When Do Work-Family Policies Work? Unpacking the Effects of Stigma and Financial Costs for Men and Women *

Abstract

Work-family policies—such as parental leave and flextime—can help to facilitate gender equality in workplaces and in families. But policy use is typically low, varies significantly from one workplace to another, and is often more prevalent among women than men. Extant research suggests that flexibility stigma—workplace norms that penalize workers for utilizing policies that facilitate non-work demands—as well as the financial costs associated with policy use, contribute to this pattern. However, previous studies have been largely correlational in nature, and have had difficulty assessing how these factors may interact with one another to shape gendered patterns of policy use. In this study, we offer novel causal traction on this set of issues. Using an original, population-based survey experiment, we examine how the salience of flexibility stigma and financial costs affect men's and women's intentions to use work-family policies. We find that these factors exert a large direct effect on men's and women's intentions to use work-family policies. Moreover, the gender gap in parental leave use intentions is large in workplace contexts with high flexibility stigma and high financial costs, but this gap narrows significantly under more favorable conditions. Findings point to the importance of organizational contexts and policy design in shaping work-family policy use and, in turn, gender inequality.

Keywords

Gender worker characteristics flexibility stigma work-family policy

A growing body of research indicates that most American men and women ideally prefer to share earning and caregiving responsibilities with a spouse, and that they want access to the kinds of policies that would help them achieve this ideal (Cotter et al., 2011; Gerson, 2010; Horowitz et al., 2017; Pedulla & Thébaud, 2015; Thébaud & Pedulla, 2016). But these ideals remain challenging to achieve given that workplace norms often still reward implicitly male “ideal workers” who can be constantly available to the employer and who maintain few responsibilities outside of work (Acker, 1990; Correll et al., 2014). Such a mismatch between personal preferences and work expectations contributes to high levels of stress and work-family conflict among both men and women (Harrington et al., 2017; Lyness et al., 2012).

Increasingly, employers and lawmakers in the United States acknowledge that workplace norms are inconsistent with the widely held goal of recruiting, retaining, and promoting women. The federal government, some states, and many employers now offer policies like parental leave and flextime (Kaufman et al., 2020; Matos et al., 2017; Maume, 2016; Thébaud & Halcomb, 2019). Research shows that, when appropriately designed and implemented, such policies can promote more gender-equal patterns of employment and earnings (Andersen, 2018; Blau & Kahn, 2013; Boeckmann et al., 2015; Budig et al., 2016; Fuller & Hirsh, 2019; Houser & Vartanian, 2012; Pettit & Hook, 2009; Thévenon & Solaz, 2013) and housework and caregiving (Estes et al., 2007; Kotsadam and Finseraas 2011; Nepomnyaschy & Waldfogel, 2007; Patnaik, 2019; Rehel, 2014).

But in practice, work-family policies often fall short of facilitating gender equality. Even when they are available, many workers forego using them (Albiston & O'Connor, 2016; Blair-Loy & Wharton, 2002). And, in the case of parental leave, women often have greater policy access and higher rates of use than men (Blair-Loy & Wharton, 2002; Hegewisch & Gornick, 2011; Kaufman & Petts, 2020; Maume, 2016; Moen et al., 2016; Rau & Williams, 2017; Tang & Wadsworth, 2010). Such disparities are problematic because they can mark women workers as more “troublesome” and expensive than other workers, thereby fueling gender discrimination (Bergmann, 2009; Padavic et al., 2020; Williams, 2000). They may also reduce women's perceived work commitment and contribute to occupational and earnings inequality (Blau & Kahn, 2013; Gangl & Zeifle, 2015; Pettit & Hook, 2009). As such, efforts to alleviate gender inequality may end up reinforcing it.

In this study, we provide novel, causal traction on this set of issues. Extant research centers on two critical factors that shape men's and women's willingness to use work-family policies: the direct financial costs associated with policy use (Ekberg et al., 2013; Hegewisch & Gornick, 2011; Patnaik 2019) and informal workplace norms that link policy use to social, economic, or career penalties (Albiston & O'Connor, 2016; Coltrane et al., 2013; Glass, 2004; Judiesch & Lyness, 1999; Samtleben et al., 2019).¹ Scholars describe these informal norms as a “flexibility stigma”: the cultural belief that portrays workers who use work-family policies as uncommitted, poor quality workers who are undeserving of work rewards (Williams et al., 2013). However, it remains an open question as to whether, and if so, the extent to which, eliminating 1) financial costs and/or 2) “flexibility stigma” would directly increase men's and women's willingness to use work-family policies. Moreover, it is unclear if such an alteration could close the gender gap in the willingness to use these policies. The literature on the increasingly progressive nature of work-family ideals suggests that men would want to use these policies at similar rates as women if they no longer had reason to expect a financial or career penalty. But, it is also possible that the gender gap would persist, even under such favorable conditions. Men—particularly heterosexual men—have weaker incentives to use work-family policies because they are still more likely than women to have a spouse who is able and/or willing to take on the primary responsibility for caregiving and household labor (Cohen, 2018b). And, despite viewing shared earning and caregiving as an ideal, many people still internalize and/or are held accountable to gender stereotypes and expectations, which may lead to gendered leave-taking patterns (Blair-Loy, 2003; Ridgeway, 2011; Risman, 2018; Williams, 2018).

Extant research has been unable to fully address these questions because it is largely correlational in nature. Although a field experiment on this topic in an organization could offer causal traction on key behavioral outcomes (e.g., Kelly et al., 2014), such a study would be difficult—if not impossible—in this case, given that it would require simultaneously and exogenously manipulating the levels of financial costs and flexibility stigma that workers experience. The organization would need to randomly assign workers access to policies with different designs—for example, unpaid versus paid parental leave—and change the normative context in which workers make policy use decisions.

