The inevitable stigma for childbearing-aged women in the workplace: Five perspectives on the pregnancy-work intersection

Abstract

The most commonly researched group of women of childbearing age are those who get pregnant and/or have young children in the workplace. Given employers’ anticipation that employees will invest the majority of their physical and psychological time and energy to their work (Greenberg et al. 2009), deviations from these expectations often result in negative perceptions of both male and female employees. But stigmatization toward childbearing-aged women is not just reserved for those who are pregnant. Childbearing women who, for a variety of reasons (e.g., choose not to, cannot physically have them), do not have any children (e.g., Lisle 1999) also face stigmatization. Similarly, recent evidence suggests that working women who choose to have only one child also face a barrage of inappropriate questions and associated stigmatization (e.g., Lombino 2011; Zamora 2012). This chapter takes a broad approach to examining the intersection of pregnancy and the workplace by examining five different groups of childbearing-aged employees: women who are not pregnant and do not ever plan to have children (Group 1), women who are not pregnant but plan to have children (Group 2), women who are currently pregnant with their first child (Group 3), women who are currently pregnant and already have at least one child (Group 4), and women who have at least one child and do not plan to have any more children (Group 5). For each group of women, we provide descriptive statistics and a content analysis of items asking them about their biggest worries, advice to past-selves, and how successful they have been at attaining their goals.