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Final Conference Program

The 2024 conference theme is Big Questions in Work-Family, which will be part of a two-year agenda. These are the cutting-edge global questions that are not yet fully answered or recognized, including:

CHANGES IN WORK – What are the meanings of work at different life stages, for different groups, and in different kinds of jobs? How is work organized? What is the future of work and for whom?

CHANGES IN FAMILY LIFE – How are families and family experiences changing around the globe and what changes might we expect? For example, fertility rates are declining in high-income countries and there are reports of an epidemic of loneliness. What other changes are evident and what are the implications?

CHANGES IN WORK-LIFE INTERFACE: What theories, concepts, and measures best explain new and emerging intersections between work and family?

THE LIFE COURSE – How do changes in work and family impact children and their capacities to enter adult roles, for adults to successfully navigate transitions, and for older populations to age well?

SOLUTIONS AND PROMISING PRACTICES – What are the most promising solutions in policy and practice in the global north and south? What are the challenges and best opportunities for advancing equity and social justice?

The conference’s objective is to chart an agenda for the future of work-family research, policy and practice. In addition to sharing new research and seeking answers to big questions, this is a working conference, fostering active participation and connectivity among diverse groups. We anticipate more than 500 work-family stakeholders in attendance and a dynamic program centered on meaningful exchange. There will be numerous events to connect a global community of scholars with thought leaders in media, philanthropy, practice, policy, and social change.

With excitement about the years ahead,

Ellen Galinsky, WFRN President

Registration reception will be on the first floor atrium of the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) also known as the “MB building” located at 1450 Guy Street Montreal, Quebec Canada. The registration desk will be open Wednesday 9am-5pm, Thursday 8am-5pm, Friday 8am-5pm, and Saturday 8am-1:30pm.

Coffee and snack stations are located in the MB Atrium 1st floor and MB 3rd floor throughout the conference. Additional coffee and snacks will be provided in MB9 (9th floor) concurrent with poster presentations on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

WIFI

WIFI is available to all conference delegates. To access WIFI you will need to self-register to the Concordia University wireless network via these instructions: CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

Use the network: ConcordiaGuest

Use the access code (case sensitive): WAC-wfrn24

Childcare

Childcare is available on Thursday and Friday 8am-5pm to those who have pre-registered for these services. The childcare room is located at MB9D.

Breastfeeding and Private Space

We have reserved a private space for breastfeeding and for those in need of privacy to attend to other personal concerns. This is located in room MB 2.426. Kindly be considerate of others by knocking on the door. Please do not use this space not for other purposes (such as for office work).

Subha Barry, MBA, MS

Subha V. Barry is a C-suite leader and an Advisor who brings a unique perspective on the alignment of corporate culture to talent strategy and business results. As a transformational change agent, she has a proven record of identifying and accelerating new business creation, driving sales, and increasing profitability. She is president of Seramount, now part of EAB. Seramount is a strategic professional services firm dedicated to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Here, she drives the firm’s vision, strategy, and business development. Prior to Seramount, Subha was SVP and Chief Diversity Officer at Freddie Mac, where she served on the firm’s management committee and led their Foundation. During her 20+ years at Merrill Lynch, Subha was a Managing Director and the company’s first Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion, driving strategy, infrastructure and execution with a lens on both global and local community. She has taught Gender Policy at Columbia University and speaks passionately about the ability to drive innovation by embracing diversity and creating a culture of inclusion. She serves on a number of boards aligned with her passions—education, cancer research, and women’s advancement.A native of India, Subha holds a BA from Bombay University and an MBA and MS in Accounting from Rice University. She enjoys golfing, reading poetry and rallying for social change. She has two grown children and lives in Naples, Florida and New Hope, PA with her husband.


Mary Blair-Loy, Ph.D.

Mary Blair-Loy is Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego (PhD, University of Chicago; MDiv, Harvard). She studies gender, work-family, and normative cultural models of a worthwhile life. Her award-winning book Misconceiving Merit (with Erin Cech) uses multiple types of evidence to show that cultural beliefs about merit in STEM professions are widely-embraced yet reinforce gender and race inequality and harm science. Her award-winning book Competing Devotions is recognized as a landmark in work-family research. She is a coauthor of the 2024 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report entitled, “Supporting Family Caregivers in STEMM: A Call to Action.”


Erin Cech, Ph.D.