In this study, we overcome some of these methodological challenges by utilizing an original, population-based survey experiment. Our experiment offers an important advance because it enables us to exogenously manipulate aspects of the workplace environment and the policy structure. First, we investigate how reducing 1) financial costs associated with policy use and 2) the salience of flexibility stigma directly affects workers’ stated interest in using parental leave. Second, we examine how reducing the salience of flexibility stigma affects intentions to use flextime. By offering causal traction on the independent and interactive effects of financial costs and flexibility stigma on men's and women's willingness to use work-family policies, our study generates valuable implications for theory in the area of gender, work, and family.

Work-Family Policies, Organizations, and Gender

Parental Leave

Leaves taken after the birth or adoption of a child (including “maternity”, “paternity,” and “parental” leaves) affect the gender division of earning, caregiving, and household labor. Because they enable mothers to maintain attachment to their jobs, paid leaves of a moderate length (e.g., up to 6 months) are linked to higher rates of and continuity in mothers’ employment (Bana et al., 2020; Boeckmann et al., 2015; Budig et al., 2016; Hegewisch & Gornick, 2011; Thévenon & Solaz, 2013). When fathers take leave, they establish a stronger bond with their child, and are more engaged in housework and caregiving in both the short- and long-term (Almqvist & Duvander, 2014; Estes et al., 2007; Hook, 2006; Kotsadam and Finseraas 2011; Maume, 2016; Meil, 2013; Nepomnyaschy & Waldfogel, 2007; Patnaik, 2019; Petts & Knoester, 2018; Rehel, 2014; Schober, 2014). Fathers’ time spent at home is also positively linked to relationship quality and maternal employment, wages, and health outcomes (Andersen, 2018; Bratberg & Naz, 2014; Gault et al., 2014; Persson & Rossin-Slater, 2019; Petts & Knoester, 2020).

But access to parental leave in the United States is limited and uneven. The United States is the only high-income country that does not have federally mandated paid maternity leave (Donovan, 2020; Gault et al., 2014). The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) allows for 12 weeks of job protected leave after birth or adoption, but it is unpaid and only about half of all private sector workers are eligible (Jorgensen & Appelbaum, 2014; Kaufman et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the government does provide twelve weeks of fully paid leave to federal employees, and a few states provide access to some form of paid caregiving leave. For instance, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington offer partially paid leave, ranging between 16 weeks (Washington State) and four weeks (Rhode Island). These leaves are paid anywhere between 60 and 90 percent of one's full-time earnings up to a certain level of income (typically between 50 and 70 percent of statewide annual weekly wages), at which point replacement rates decrease (Donovan, 2020; Kaufman et al., 2020).

Most United States workers who do have access to paid parental leave obtain it through their employers. Although nearly 60 percent of employers offer at least some pay during maternity leave, very few offer full pay (approximately 10 percent), and few offer any sort of paid paternity leave (around 15 percent) (Matos et al., 2017). Moreover, in 2020, only 21 percent of United States workers had access to paid family leave (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Leave allowances are also considerably longer for women than men, and access is uneven depending on the size of the firm and one's position within it, with workers in larger firms and more privileged employees (salaried workers, professionals) having greater access (Horowitz et al., 2017; Kaufman et al., 2020; Kaufman & Petts, 2020; Matos et al., 2017; Petts et al., 2018). Indeed, drawing on data from 2013, Gault et al. (2014) report that five percent of workers with wages in the lowest 25 percent of the distribution had access to paid family leave (Gault et al., 2014). That percent jumped to 22 percent for workers in the top 10 percent of the wage distribution. Women are also much more likely than men to take advantage of leaves when they are available (Hegewisch & Gornick, 2011; Matos et al., 2017).

Flextime

Flextime—which enables employees to work at less traditional times of the day, but to work the total same number of hours—is also an important resource for parents of young children, given that it enables them to accommodate unpredictable and changing caregiving schedules. Studies find that, unlike other types of flexible work arrangements, such as telecommuting, flextime policies that give workers a degree of control over their work hours without increasing total work hours, tend to mitigate work-family conflict, lower turnover intentions, and boost job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Allen et al., 2013; Kelly and Moen 2020; Lyness et al., 2012). There is also evidence that flextime is particularly likely to facilitate women's, especially mother's, careers by enabling them to maintain their work hours (Fuller & Hirsh, 2019; Lyness et al., 2012).

Compared to parental leave, flextime is more widely available across employees and organizations. According to one study, 81 percent of employers offer flextime to at least some of their employees (Matos et al., 2017). Flextime is less costly to implement and applies to a broader set of workers than parental leave, given that it can be used for a variety of reasons, including elder care, household maintenance, medical appointments, or other personal commitments (O’Connor & Cech, 2018).

Flextime is similar to fully paid parental leave in that it allows workers to maintain breadwinner status while managing caregiving responsibilities. Yet, because flextime users are not absent from their workplace for a prolonged period, flextime use represents a relatively less egregious violation of ideal worker norms. Indeed, high-status male employees are especially likely to have access to flexibility policies (Weeden, 2005; Williams Blair-Loy & Berhdal, 2013), and studies do not find gender differences in their use (Blair-Loy & Wharton, 2002; Tang & Wadsworth, 2010). One study even found that fathers incur smaller penalties than mothers do for using flextime (Munsch, 2016).

Taken together, the availability and use of parental leave remain highly variable across employment situations and depend strongly on gender, whereas this is less true for flextime. Below, we discuss the factors that lead to men's and women's patterns of policy use.

What Drives Men's and Women's Policy Use?

Our study focuses on two key factors that contribute to men's and women's willingness to use work-family policies: 1) financial costs, and 2) flexibility stigma. Below, we discuss how these two forces operate.

