE

Nous savons que les expériences durant l’enfance peut avoir un impact sur les choix personnels et professionnels que nous faisons une fois adulte et c’est pourquoi je vais vous poser quelques

questions concernant votre environnement familial durant votre enfance.

§ Vos parents travaillaient-ils ? Votre mère travaillait-elle après son congé de maternité ?

§ Vos parents partageaient-ils les tâches ménagères et la garde des enfants ? § Cette organisation a-t-elle donné lieu à des situations conflictuelles ?

§ Avez-vous des attentes envers votre partenaire ?

§ Comment partagez-vous les tâches ménagères ? Cela donne-t-il lieu à des conflits ?

§ Selon vous, quels sont les événements ou les expériences les plus importants de votre vie qui

vous ont incité à choisir cette carrière ? § Qu'est-ce qui est le plus important pour vous dans votre carrière ?

§ Qu'est-ce qui est le plus important pour vous dans la vie ?

Nous arrivons à la fin du premier entretien. Tout d’abord, je souhaiterais vous remercier pour le temps que vous m’avez accordé. Les données recueillies sur le sujet de la maternité au travail sont

très importantes pour mieux comprendre l’expérience des femmes en entreprise et améliorer leurs

conditions de travail.

§ Souhaitez-vous partager autre chose avec moi ?

Merci encore pour votre participation à notre étude. Après cet entretien, je vous enverrai votre premier chèque cadeau d’un montant de 10€.

Je vous souhaite un excellent congé de maternité !

Abstracts

French Abstract

A travers trois articles distincts, cette recherche vise à développer notre compréhension des

expériences professionnelles des femmes, des mères en particulier, ainsi que de la façon dont

ces expériences impactent le travail et la carrière de ces femmes. Dans le premier article, je

passe en revue 167 articles empiriques et conceptuels en lien avec les carrières des femmes.

Cet examen permet le développement de cinq perspectives majeures qui apportent un nouvel

éclairage sur le sujet et mène à la définition d’un programme de recherche proposant des

pistes pour faire avancer le domaine. Les deuxième et troisième articles sont basés sur des

études empiriques longitudinales. Pour le deuxième article, j'ai interrogé 35 femmes

hautement qualifiées à trois moments distincts durant la période de leur congé de maternité.

Pour le troisième article, mes co-auteurs et moi avons mené une étude de journal intime

parmi des parents qui télétravaillaient pendant la première vague de confinement en France

lors de la pandémie du COVID-19, lorsque les écoles et les crèches étaient fermées. Adoptant

une approche dynamique et intra-personnelle, ces études s'appuient sur la théorie de la justice

organisationnelle et sur le modèle de carrière kaléidoscope pour comprendre les expériences

de justice et d’interruptions des mères qui travaillent. Les résultats de la première étude

suggèrent qu’il existe des expériences récurrentes et perçues comme injustes par les mères au

moment du congé de maternité et que celles-ci influencent les aspirations professionnelles,

les attitudes et les décisions en matière de carrière de ces femmes au fil du temps. La

deuxième étude suggère que les mères et les pères diffèrent dans leur expérience du

télétravail et de la garde des enfants en période de pandémie : Contrairement aux pères,

l'équilibre vie professionnelle – vie personnelle quotidien des mères a été négativement

affecté par les interruptions causées par le travail lorsqu’elles s’occupaient de leurs enfants et

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elles n'ont pas bénéficié du même effet de motivation que les pères qui ont vu leurs niveaux

d’authenticité et de défi quotidiens augmenter lorsqu'ils étaient confrontés à des interruptions

émanent de la sphère professionnelle.

Cette recherche contribue à la littérature sur les carrières des femmes en faisant le point sur

l’état des connaissances et de la littérature sur les carrières des femmes et en proposant des

études longitudinales investiguant les expériences au travail des femmes à des périodes

critiques, à savoir le congé de maternité et la pandémie de COVID-19. Plus précisément,

cette thèse illustre comment les expériences d'(in)justice avant, pendant et après le congé de

maternité influencent les attitudes et choix de carrière, et comment les interruptions venant du

travail affectent la perception de l'accomplissement des objectifs de carrière au quotidien

pendant le télétravail, nous informant ainsi sur des facteurs pouvant constituer des freins à la

participation des mères au marché du travail. En outre, cette recherche contribue aussi à la

littérature sur la justice organisationnelle et notamment à notre compréhension des épisodes

de justice, en introduisant un nouveau concept, à savoir l'omission de justice, qui fait

référence à l'absence d'action donnant lieu à un jugement d'équité. Au-delà de cela, par son

illustration des importants effets des expériences d'injustice et des interruptions vécues par les

femmes enceintes et mères de jeunes enfants, cette thèse a également des implications

importantes pour les organisations qui souhaitent promouvoir l'égalité de carrière entre les

hommes et les femmes.

English Abstract

This research aims at better understanding the work experience of women, mothers in

particular, as well as how this experience influences work and career outcomes. In my first

paper, I review 167 empirical and conceptual articles on women’s careers. This review allows

the development of five theoretical perspectives shedding new light on the topic and

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delineates a research agenda to move the field forward. The second and third papers are based

on longitudinal empirical studies. For the second paper, I interviewed 35 highly educated

women at three points in time around their maternity leave. For the third paper, my co-

authors and I conducted a diary study among teleworking parents during the first COVID-19

lockdown wave in France when schools and childcare were closed. Taking a dynamic and

within-person approach, these studies draw on organizational justice theory and on the

kaleidoscope career model to get insight on working parents’ experiences of justice and work

interruptions. The findings of the first study suggest typical patterns of how working mothers’

perceived fairness experiences influence their career aspirations, career attitudes and

decisions. Over time, experiences of unfair events and omissions around the transition of

maternity produce career responses. The second study suggests that mothers and fathers

differed in their experience of simultaneously teleworking and caring for children in

pandemic times: Unlike fathers, mothers’ perceived daily balance was negatively impacted

by work-to-childcare interruptions and they did not benefit from the same motivational effect

as fathers who saw their perceived daily authenticity and challenge increase when confronted

with work-to-childcare interruptions.

This research informs the literature on women’s careers by taking stock of the literature on

women’s careers and by offering longitudinal investigations of experiences at work at critical

periods of time, i.e., maternity leave and the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it illustrates

how experiences of (in)justice before, during and after maternity leave influence career

outcomes, and how work-to-childcare interruptions affect perceived daily motive fulfillment

during telework, therefore informing us on what may constitute push factors for mothers’

workforce participation. Furthermore, it contributes to the literature on organizational justice

by introducing a new concept, namely justice omission, which refers to the absence of action

giving rise to a fairness judgment. Beyond this, through its illustration of the important

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downstream effects of typical injustice events and interruptions experienced by pregnant

women and mothers of young children, this research also has important implications for

organizations that wish to promote gender career equality.

Keywords

Women’s careers, working mothers, organizational justice, gender career equality