Dr. Erin Cech (she/her) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Mechanical Engineering (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan. Her research examines cultural mechanisms of inequality in the US workforce. Cech’s work includes The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (2021) and Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering (with M. Blair-Loy; 2022). Her research has been covered in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Time and has written for The Atlantic and Harvard Business Review. She was named one of Business Equality Magazine’s “40 LGBTQ+ Leaders Under 40.”


Heejung Chung, Ph.D.

Heejung Chung is Professor of Work and Employment at King’s College London. She is a comparative labour market researcher interested in the future of work, workers’ well-being, and gender equality. Her research aims to explore different issues of inequality and social justice around work and labour markets, and find policy solutions to tackle these problems. Her work has influenced policies at the international level – including the European Commission, ILO, UN and national levels – e.g. the UK, Korean, and German government. She is the author of the book The Flexibility Paradox: Why flexible working leads to (self-)exploitation (2022, Policy Press)


Andrea Doucet, Ph.D.

Andrea Doucet is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work, and Care, Professor in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Brock University, and Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University and the University of Victoria. She is the author of the award-winning book Do Men Mother? (2006, 2018). Her current writing explores ecological care ethics and how to apply this to research on paid and unpaid work in diverse Canadian families, parental leaves and other care leaves, and knowledge-making processes. She is the Project Director and Principal Investigator of the Canadian SSHRC Partnership program, Reimagining Care/Work Policies and Co-Coordinator of the International Network of Leave Policies and Research


Kim French, Ph.D.

Dr. Kim French is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State University. She earned her PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from University of South Florida (2017). Her research focuses on how managing work and family affects the health and well-being of individuals and their family members. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the connection between work and physical and physiological health, workers' changing experiences over time, and supportive work and family systems.


Ellen Galinsky, MS

Ellen Galinsky is the President of Families and Work Institute (FWI) and the elected President of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN). She also serves as senior research advisor to AASA, the School Superintendent Organization. Previously, she served as the Chief Science Officer of the Bezos Family Foundation and as faculty at the Bank Street College of Education. Galinsky is the author of Mind in the Making, a best-selling book on early learning Her book on adolescence, The Breakthrough Years, was published in March 2024. She is also the author of 90 books/reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the Web. Other career highlights include serving as the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, being elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, serving as parent expert in the Mister Rogers Talks with Parents series, and receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College as well as the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from WFRN.


Jarrod Haar, Ph.D.

Dr Jarrod Haar is Dean’s Chair and Professor of Management and Māori Business at Massey University (New Zealand). He has Māori tribal affiliations of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Mahuta. He researches employees and organisations (especially Māori) including the role of technology. He has won industry and best-paper awards and won multiple research grants ($6.7m individually) plus is a named researcher on a $105m National Science Challenge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi. He has 150 journal articles and has given 110 keynotes/invited presentations. He is a frequent media commentator and is ranked in the Elsevier World Top 2% of Scientists worldwide [by citations].


Yang Hu, Ph.D.

Yang Hu is Professor of Global Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. He obtained his PhD in Sociology as a Gates Scholar from the University of Cambridge, UK. Yang’s research focuses on family and work changes and inequalities in a global context. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), his recent and ongoing collaborative projects examine the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for work and family inequalities in a cross-national context. Yang is the author of the book Chinese-British Intermarriage – Disentangling Gender and Ethnicity. His recent work has been published in journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Gender & Society, and Journal of Marriage and Family, and has been covered by media outlets including The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC, and Channel News Asia. Yang is co-director of the Early Career Fellowship Program at the Work and Family Researchers Network. He is also a member of the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab.


Ameeta Jaga, Ph.D.

Ameeta Jaga (Ph.D.) is Professor of Organisational Psychology at the University of Cape Town and a non-resident fellow at Harvard University's Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research. She applies a Southern and decolonial approach to address the geopolitics of knowledge production, focusing on gender and social class analyses of work-family concerns, particularly among low-income mothers. Employing feminist methodologies like photovoice, her research aims for epistemic justice, impacting workplace breastfeeding support and policy enhancements for care work. Ameeta's work is published in Gender, Work and Organisation, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and Journal of Applied Psychology.


Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ph.D.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, specializing in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights guide leaders worldwide through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations, governments, and start-up ventures. She co-founded the Harvard University-wide Advanced Leadership Initiative, guiding its planning from 2005 to its launch in 2008 and serving as Founding Chair and Director from 2008-2018 as it became a growing international model for a new stage of higher education preparing successful top leaders to apply their skills to national and global challenges. Author or co-author of 20 books, her latest book is Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time.