Financial Costs

One important force implicated in generating gender disparities in work-family policy use—especially parental leave—pertains to short-term effects on income. Many women and men are unable to afford an even temporary reduction in their wages or salary (Gerstel & McGonagle, 1999), but patterns of gender inequality within families suggest that concerns over short-term costs tend to be more salient for men than women (Coltrane et al., 2013). Whereas women earn a significantly greater share of family income than in previous generations, men still earn the majority of the income in most heterosexual married couples (Cohen, 2018a, 2018b). Thus, even though women's incomes may be important for maintaining a standard of living over the long term, a temporary reduction in a husband's earnings is likely to be relatively more costly to family income than a temporary reduction in a wife's earnings. Further, men may be more likely to feel they must maintain their income, given that hegemonic cultural norms assign men greater moral responsibility for breadwinning and link it to the maintenance of a masculine identity (Blair-Loy, 2003; Ridgeway, 2011; Tichenor, 2005). Indeed, a large majority of adults believe cost is a major reason why men don’t take caregiving leave (Lenhart et al., 2019). Men themselves report financial concerns as a key source of their reluctance (Kaufman, 2018), though it is possible that some rely on economic rationalizations even if, for them, it is more about living up to masculine gender norms (Miller, 2011).

Consistent with the idea that men are less willing to accept even a short-term reduction in earnings, studies find that pay substantially boosts men's use of and duration of leave (Berrigan et al., 2021; Hobson et al., 2006). Furthermore, non-transferable (e.g., “use it or lose it”) paid leaves—which create a financial incentive for men to take advantage of it—are known to be more successful at increasing men's leave use (Bartel et al., 2018; Ekberg et al., 2013; Hegewisch & Gornick, 2011; Patanik 2015). Fathers are also much less likely than mothers to reduce their normal work hours (Cha, 2010; Killewald & García-Manglano, 2016; Young & Schieman, 2018) and may even increase their work hours and commitment after birth or adoption (Kaufman & Uhlenberg, 2000; Townsend, 2002). For some men, this behavior may be driven by a desire to fulfill a masculine provider role. But for others, it may be a response to changing financial pressures associated with the birth or adoption of a new child. For instance, the increasing healthcare, housing, and childcare costs associated with a growing family may coincide with declines in family income if a man's partner takes a partially paid or unpaid leave, reduces their work hours, or leaves the labor force altogether. By the same token, fewer women than men have a spouse who is both willing and able to take on substantial caregiving responsibilities, in part due to men having less access to leave. As such, taking unpaid leave may be viewed as an especially untenable option for men, whereas it may be viewed as a necessity for women. In this way, the existing gender disparities in access to and use of parental leave may be self-perpetuating, especially under conditions where the leave is financially costly to the worker.

Flexibility Stigma

Independent of short-term financial costs, workers may also, or instead, find that they are concerned about the threat that policy use could pose to their long-term career or employment prospects. Norms and expectations centered on an implicitly male “ideal worker” who is constantly available and able to meet employer demands (Acker, 1990; Correll et al., 2014; Williams, 2000) often pervade workplaces via organizational practices and interactions with managers, coworkers, customers and/or clients. Despite women's rising employment, this norm has strengthened in recent decades: work hours among professionals have risen dramatically (Cha & Weeden, 2014), work hours among non-professionals are increasingly unpredictable (Lambert, 2008), pressures to put in “facetime” are high (Kelly et al., 2010), and the growing use of new technologies like smartphones, facilitate workers’ availability (Perlow, 2012).

These expectations have dramatic effects on workers’ experiences and outcomes. When workers break ideal worker norms by taking leave or working flexibly, they risk being stigmatized as a less committed, low quality worker (Williams et al., 2013), and in turn, assigned lower performance reviews, wages, and chances of promotion (Coltrane et al., 2013; Glass, 2004; Judiesch & Lyness, 1999; Kmec et al., 2014; Munsch, 2016; Vandello et al., 2013). “Flexibility stigma” can also negatively affect workers more broadly—not just those who are stigmatized—by lowering job satisfaction, engagement, and work-life balance, increasing turnover intentions, and worsening health outcomes (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2014; Cech & O'Connor, 2017; O’Connor & Cech, 2018).

Important for our purposes, widely shared cultural beliefs about gender may frame the way that flexibility stigma is applied and experienced, especially when policy use is on account of gendered caregiving responsibilities. When women take leave for the purpose of caregiving, they deviate from workplace norms, but conform to prescriptive norms that women ought to prioritize family (Blair-Loy, 2003; Hays, 1998; Prentice & Carranza, 2002). As such, mothers may be viewed as a “bad” workers—who are less competent and committed and deserving of less pay (Budig & England, 2001; Correll et al., 2007)—but may still be viewed as “good” mothers—who are appropriately moral, warm, and nurturing (Benard & Correll, 2010).

By contrast, when men take on caregiving, they deviate from workplace norms as well as gender norms. As noted, maintaining a provider role is a cultural prescription for some men, and many men are not rewarded to the same extent as women—either socially or in the labor market—for taking time out to engage in non-work responsibilities like caregiving (Pedulla, 2020; Prentice & Carranza, 2002; Tichenor, 2005). Indeed, men are more likely to experience harassment and mistreatment and to be viewed as less masculine and less altruistic when they take caregiving leave or reduce their work hours (Berdahl & Moon, 2013; Harrington et al., 2016; Rudman & Mescher, 2013; Vandello et al., 2013; Wayne & Cordeiro, 2003). Even in contexts where employers are generally supportive of leave-taking, men are less often encouraged to take it than women (Harrington et al., 2019). Men's policy use has also been shown to depend on the behavior of other men. For instance, Norwegian men are more likely to use paternity leave when their coworkers and brothers have taken it (Dahl et al., 2014). As such, it may be that even if a man personally wants to take paternity leave, the risk of penalties from peers, employers and coworkers may be enough to dissuade him from doing so. Indeed, a majority of United States adults believe that professional penalties and a lack of employer support are a key reason why so few men take parental leave (Lenhart et al., 2019).

