COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from working mothers
The entrenchment of the ideal worker norm during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from working mothers in the United States.
Shifts in the ideal worker culture as experienced by working mothers in the U.S. during COVID-19 are examined. Highlighting the intricate nature of the entrenchment of the ideal worker culture informs implications for theory of gendered organizations & organizational practice.
- Published July 6, 2022
- Author List: Mona Zanhour & Dana McDaniel Sumpter
- Link to Publication
We study shifts in the ideal worker culture as experienced by working mothers across organizations in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiences of 53 interviewees who attended to increased responsibilities across both work and family domains revealed an entrenchment of the ideal worker culture across nearly all organizations and professions. This manifested in three levels: as (1) a reinforced ideal worker culture in the workplace through work intensification, increased competitiveness, and surface-level support; (2) the reinforcing of organizations' ideal worker norms at home, with gendered division of space and labor; and (3) experienced internalized ideal worker norms in the expectations working mothers maintained for themselves. These findings offer insight into the lives of working mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges which have pushed many mothers to reduce work hours or leave the workforce. Highlighting the intricate nature of the entrenchment of the ideal worker culture informs implications for theory of gendered organizations and for organizational practice.
How are working mothers faring during the COVID-19 crisis? College of Business HRM professors Dana Sumpter and Mona Zanhour have been conducting a qualitative study to gather the experiences of women who face increasingly difficult choices in their work and family roles. Their work was recently quoted in The Atlantic, in an article by Joe Pinsker about the unsustainable nature of this experience for working parents.