Ellen Ernst Kossek, Ph.D.

Ellen Ernst Kossek is the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor at Purdue University’s Daniels School of Business. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a BA from Mount Holyoke College. A leading social scientist and workplace expert, she served as the first elected President of the Work-Family Researchers Network and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, and the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology. Dr. Kossek has many awards for research and service excellence to advance gender equality, inclusion, and work-life understanding in employing organizations and society. Her current research examines initiatives to advance work-life equality; improve the implementation of flexibility and work-family policies such as hybrid and remote working, and maternity/sick leaves; and the design and delivery of leadership and organizational interventions to help employers adapt the modern workplace and the future of work. She has also developed an assessment and training to help individuals and teams manage their work-life connectivity and boundary management styles. She recently served on a National Academy of Sciences expert study group on the need to enhance supportive policies and practices for supporting family caregivers working in science, engineering and medicine. A recent Harvard Business Review article on the future of flexibility was selected as a “must read” for 2023. Dr. Kossek has been invited to give talks to managers and students in many countries round the world. Prior to becoming a professor, she worked on human resource issues for major corporations in the U.S., Europe and Asia.


Melissa Milkie, Ph.D.

Melissa Milkie is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, and Professor Emeritus at University of Maryland. She recently served as President of the Work and Family Researchers Network. Her research centers on gender, work-family conflicts, time use and mental health. She examines changing work structures and cultural landscapes that shape well-being at work and at home. Central to her scholarship is highlighting the complexities and social factors linked to how people spend their time and experience daily life. Dr. Milkie is currently writing the book Parents Under Pressure: How Mothers and Fathers Spend and Feel about Their Time.


Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Ph.D.

Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Ph.D., is the Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation at Work and in Life at the University of Quebec in Montreal (ESG-UQAM). Her research examines digital technologies and the boundaries between work and life across different national contexts. She has published Living with Digital Surveillance in China. Citizens’ Narratives on Technology, Privacy, and Governance (Routledge, 2024) and over 75 chapters and articles in management, sociology, psychology, and information systems journals. She has received the Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, is a founding member of WFRN and co-chairs the Technology, Work and Family research community.


Richard Petts, Ph.D.

Richard J. Petts is a Professor of Sociology at Ball State University. His research focuses on the intersection of family, work, gender, and policy, with a specific emphasis on parental leave, father involvement, and workplace flexibility as policies and practices that can reduce gender inequality, promote greater work-family balance, and improve family well-being. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Contemporary Families and the Executive Board of the Work and Family Researchers Network. He has published extensively in academic journals, and his work has been featured in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Forbes, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal. You can learn more about his research by visiting his website (www.richardpetts.com).


Alejandra Ros Pilarz, Ph.D.

Alejandra Ros Pilarz is an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research agenda aims to improve the wellbeing of working families with low-incomes through policy-relevant research. Her research examines the effects of parental employment and children’s early care and education (ECE) contexts on family wellbeing and children’s development in early childhood. She also examines how child and family policies—including ECE policies, work-family policies, and income support policies—shape parents’ employment, children’s ECE contexts, and ultimately, influence child and family wellbeing.


Leah Ruppanner, Ph.D.

Leah Ruppanner is a Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab and Gender Equity Imitative at the University of Melbourne. She was awarded top in field for all of Australia for Gender Studies (2022 and 2023) and Sociology (2023). Ruppanner is a leading expert on the gender impacts of COVID-19 with work cited in top outlets - Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Gender and Society. Her forthcoming book Drained offers a new understanding of the mental load and concrete solutions to tame its drain (Penguin Random House USA, Allen Unwin Australia, Atlantic Books UK). Her previous book Motherlands provides a typology of childcare and gender policies across US states (Temple). Ruppanner's research is regularly featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes and other international news outlets.


Scott Schieman, Ph.D.

Scott Schieman is Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. He is currently co-editor of Society and Mental Health, the flagship journal for the Sociology of Mental Health Section of the American Sociology Association. Professor Schieman studies trends in what people think and feel about work–and how they talk about it. He is especially interested in the ways that work shapes the sense of self and identity, status, and well-being. Since 2005, he has collected data from more than 40,000 workers in national surveys of the United States and Canada. Drawing upon decades of quantitative and qualitative evidence, his research tells the story about the quality of working life and its effects over time.