In sum, prior literature on flexibility stigma either attempts to measure the form and extent of stigma, or examines how perceived flexibility stigma affects employee outcomes. Our work fills an important gap by measuring the direct effect of organizational-level flexibility stigma on men's and women's intentions to use work-family policies and assessing how stigma may play out in gendered ways. Further, we disentangle the effects of flexibility stigma from financial concerns, and examine how these two forces may operate in tandem to shape policy use intentions. Indeed, the majority of United States workers are exposed to parental leave that is unpaid or poorly paid, and that exists in a workplace characterized by some degree of flexibility stigma—a nexus that is ripe for the reproduction of gender inequality.

Empirical Predictions

Work-family policies vary in the extent to which they allow workers to maintain financial security. Policies that enable a worker to engage in caregiving without losing income are more attractive than those that do not. Thus, we expect that as the financial costs of parental leave decrease, workers’ willingness to use it will increase. We also expect that the strength of this effect will vary by gender. As noted, men are much more likely to take leave in contexts where the leave is paid at a higher rate, or where they experience financial incentives to take the leave. Therefore, the effect of declining financial costs on workers’ willingness to use parental leave will be stronger for men than for women.

Next, in workplaces where flexibility stigma is salient, workers incur social and financial penalties when they demonstrate a willingness to use policies that allow them to prioritize outside responsibilities. Therefore, we anticipate that reducing the salience of flexibility stigma will significantly increase workers’ willingness to use parental leave and flextime. However, because “ideal worker” norms are gendered, men may react to flexibility stigma more acutely than women, given that they may feel they have more to lose in terms of social and financial status. This suggests that reducing the salience of flexibility stigma may exert a more significant and positive effect on men's than women's willingness to use parental leave and flextime.

As noted above, though, financial costs may also exert a disproportionate effect on men's use of parental leave. As such, the effects of financial costs and flexibility stigma may be interdependent for men, given their strong financial and social incentives to maintain continual breadwinner status. Specifically, the threat of flexibility stigma may be felt especially strongly for men in the case of unpaid leave, given that unpaid leave already represents an affront to men's breadwinning capabilities. Therefore, gender differences in responsiveness to reducing the salience of flexibility stigma may be more pronounced when financial costs for using parental leave are high than when they are low.

Finally, the more gendered cultural logics and patterns of policy use associated with parental leave versus flextime may condition the effects of flexibility stigma on policy use intentions. Parental leave taps more directly into gendered notions of family compared to flextime, given that it is specifically intended for the traditionally feminine responsibility of caring for an infant. Parental leave is also more apt to violate ideal worker norms, since it reduces, rather than rearranges, work hours. These factors suggest that gender differences in responsiveness to a reduction in flexibility stigma may be more pronounced in the case of parental leave than in the case of a flextime.

Data & Methods

Methodological challenges have made it difficult for existing research to identify the direct effects of different organizational and policy attributes on workers’ use of those policies. Organizational norms and practices are complex and often endogenous to a host of other forces—such as the demographic make-up of management—making it difficult to causally link the climate within an organization and the attributes of policies to the behaviors of its workers. We address these methodological challenges and provide new theoretical traction on these issues with data from an original, population-based survey experiment that enables us to exogenously manipulate formal aspects of a work-family policy as well as key aspects of the organizational context and then measure workers’ willingness to use the policy.

Data collection was funded by Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences and fielded by the survey company GfK (formerly Knowledge Networks) in June and July of 2016.² Respondents were part of Gfk's KnowledgePanel, a population-based, representative panel of respondents recruited through address-based sampling methods. We drew a sample of individuals for whom work-family issues and the policies that address them would be most relevant: 18 to 44 year-olds who are in the labor force (working as a paid employee, temporarily laid off from work, or not working but looking for work).³ Gfk fielded the survey to 4,444 panel members, which resulted in 2,036 completed and qualified surveys. We limit our analyses to individuals who identified as heterosexual because research indicates that the family and employment experiences of lesbian and gay individuals differ from individuals who identify as heterosexual.⁴ Gfk produced study-specific weights using benchmark distributions based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, Census region, household income, home ownership, metropolitan area, and having home internet access. These weights are used throughout our models.

Experimental Design

All respondents were asked how likely they would be to use two different work-family policies offered by their employer: a 12-week parental leave and a flexible work arrangement (FWA).⁵ For the parental leave policy, three conditions manipulated the financial costs associated with using the policy and five conditions manipulated the flexibility stigma. These were fully crossed, resulting in a 3 × 5 experimental design with 15 cells. For the flextime policy, five conditions manipulated the flexibility stigma.

Three manipulations altered the financial costs of parental leave. Respondents were told that the leave would either be: 1) unpaid, 2) paid at 50 percent of their usual pay, or 3) paid at 100 percent of their usual pay.

We draw on previous literature to develop two manipulations that measure the effect of flexibility stigma. The first communicates the presence or absence of stigma explicitly, via a direct supervisor's communications about the possible link between policy use and career prospects (Williams et al., 2013). The second communicates the presence or absence of stigma implicitly, via aggregate patterns of leave-taking within the organization, including among managers (Munsch et al., 2014). In all, five conditions manipulated the flexibility stigma within the broader organizational context: 1) managers indicating policy use may decrease promotion prospects (high flexibility stigma), 2) managers indicating that policy use would have no promotion consequences (low flexibility stigma), 3) a low rate of policy use within the organization, including among managers (high flexibility stigma), or 4) a high rate of use of the policy within the organization, including among managers (low flexibility stigma). There was also a “control” condition where nothing about the organizational context was mentioned. Thus, there were five total experimental conditions along the organizational context dimension. The full text of the experimental prompts is available in the Online Supplemental Appendix.

Dependent Variable

After being presented with information about a given work-family policy, all respondents were asked how likely they would be to use the policy (on a scale from 1 to 100, where a rating of “1” indicated that they would be very unlikely to use the policy and a rating of “100” meant they would be very likely to use the policy). This item is our primary dependent variable. Although it is not behavioral, we believe this measure captures workers’ behavioral intentions and thus is a useful indicator.

