Yavorsky, Jill, Yue Qian, and Rebecca Glauber. 2025. “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States.” Gender, Work & Organization 1–21. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.70027

Main Findings: Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we find that managers more severely penalize mothers, compared to fathers, when their job productivity decreases due to childcare issues outside their control. This result was primarily driven by men managers who gave fathers a greater benefit of the doubt when it came to their decreased productivity. 

Abstract: Many dual-earner parents face ongoing challenges to securing reliable and accessible childcare, which potentially affect their productivity at work and consequential career rewards. Although productivity can ebb and flow, limited research has examined how productivity changes influence parents’ access to organizational rewards, especially when productivity changes result from childcare issues outside their control. The answer to this question is crucial for understanding gender inequality given that childcare issues are more likely to affect mothers’ productivity and employers could enact gender biases toward mothers (or fathers) when their productivity changes. Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we assessed how a parent’s productivity changes (because of childcare issues outside their control) influenced managers’ recommendations of future organizational rewards (pay, promotions, etc.) to the parent. First, we find that managers assigned lower career rewards to workers whose productivity decreased, relative to workers whose productivity increased or stayed constant. Second, managers more severely penalized mothers, compared to fathers, when their productivity decreased. Third, exploratory analyses suggested that the widened gender gap in career rewards among parents whose productivity decreased was driven by men managers who penalized fathers less than women managers, primarily because men managers did not view fathers’ decreased productivity as evidence of reduced competence, professional commitment, or interest in advancement. By revealing pro-male biases that help explain the greater penalties faced by mothers relative to fathers when their productivity declined, our findings expose potential long-lasting impacts of parents experiencing disruptions to childcare on gender inequality in the workplace.

Authors:

Jill Yavorsky is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizational Science at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Yue Qian is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Rebecca Glauber is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.