Brigid Schulte

Brigid Schulte is a journalist, think tank program director, keynote speaker and author of the New York Times bestselling book on time pressure, gender and modern life, Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time. Her latest book, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life will be published in September 2024. She was an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine for and was part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She serves as the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity narrative change program at New America. She hosts the Better Life Lab podcast on Slate. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Slate, the Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Guardian, New York Magazine, Fast Company, and others.


Cali Williams Yost, MBA

For more than two decades, Cali Williams Yost has been a leading authority on high performance work flexibility. A visionary workplace futurist, strategist, and author, Yost is the Founder and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group, a solutions company helping organizations unlock performance and engagement by reimagining how, when, and where work is done. Called “one of the most sophisticated thinkers” on the transformation of work by The New York Times, her commentary is frequently featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, USA TODAY, Marketplace, NBC Nightly News and CNN. Yost approaches flexible work transformation as a strategic business imperative. She codified her concepts in her books, Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, (Hachette), and Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You (Penguin Group). Yost graduated with honors from Columbia Business School where she’s noted as an alumnus “Changing the World.” In 2018, she was named one of the global management thinkers “On the Radar” by Thinkers50.

The Kathleen Christensen Dissertation Award

2024 Award Recipient: Tania Hutt

Nominator Kate Weisshaar writes: “Dr. Tania Hutt received her PhD in June 2023 in the Sociology department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Dr. Hutt’s dissertation, titled “A New Dimension of the Motherhood Penalty: Perceptions of Future Childbearing Risk,” proposes that our understanding of motherhood should be broadened to include perceptions of potential motherhood, in addition to current motherhood. This conceptualization has important implications for how we consider gender inequality in the labor market and within employment settings. Through a series of rigorous and highly innovative empirical studies, including two survey experiments, an audit study of employers, and in-depth interviews with mothers and employers, Dr. Hutt illustrates how employers’ anticipation of women becoming future mothers creates a unique form of inequality that is not solely related to gender or current parental status.” The Work and Family Researchers Network and the Society for Human Resource Management are honored to recognize the exceptional work of this recent doctoral recipient.

2024 Honorable Mention: Victoria Daniel

Nominator Yujie (Jessie) Zhan writes: “In addressing her doctoral dissertation “The Hidden Side of Work‐Family Boundary Management: Uncovering the Role of Cognitive Boundary Work and Boundary Context Questions, Dr. Daniel developed a theoretical model explaining how cognitive boundary work unfolds and how it relates to different performance and well-being outcomes for individual employees. In doing so, her dissertation studies are among the first to start bridging some important gaps in the work-family boundary literature. To address her research questions, Dr. Daniel conducted a qualitative study and three quantitative survey studies using different designs. Dr. Daniel analyzed data from two sources, posts from online discussion boards and text responses from open-ended survey questions, following a grounded theory approach. Through this inductive study, she identified four components of cognitive boundary work, including anticipating boundary needs, boundary planning, regulating boundary implementation, and adapting boundaries. She also identified the critical role of boundary context that shapes boundaries and impacts the amount of cognitive boundary work.” The Work and Family Researchers Network and the Society for Human Resource Management are honored to recognize the exceptional work of this recent doctoral recipient.


The Ellen Galinsky Generative Researcher Award

2024 Award Recipient: Erin Kelly

Nominator Melissa Milkie writes “Dr. Erin Kelly is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. She has had a profound impact on the work and family field through her influential work on schedule control, diversity and equity, and work redesign, and her commitment to bridging the boundaries across research, policy and practice….One stellar contribution of Dr. Kelly’s work is the generative concept of schedule control, dating back from about her time with the Work-Family Health Network. The concept of schedule control includes not only the time of day, but where people work and how much work they do. Moving the idea of flexibility forward to the importance of control for workers’ work and family wellbeing, Dr. Kelly and her collaborators have been pivotal in elevating the concept as a critical topic within the field….Dr. Kelly’s research on work redesign has played a vital role in advancing the discourse on workplace policies and practices, demonstrating through rigorous experimental and multi-method studies that it is indeed feasible to enact meaningful changes to address work-life challenges, reduce overload and burnout, and support overall worker well-being. Her work within the Work-Family Health Network and the award-winning 2020 book “Overload” stand as a testament to her commitment to building guiding work redesign studies, setting a standard for future research in the field….As part of the WFRN, Dr. Kelly has made important data sets, protocols, and measures available to other scholars: https://workfamilyhealthnetwork.org/data. The provision of important data sets, protocols, and measures through the Work-Family Health Network showcases her commitment to advancing collective knowledge within the academic community. Dr. Kelly has actively contributed to the generativity of work-family research into the public policy and practitioner setting. She has actively engaged with corporate and policy audiences, influencing workplace mental health and well-being frameworks. Dr. Kelly has a stellar research-for-action or research-to-practice project, which was cited repeatedly within the US Surgeon General’s framework for Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing. The Employer Toolkit tries to provide inspiration and guidance for employers of all sizes that want to consider work redesign approaches, including profiling research-based workplace changes focused on scheduling flexibility, scheduling predictability or stability, streamlining work to reduce the risk of burnout and work-family time strain, and increasing supervisors’ support for family and personal life.” The WFRN is honored to recognize the profound impact that Dr. Kelly has had on the work-family area of inquiry.