Measuring “Ideal Worker” Norm Violations and Financial Concerns

Our theoretical argument suggests that the flexibility stigma manipulations would reduce concerns about “ideal worker” norm violations for using a policy and our wage replacement rate manipulations would alleviate financial concerns about using a policy. To examine whether this was the case, we asked respondents a series of questions that captured these constructs. Respondents were asked the extent to which the following four issues would be of concern to them if they used the parental leave policy (again, on a scale from 1 to 100): 1) Other people in my organization would see me as a less competent worker, 2) Other people in my organization would see me as a less committed worker, 3) My financial security may be at risk, and 4) My relationships with managers, co-workers, customers, or clients may be harmed.⁶ From this set of items, we generated two variables. To capture the “ideal worker” norm, we combined the items about competence, commitment, and relationships into a single scale by taking the average (alpha = 0.91). To measure financial concerns, we utilized respondents’ response to the item about their financial security. Workers primed with high flexibility stigma prompts (those who received either the prime about promotion penalties or low uptake of the policy) reported higher levels of concern about violating ideal worker norms (p < .05). Although, we note that this effect is driven by the promotion penalty manipulation. There is not a statistically significant relationship between low uptake of the policy (compared to high uptake of the policy) and ideal worker norm concerns. Workers who were told that the parental leave policy was unpaid were also more likely to have financial concerns about using the policy than respondents who were told that they would receive either a 50 percent or 100 percent wage replacement rate (p < .001). Although, we note that the effect of the 50 percent wage replacement rate (compared to unpaid leave) on financial concerns reaches statistical significance for women, but not for men. For men, only 100 percent wage replacement lowered their financial concerns in a statistically significant way. These analyses demonstrate that our experimental manipulations generally, although not universally, affected individuals’ concerns about ideal worker norm violations and financial issues related to using the parental leave policy in ways that align with our theoretical predictions.

Results

We begin by examining the effects of financial costs, flexibility stigma, and their interaction on the likelihood of parental leave use. In doing so, we also assess gendered patterns in these effects. Then, we assess the effect of flexibility stigma on men's and women's likelihood of flextime use.

Reducing Financial Costs for Parental Leave

Model 1 in Table 1 regresses parental leave policy use likelihood on the different wage replacement rate conditions: 50 percent replacement and 100 percent replacement, compared to unpaid parental leave. The model includes a variable for the gender of the respondent as well as controls for flexibility stigma.⁷

Table 1.

Linear Regression Models of the Relationship Between Wage Replacement Rates, Gender, and Parental Leave Policy Use Likelihood.

	(1)	(2)
Male	−10.686***	−16.846***
	(1.798)	(3.336)
Wage Replacement Rate
Unpaid Leave	–	–
	–	–
50% Wage Replacement	5.186*	−0.238
	(2.334)	(3.599)
100% Wage Replacement	16.112***	11.513***
	(2.114)	(3.151)
Interactions
50% Wage Replacement × Male	–	10.142*
	–	(4.685)
100% Wage Replacement × Male	–	8.471*
	–	(4.262)
Constant	69.429***	72.812***
	(2.712)	(3.095)
Observations	1,729	1,729
R-squared	0.099	0.104

Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Weights used in all models. Controls included for flexibility stigma conditions.

Statistical significance (two-tailed tests): *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

Findings reveal large positive effects of the wage replacement rate on policy use likelihood. When 50 percent of a worker's wages would be replaced, they are five points on a 100-point scale more likely to use the policy than if the leave was unpaid. When the wage replacement rate is 100 percent, workers are fully 16 points on a 100-point scale more likely to indicate that they would use the policy.

We also posited that the effects of increasing the wage replacement rate would be stronger for men than for women. Model 2 in Table 1 tests this possibility by including interactions between the replacement rate and the gender of the worker. The interaction terms are both positive and statistically significant, indicating that the effects of increasing the wage replacement rate on the likelihood of using a parental leave policy are stronger for men than they are for women.

Reducing Flexibility Stigma for Parental Leave

Next, we examine whether reducing the level of flexibility stigma in an organizational context affects workers’ stated likelihood of using parental leave. We gain empirical traction on this issue by: 1) comparing the “promotion reassurance” condition with the “promotion penalty” condition, and 2) comparing the “high policy uptake” condition with the “low policy uptake” condition. Our expectation is that policy use intentions will be higher in the “promotion reassurance” and “high policy uptake” conditions, relative to their counterparts.

In Model 1 in Table 2, we regress the policy use likelihood measure on “promotion reassurance” (compared to promotion penalty) and the gender of the worker. We also control for the wage replacement rate condition to which the respondent was randomly assigned. First, as we saw previously, there is a large gender gap in use intentions with men being roughly 10 points on a 100-point scale less likely to use the policy than women. Second, consistent with our prediction, workers are statistically significantly more likely to indicate that they would use the parental leave policy if flexibility stigma is reduced through a prime reassuring them that their promotion prospects would not be jeopardized by using the policy. Indeed, respondents were more than 12 points on a 100-point scale more likely to use the policy when flexibility stigma was reduced in this way. Thus, the promotion reassurance effect size is similar to the effect of gender on intended parental leave use. In Model 2 in Table 2, we examine the effect of another flexibility stigma reduction prime: high policy uptake. Here, we see a positive, but not statistically significant, coefficient, indicating that higher levels of uptake do not increase policy use intentions in the same way as directly reassuring workers about their promotion prospects does.

Table 2.

Linear Regression Models of the Relationship Between Flexibility Stigma, Gender, and Parental Leave Policy Use Likelihood.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Male	−9.978***	−10.439***	−11.361**	−12.375**
	(2.829)	(2.812)	(3.708)	(3.754)
Reductions to Flexibility Stigma
Promotion Reassurance	12.602***	–	11.140**	–
	(2.806)	–	(4.241)	–
High Uptake	–	2.181	–	0.223
	–	(2.836)	–	(4.171)
Interactions
Promotion Reassurance × Male	–	–	2.697	–
	–	–	(5.605)	–
High Uptake × Male	–	–	–	3.826
	–	–	–	(5.619)
Constant	58.751***	69.510***	59.560***	70.542***
	(3.216)	(3.202)	(3.507)	(3.467)
Observations	699	703	699	703
R-squared	0.087	0.075	0.087	0.076

Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Weights used in all models. Controls included for wage replacement rate condition.