WFRN Lifetime Achievement Award

2024 Award Co-Recipient: Jeffrey Greenhaus

The WFRN is delighted to recognize Jeffrey Greenhaus as co-recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nominator Tammy Allen writes “Without a doubt, Dr. Greenhaus is an extraordinary scholar. With 96 peer-reviewed journal publications, 11 books, and 41 book chapters, he has been a profoundly important contributor to the work-family literature for over four decades. Moreover, his work has been published in the very best journals in the field (e.g., Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior).

Most importantly, Jeff’s work has played a major role in shaping the field of work and family research itself. An important example is his ground-breaking 1985 Academy of Management Review article on sources of conflict between work and family roles. This article established the foundation for the study of work-family conflict and is likely the most frequently cited article on work and family in the literature. According to Google Scholar, this article alone has been cited over 14,000 times. Not only has his research shaped the foundation for work-family conflict research upon which we could all build, his 2006 Academy of Management Review article on work-family enrichment has done the same for research on the positive interdependency between work and family roles (cited over 5500 times!).

Jeff has also made substantial contributions to work-family scholarship through his books. These monographs include Career Management for Life, now in its fifth edition (Routledge, 2019), Work and Family: Allies or Enemies? (Oxford University Press, 2000), Making Work and Family Work: From Hard Choices to Smart Choices (Routledge, 2017), and Advanced Introduction to Sustainable Careers (Elgar, 2022). He has also co-edited Integrating Work and Family: Challenges and Choices for a Changing World (Greenwood Publishing, 1997), the Encyclopedia of Career Development (Sage, 2006), and Expanding the Boundaries of Work-Family Research: A Vision for the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). As a result of their cumulative contributions to the field, Jeff, along with collaborator and close friend Gary Powell, were inaugural recipients of the Ellen Galinsky Generative Research Award at the 2018 WFRN conference.

Jeff is currently attempting to integrate the work-family literature with his long-term interest in career management. Building on his 2014 article with Ellen Kossek on “The contemporary career: A work-home perspective” (Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior), he is working with Gerry Callanan and Gary Powell on identifying the theoretical mechanisms by which individuals’ home life affects the sustainability of their career.

The quality and programmatic impact of Dr. Greenhaus’ work is second to none in the field of work and family.”

2024 Award Co-Recipient: Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

The WFRN is delighted to recognize Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth as co-recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nominator Stephen Sweet writes “Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has provided important insights in understandings of work-family concerns in military careers. Many of her studies were among the first conducted of families during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, her team conducted the first nationally representative study of young children exposed to parental deployment, which revealed that boys born during deployments have significantly more peer difficulties than other boys six years later. Over her career, Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has garnered over $80 million in funding, including sustained funding for the Military Family Research Institute, which she co-founded and directs, through approximately 100 grants for research, outreach and engagement from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health, as well as state government, private philanthropic organizations, and corporations. Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth’s research portfolio is impressive, with over 120 refereed articles in leading journals, over 40 book chapters, and 10 authored or edited books.

A second overarching area of contribution is Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth’s scholarship on the links between workplace conditions and family functioning. Her research has significantly advanced knowledge about the impact of workplace characteristics, policies, and practices on workers and their families. In particular, she has studied how work environments impact worker well-being and family relationships, including relationships between spouses and between parents and children. Her prominence in the field was confirmed by her designation as one of the Top 10 Extraordinary Contributors to WorkFamily Research in the world through a research-based study.”

One of the most enduring and important contributions Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has made to the work-family community is the highly visible recognition given to the research of other scholars, which speaks volumes to her commitment to the concerns central to the WFRN. In 1999, in partnership with the Boston College Center for Work and Family, Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth created the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, an international award for the best study published in the peer-reviewed scientific press each year. Each year, the award competition recognizes the winner, finalists, and nominees for the award. Over the 25 years of its existence, over 300 articles with over 800 authors have been recognized.