Statistical significance (two-tailed tests): *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

Is flexibility stigma reduction more effective for men than for women? Model 3 in Table 2 assesses this possibility by including an interaction between being a male respondent and the promotion reassurance condition. The interaction term is not statistically significant, indicating that the promotion reassurance prime operates similarly for men and women. Model 4 also shows that the interaction between the high policy uptake prime and gender is not significant.

The Intersection of Financial Costs, Flexibility Stigma, and Gender

Next, we examine how financial costs, flexibility stigma, and gender intersect with one another. Model 1 in Table 3 includes three-way interactions between respondent gender, the promotion support prime, and the wage replacement rate (as well as all two-way interactions). Here, we see a statistically significant three-way interaction between being male, receiving the promotion support prime, and having a 100 percent wage replacement rate. Because three-way interactions are difficult to interpret, we plot the predicted parental leave policy use values from this model by gender, unpaid versus 100 percent wage replacement, and promotion support versus promotion penalties in Figure 1.⁸ The two bars on the left side of the figure show a large gender gap in the likelihood of using the parental leave policy in the condition with high flexibility stigma—promotion penalties, in this case—and no financial support—unpaid leave. The gender gap in this condition is nearly 25 points on a 100-point scale and is highly statistically significant. Yet, the gender gap narrows greatly in the other three conditions presented here: promotion reassurance and unpaid leave, promotion penalty and 100 percent replacement, and promotion reassurance and 100 percent replacement. These findings provide support for the idea that the gender gap in parental leave use can be reduced under more favorable conditions. Interestingly, it appears to require either reducing flexibility stigma or removing financial concerns. Both types of supports do not appear necessary, although the gender gap is also not statistically significant when both conditions are met.

Figure 1.

Predicted likelihood of using the parental leave policy, by gender. Notes: Predicted values presented from Model 1 in Table 3. 95% confidence intervals presented. Only selected conditions presented. Additional conditions included in Model 1. Source: Survey-experimental data.

Table 3.

Linear Regression Models of the Relationships between Flexibility Stigma, Wage Replacement Rates, Gender, and Parental Leave Policy Use Likelihood.

	(1)	(2)
Male	−24.827***	−12.698*
	(6.390)	(6.281)
Reductions to Flexibility Stigma
Promotion Reassurance	2.382	–
	(7.909)	–
High Uptake	–	3.667
	–	(7.973)
Wage Replacement Rate
Unpaid Leave	–	–
	–	–
50% Wage Replacement	−8.328	−0.772
	(6.803)	(8.171)
100% Wage Replacement	−1.849	17.753**
	(6.534)	(5.746)
Interactions Between Flexibility Stigma Reductions and Wage Replacement
Promotion Reassurance × 50% Wage Replacement	15.036	–
	(10.746)	–
Promotion Reassurance × 100% Wage Replacement	11.939	–
	(10.341)	–
High Uptake × 50% Wage Replacement	–	−3.510
	–	(11.471)
High Uptake × 100% Wage Replacement	–	−5.480
	–	(9.354)
Interactions between Flexibility Stigma Reductions and Gender
Promotion Reassurance × Male	20.233	–
	(10.329)	–
High Uptake × Male		−8.297
		(10.417)
Interactions between Wage Replacement and Gender
50% Wage Replacement × Male	12.370	4.898
	(9.048)	(10.542)
100% Wage Replacement × Male	28.606**	−2.756
	(8.659)	(7.980)
Interactions between Flexibility Stigma Reductions, Wage Replacement, and Gender
Promotion Reassurance × 50% Wage Replacement × Male	−20.114	–
	(14.278)	–
Promotion Reassurance × 100% Wage Replacement × Male	−32.511*	–
	(13.558)	–
High Uptake × 50% Wage Replacement × Male	–	20.959
	–	(15.027)
High Uptake × 100% Wage Replacement × Male	–	12.960
	–	(12.894)
Constant	66.954***	71.861***
	(4.995)	(4.788)
Observations	699	703
R-squared	0.108	0.094

Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Weights used in all models.

Statistical significance (two-tailed tests): *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

In Model 2 of Table 3, we tested whether there is a similar three-way interaction between being male, having high policy uptake in the organization, and the wage replacement rate. Neither of the three-way interactions in the model are statistically significant.⁹

Reducing Flexibility Stigma for Flextime Use

Next, we examine how likely respondents are to say that they would use a flextime policy where they could receive their full compensation and continue to work full time, but maintain some control over their work schedule. As we theorize above, flextime offers an analytically revealing comparison to parental leave. Flextime use violates ideal worker norms, but not to the same degree as parental leave use. And the underlying logic of flextime is relatively less gendered, given that its purpose is not limited to parenting and it is widely used by men, women, parents and non-parents.

Table 4 shows the effects of the flexibility stigma manipulations on the likelihood of using flextime and examines gender differences in these effects. Model 1 in Table 4 regresses the likelihood of using the flextime policy on the promotion reassurance condition (compared to the promotion penalty condition) and the gender of the worker. We observe a large, positive, and statistically significant effect. When supervisors counteract concerns about promotion prospects, workers are nearly 21 points out of 100 more likely to indicate that they would use the policy. Model 2 examines the effect of high policy uptake. While the coefficient for high uptake is positive, it does not reach statistical significance. Models 3 and 4 replicate models 1 and 2, respectively, but include interactions between the flexibility stigma reduction prime and the gender of the respondent. Neither interaction is statistically significant, indicating that the effects of flexibility stigma do not vary by gender.