Hugh Bainbridge

Rupashree Baral

Alexandra Beauregard

Erin Cech

Xi Wen Chan

Vanessa Conzon

Allison Daminger

Jennifer Faone

Peter Fugiel

Marc Grau Grau

Yang Hu

Karen Kramer

Katherina Kuschel

Jean-Charles Languilare

Prudence Mabaso

Ariane Ollier-Malaterre

Abigail Opoku Mensah

Kitha Mokomane

Berkay Ozcan

Gabrielle Pepin

Pascale Peters

Rachel Pettigrew

Alejandra Ros Pilarz

Jeremy Reynolds

Casey Scheibling

Claudia Sellmaier

Nora Spinks

Bianca Stumbitz

Marisa Young

Grand Reception Information

Conference delegates are welcomed to join together from 7pm-9pm on Thursday June 20 at the historic Windsor Ballrooms, located at 1170 rue Peel. The reception will provide open bar, hors d’ouevres and opportunity celebrate our vibrant community.

For directions to the Windsor Hotel using Goolge Maps, click here

Call for Papers

Following the WFRN 2024 Biennial Conference, presenters are encouraged to submit papers for consideration to a special issue of the journal Community, Work & Family, which will be edited by Ellen Galinsky, Tammy Allen and Krista Lynn Minnotte. The theme of the special issue will be Big Questions in Work-Family and submissions should be crafted to fit that thematic purpose. Below is the timeframe for the special issue:

  • Deadline for submission of manuscripts: October 15, 2024
  • First review process completed: January 31, 2025
  • Revised manuscripts must be resubmitted by: April 1, 2025
  • Second review process completed: July 1, 2025
  • Revised manuscripts must be resubmitted by: October 1, 2025
  • Publication of special issue: January 1, 2026 issue 1

Submission procedures will be posted after the 2024 conference.

Early Career Work and Family Fellowship Program

The Work and Family Researchers Network is committed to mentoring the next generation of work and family scholars. Our Early Career Fellowship Program provides support for recent doctoral recipients to advance their research, teaching, and long-term career prospects. By offering networked resources and consultation, we help promising new scholars move into tenure-track, tenured appointments and secure senior-level positions, as well as engage them with the work and family community of scholars. The WFRN provided a call for applications, which ended October 15, 2023, and anticipates a similar call in advance of the next biennial conference. WFRN Early Career Fellows Conference Program

The WFRN Welcomes 2024 Early Career Fellowship Recipients!

The WFRN’s Early Career Fellowship Program is co-directed by Nicole Denier and Yang Hu, who organized this year’s preconference and will guide the 2024 cohort moving forward. To date, 140 early career scholars have participated in this program, which is designed to deliver a variety of supports for advancement to secure senior-level positions, as well as assist attendance at the WFRN Conference. The call for applications for the 2024 fellowships yielded close to 70 applications. With thanks to the selection committee Renada Goldberg, Nicole Denier, and Yang Hu, we are delighted to announce this year’s fellowship recipients.

  • Mariam Abouelenin, Ph.D., Lancaster University, UK
  • Kwaku Abrefa Busia, Ph.D., Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China
  • Miriam Barcus, Ph.D., The State University of New York at Cortland, USA
  • Sarah Bourdeau, Ph.D., University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada
  • Haley Cobb, Ph.D., Louisiana State University, USA
  • Vanessa Conzon, Ph.D., Boston College, USA
  • LaToya Council, Ph.D., Lehigh University, USA
  • Allison Daminger, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, USA
  • Moses Dang, Ph.D., Teesside University, UK
  • Victoria Daniel, Ph.D., York University, Canada
  • Camille Desjardins, Ph.D., Renmin University, China
  • Juliana de Castro Galvao, Ph.D., University of Oxford, UK
  • Christina Hymer, Ph.D., University of Tennessee, USA
  • Cynthia Halliday, Ph.D., The University of Texas at El Paso, USA
  • Sidra Kamran, Ph.D., Lewis & Clark College, USA
  • Nicole Kapelle, Ph.D., Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
  • Thomas Lyttelton, Ph.D., Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
  • Eunjeong Paek, Ph.D., University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA
  • Vedavati Patwardhan, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, USA
  • Federica Querin, Ph.D., University of Bologna, Italy
  • Harchand Ram, Ph.D., International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India
  • Megan N. Reed, Ph.D., Emory University, USA
  • Joseph Regina, Ph.D., Rutgers University, USA
  • Laila Schmitt, Ph.D., LMU Munich, Germany
  • Meredith Slopen, Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center, USA
  • Haoming Song, Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, USA
  • Daniela R. Urbina Julio, Ph.D., University of Southern California, USA
  • Lili Vargha, Ph.D., Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
  • Mengyi Xu, Ph.D., Birmingham University, UK

Recipients represent a wide range of disciplines, including the fields of economics, human resources, management, human development, organizational science, public health, public policy, psychology, social work, demography, and sociology. This year’s Early Career Fellows (ECFs) are also internationally diverse—they either live on, or study the experiences of people living on, all six habitable continents. Fellowship recipients share a common interest in identifying connections and consequences of work and family arrangements, as well as working together to advance mutual career interests and goals.

The ECFs’ research programs address a wide variety of topics that include, gender and intersectional inequality, work-family conflict, spillover, crossover and boundary management, work-family dynamics over the life course, employee health, stress, and well-being, state and organizational-level family-related policies (parental leave, sick leave, child subsidies), cognitive labor and the mental load, remote work and teleworking, workplace EDI, care and domestic work, poverty, among other topics. As a group, this year’s ECFs share a passion for examining the experiences of traditionally under-studied groups in work-family research, including people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, women of color, and families and workers in the Global South, as well as addressing pertinent challenges and opportunities, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and digitalization, for work and family lives.

We welcome these scholars to the program and their participation in the Work and Family Researchers Network!

Contact Information

Nicole Denier, Ph.D. (nicole.denier@ualberta.ca) and Yang Hu, Ph.D. Yang Hu (yang.hu@lancaster.ac.uk) are Co-directors of the Early Career Work and Family Fellowship Program.

WFRN Global South Travel Awards

To maximize geographic diversity within the Global South, the WFRN Global South Travel Awards are intended to help scholars from economically-disadvantaged locales secure financial support to attend the WFRN’s biennial conference. Awards include a regular membership, conference registration, and reimbursement of $500 for travel expenses incurred (which can include hotels, food, flights, ground transportation, and visa fees).

We are pleased to announce the 2024 Award Recipients:

  • Tapas Dey, International Institute for Population Sciences, India
  • Mariam Gbajumo-Sheriff, Ph.D., Department of Employment Relations & Human Resource Management, University of Lagos, Nigeria
  • Srinivas Goli, Ph.D., International Institute for Population Sciences, India
  • Babul Hossain, International Institute for Population Sciences, India
  • Tania Hutt, Ph.D. Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile
  • Harchand Ram, Ph.D., International Institute for Population Sciences, India

Thank you to Bianca Stumbitz, WFRN International Committee Chair, for leading the selection of decisions in 2024.