Table 4.

Linear Regression Models of the Relationship between Flexibility Stigma, Gender, and Flextime Policy Use Likelihood.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Male	−2.602	−5.554	−1.089	−1.810
	(3.635)	(3.748)	(5.526)	(5.387)
Reductions to Flexibility Stigma
Promotion Reassurance	20.854***	–	22.347***	–
	(3.693)	–	(5.190)	–
High Uptake	–	5.680	–	9.380
	–	(3.761)	–	(5.782)
Interactions
Promotion Reassurance × Male	–	–	−2.690	–
	–	–	(7.360)	–
High Uptake × Male	–	–	–	−7.560
	–	–	–	(7.518)
Constant	57.799***	73.016***	57.024***	71.289***
	(3.207)	(3.531)	(3.729)	(4.203)
Observations	336	342	336	342
R-squared	0.121	0.018	0.121	0.023

Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Weights used in all models.

Statistical significance (two-tailed tests): *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

The findings for the flextime policy paint a distinct picture from those found for parental leave. There are no gender differences in the intention to use the flextime policy or in response to the flexibility stigma-reducing prime. However, reducing flexibility stigma through promotion reassurance exerted a particularly large, positive effect on the likelihood of using flextime for both men and women.

Discussion

Work-family policy use is highly variable across organizations and between men and women. In this article, we have sought to understand how modifications to organizational norms, practices, and policy designs may increase the use of work-family policies among both men and women. Our survey-experimental results are uniquely positioned to provide traction on these issues because we were able to exogenously manipulate the level of flexibility stigma and financial costs that workers would experience while making a decision about how likely they would be to utilize hypothetical work-family policies.

First, we demonstrate that reducing flexibility stigma by directly reassuring workers that leave-taking will not harm their career prospects has a large, positive effect on both men's and women's intentions to use parental leave and flextime. However, we do not find evidence that the overall rate of policy use in the organization—a more indirect signal of flexibility stigma—affects policy use intentions. Indeed, this manipulation also did not affect respondents’ concerns about ideal worker norm violations. Second, we show that reducing the financial costs associated with parental leave has a large positive effect on leave-taking intentions for both men and women, but these effects are stronger for men. Third, the effects of financial costs and flexibility stigma can interact to narrow the gender gap in parental leave use. The gender gap in the willingness to use parental leave is most pronounced when leaves are unpaid and when flexibility stigma around promotion penalties is high. Critically, this type of context—high stigma with unpaid leave—is the modal experience for workers in the United States. Yet, our results also provide evidence that things do not need to be this way: the gender gap may be reduced when organizational environments actively decouple rewards from policy use or when leaves are well-paid.

Conclusion

Our findings have important implications for scholarship in the areas of organizations, gender, and families. First, our findings imply that, under the right organizational conditions, men's and women's parental leave and flextime use could be substantially increased, and parental leave could be used more equitably by men and women. This finding speaks to debates over the relative effectiveness of work-family policies for promoting gender equality (see e.g., Gornick & Meyers, 2009). For instance, if we had found that our manipulations exerted very modest or weak effects, we would have concluded that organizational change may help reduce inequality, but that it is unlikely to overcome the enduring power of the other social forces that contribute to the gendered division of labor, such as gender-traditional family logics, unequal incomes, gendered pressures from friends and family, and internalized ideal worker norms (Blair-Loy, 2003; Cohen, 2018a; Ridgeway, 2011; Risman, 2018). But the large size of the main effects, and the fact that we demonstrate ways to mitigate significant gender gaps, supports the literature showing that most young people today hold gender-progressive ideals and, as a result, are motivated to act on such ambitions when institutional conditions are favorable (Gerson, 2010; Pedulla & Thébaud, 2015). Our findings also resonate with evidence suggesting that gender norm violations alone may be a relatively minor factor in explaining men's policy use. For instance, a recent survey found that nearly half of American men reject the notion that taking a caregiving leave violates masculinity norms (Lenhart et al., 2019). As such, our findings imply that more egalitarian beliefs and ideals could be more fully realized under more favorable workplace conditions. That is, under the right social and organizational conditions, work-family policies likely can be utilized frequently and gender-equitably.

Importantly, such an outcome would facilitate gender equality both in families and in the workplace. The large effect sizes for men are of particular importance in this regard. More widespread use of parental leave and flextime among men would presumably increase their household contributions not just in the short term, but also over the long term, as children age (see Bünning, 2015). Furthermore, it would promote workplace equality given that: 1) women who use work-family policies are more likely to remain employed, and 2) men who are in more egalitarian spousal relationships are more likely to support their female co-workers (Desai et al., 2014).

A second major contribution of our analysis is to improve our understanding of how the gender beliefs that are linked to a given policy matter. Ridgeway (2011) argues that gendered patterns and inequalities in organizations are likely to be most prominent when tasks and settings elicit widely shared cultural beliefs about gender (a “gender frame”). In our study, gender is a more salient predictor of parental leave use intentions than it is for flextime use. This finding underscores that parental leave is especially strongly tied to gender beliefs about motherhood and the care of very young children, and dovetails with previous evidence that men are more likely to be penalized for using leave policies than they are for using flextime (Munsch, 2016; Vandello et al., 2013). But we expand on these ideas by showing how, even within parental leave policies, unpaid leave takes on an especially gendered connotation. For men, taking unpaid leave not only represents a gender transgression in that it signals a prioritization of care for young children, but it also represents a gender transgression because it simultaneously compromises men's ability to maintain a provider role. This point is illuminated by our finding that gender disparities are greatest in the case of unpaid leave, and that these disparities are especially large among respondents who were exposed to flexibility stigma from a supervisor. The implication is that, by changing the design and implementation of a policy (e.g., by offering 100 percent pay for parental leave or by changing norms around policy use), gendered cultural beliefs and assumptions about work and care may become decoupled from the policy, thereby affecting men's and women's orientations to it.

Third, our analysis highlights how people's tendency to tap into existing cultural meanings of gender, work, and family depend on the ways that “formal policies” and “informal practices” intersect in a given organizational context (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Our findings suggest that when formal policies (e.g., the level of pay associated with parental leave) and informal practices (e.g., a culture of flexibility stigma) align to make parenting incompatible with breadwinning—unpaid leave and promotion penalties, in our case—gender disparities in parental leave policy use intentions are stark. But, when there is a breakdown in this alignment, such that formal policies, informal practices, or both, allow for breadwinning alongside parenting, these gendered family schemas have less bearing on decision-making. Similar interactions between formal policies and informal practices could be key factors in shaping other gender disparities in organizations, for example in terms of earnings and promotions into management.

Fourth, we contribute to the literature on flexibility stigma by demonstrating that direct signals regarding flexibility stigma from a supervisor exert large causal effects on men's and women's policy use intentions. However, an organization with high levels of policy use may not necessarily convey the signal that it is free of flexibility stigma. Therefore, one cannot assume that increases in aggregate rates of policy use would, on their own, catalyze even higher levels of policy use. Rather, the relationship between supervisors and employees is critical. This finding resonates with prior research. Studies have documented that supervisor support regarding work-family issues is especially effective for reducing employee perceptions of work-family conflict (see e.g., Hammer et al., 2009; Kelly et al., 2008). Although formally granted by an organization or a state, work-family policies are typically implemented at the discretion of a manager. As such, the power dynamic between employer and employee is critical, given that employees have to seek out, request, and negotiate their policy use—a process by which supervisors may frame policy use as a reward for a good performance, rather than a worker's right (Albiston, 2005; Kelly & Kalev, 2006). Our study builds on this literature by providing novel empirical support for the idea that supervisors, and the way they convey organizational norms about work-family policies to workers, are critical for organizational change, and are possibly even more critical than are employees’ observations of more diffuse signals of organizational norms.

While providing important insights about organizations, gender, and policy design, our study is not without limitations. Our dependent variable captures workers’ behavioral intentions, but does not provide evidence about how workers actually behave. Nevertheless, we note that our basic pattern of findings aligns with survey-based research. For instance, the magnitude of the gender gaps we observe in parental leave use intentions are in line with existing work on gender differences in actual policy use (Blair-Loy & Wharton, 2002; Houser & Vartanian, 2012; Tang & Wadsworth, 2010). Indeed, in our survey, we asked respondents about their own work-family policy use and, among parents in our unweighted analytic sample, 52% of women and 29% of men had used a parental leave policy. The magnitude of this gender gap in parental leave use is quite similar to what we see for use intentions in the unpaid leave condition when a promotion penalty is primed in our experiment. We believe this provides some support for the idea that our measure is capturing something valuable about the social world.

We also recognize limitations to our experimental interventions and measurements. For instance, our intervention aimed at reducing flexibility stigma via supervisor behavior was neutral in that it was intended to remove the presence of stigma (e.g., by denying any association between policy use and promotion opportunities). Therefore, a study design that assesses the effect of more explicitly positive and family-supportive supervisor behaviors would be fruitful. Additionally, our intervention that reduced flexibility stigma via workplace norms did not manipulate the degree to which such norms are gendered. Prior research indicates that masculinity norms are an important driver of men's workplace behavior and policy use (e.g., Berdahl et al., 2018; Dahl et al., 2014). As such, men may have been more likely to take leave if we had indicated that most men in their organization, especially male supervisors or senior managers, had utilized the leave policy.

There are also aspects of policy design that likely contribute to gender disparities in use, but that were beyond the scope of our study. For example, some leave policies require leave-takers to attest to being the “primary caregiver” (Rau & Williams, 2017). These types of clauses make workers—especially men—who are engaged in dual caregiving arrangements feel that they are not entitled to use such policies. Additionally, we did not manipulate the length of the parental leave in our experimental design, which may be an important aspect that shapes leave-taking decisions. This would be an interesting avenue for future work in this area.

Notwithstanding these limitations, our findings have important implications for organizational leaders and policy-makers as well as scholars. First, work-family policy use mitigates gender inequality in employment, a societal pattern that amounts to significant economic losses (Elborgh-Woytek et al., 2013; Wodon & de la Briere 2018). Second, work-family policy use promotes lower levels of stress, higher levels of job satisfaction, and better overall well-being for men and women workers (Kelly et al., 2008; Kelly et al., 2014; Lyness et al., 2012; Moen et al., 2016). Third, because work-family policy use can mitigate inequalities in family divisions of labor, evidence suggests that it would also promote stable, happy, and more intimate relationships (see e.g., Thébaud & Halcomb, 2019 for a review). As such, increasing and equalizing policy use is a critical task. Our findings indicate that policymakers and employers have the potential to do so by: 1) developing innovative ways of implementing cultural change in organizations, and 2) reducing the financial costs of policy use. In particular, finding ways to promote supportive supervisor behaviors—especially to the extent that they decouple policy use from work opportunities and rewards—appears to hold promise for increasing work-family policy use and decreasing gender disparities therein.

This article also advances our understanding of the ways that organizational contexts and policy design are implicated in the perpetuation of gender inequality. Under the right conditions, the use of work-family policies can be increased for both men and women, and the disparities between men and women in work-family policy use can be significantly reduced. Designing policies in ways that limit financial costs and crafting workplace environments that mitigate flexibility stigma can enable couples to attain the more egalitarian relationships they say they desire at home, while supporting increased gender equality at work.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Sarah Thébaud

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Sarah Thébaud is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research identifies cultural, social psychological, and institutional processes that contribute to gender inequalities in the workplace, families, entrepreneurship, and higher education.

David S. Pedulla is a Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His research agenda examines the processes leading to race and gender labor market stratification as well as the consequences of nonstandard, mismatched, and precarious employment for workers’ social and economic outcomes.

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