Early Career Fund

Sarah Damaske

Andrea Doucet

Kathleen Gerson

Marc Grau-Grau

Edward Hill

Lena Hipp

Jennifer Hook

Susan Lambert

Donna S. Lero

Yvonne Lott

Melissa Milkie

Krista Lynn Minnotte

Kelly Musick

Ipshita Pal

Sarah Patterson

Shirley Porterfield

Linda Quirke

Margaret Shackell

Sabrina L. Speights

Stephen Sweet

Soo Min TOH

Doruk Uysal Irak

Tanja van der Lippe

Mara Yerkes

Marisa Young

Awards Fund

Sarah Damaske

Kathleen Gerson

Marc Grau-Grau

Edward Hill

Lena Hipp

Jennifer Hook

Susan Lambert

Donna S. Lero

Yvonne Lott

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

Melissa Milkie

Krista Lynn Minnotte

Kelly Musick

Ipshita Pal

Sarah Patterson

Shirley Porterfield

Susan Prentice

Linda Quirke

Liana Sayer

Margaret Shackell

Sabrina L. Speights

Stephen Sweet

Soo Min TOH

Doruk Uysal Irak

Tanja van der Lippe

Amy Wharton

Mara Yerkes

Marisa Young

Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research Fund

Kathleen Gerson

Jennifer Hook

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

Kelly Musick

Susan Prentice

Linda Quirke

Liana Sayer

Stephen Sweet

Amy Wharton

BIPOC and Diversity Inclusion Funds

Kess Ballentine

Anna Borg

Eileen M. Brennan

Daniel L. Carlson

Erin A. Cech

Kelly D. Chandler

Heather Cluley Bar-Or

Sydney Rose Colussi

Sarah Damaske

Kim de Laat

Laura den Dulk

Sara Dorow

Alison Earle

Elizabeth Helen Eley

Sylvia Fuller

Kathleen Gerson

Rebecca Glauber

Jill Hanley

Belinda Hewitt

Andrea Hjálmsdóttir

Jennifer Hook

Sandra Idrovo

Marla H. Kohlman

Susan Lambert

Beth Livingston

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

Melissa Milkie

Krista Lynn Minnotte

Kelly Musick

Sarah Patterson

Maureen Perry-Jenkins

Rachael N. Pettigrew

Birgit Pfau-Effinger

Shirley Porterfield

Susan Prentice

Linda Quirke

Margaret A. Shaffer

Sabrina L. Speights

Nora Spinks

Stephen Sweet

Tanja van der Lippe

Aida Villanueva

Amy Wharton

Mara Yerkes

2024 Conference Food Funds

Hugh Bainbridge

Kess Ballentine

Galina Boiarintseva

Anna Borg

Sarah Brauner-Otto

Kathryn Louise Brett

Heejung Chung

Charles Coleman

Sarah Damaske

Laura den Dulk

Christina Madchen Dreger-Smylie

Alison Earle

Sue Epstein

Daniel Erler

Janet Fast

Zachary Finn

Kimberly French

Martha Friendly

Peter J. Fugiel

Sylvia Fuller

Ellen Galinsky

Julia Goodman

Danna Greenberg

Angela Grotto

Leslie Hammer

Jill Hanley

Mojoko Clara Hemeko

Belinda Hewitt

Andrea Hjálmsdóttir

Jessica Hobbs

Heather Hofmeister

Jennifer Hook

John Hopkins

Eva Jaspers

Renge Jibu

Elise Bair Jones

Elise Jones

Hak Yoon Kim

Patrizia Kokot-Blamey

Steve Kovacic

Susan Lambert

Jean-Charles Emile Languilaire

Marianne Lapointe

Beth Livingston

David W.L. Ma

Bongekile P Mabaso

Andrew Nikko Magnaye

Maria I. Marshall

Krista Lynn Minnotte

Kaumudi Misra

Wendy Nilsen

Jessica Pac

Ipshita Pal

Birgit Pfau-Effinger

Christine Pfeiffer

Alejandra Pilarz

Shirley Porterfield

Agnieszka Postepska

Linda Quirke

Gudbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir

Alexandra Rheinhardt

Madeline Ellen Annie Robbenhaar

Maha Sabbah Karkabi

Katina Sawyer

Liana Sayer

Molly Schmidt

Margaret Shackell

Margaret A. Shaffer

Sudong Shang

Shweta Singh

Karen Elizabeth Smith

Lisa Stewart

Soo Min TOH

Cosmas Augustus Uhuo

Tanja van der Lippe

Ronit Waismel-Manor

Carolyn E. Waldrep

Tianying Wang

Deborah Widiss

Julie Yen

Mara Yerkes

General Funds

Hugh Bainbridge

Kathryn Louise Brett

Chuck N. Darrah

Claudia Geist

Kathleen Gerson

Jeffrey H. Greenhaus

Margo Hilbrecht

Susan Lambert

Susan Prentice

Maximiliane Reifenscheid

Liana Sayer

Stephen Sweet

Tanja van der Lippe

Julia Yang

The WFRN expresses gratitude to our partners and sponsors, who provided generous support to make the 2024 conference possible.

Benefactors

Patrons

Ellen Galinsky

Adam Galinsky and Jennifer Olayon

Promoters

Friends and Organization Partners

Kathleen Gerson






Program at a Glance


Wednesday June 19, 2024
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Thursday June 20, 2024
8:00 AM - 8:45 AM
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
3:00 PM - 3:45 PM
4:00 PM - 4:45 PM
4:45 PM - 5:30 PM
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Friday June 21, 2024
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
3:15 PM - 4:00 PM
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
5:45 PM - 6:30 PM
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Saturday June 22, 2024
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
10:15 AM - 11:45 AM
10:45 AM - 11:15 AM
11:15 AM - 11:45 AM
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
1:15 PM - 2:00 PM
2:15 PM - 2:45 PM
2:15 PM - 3:45 PM
2:45 PM - 3:15 PM
3:15 PM - 3:45 PM
4:00 PM - 4:30 PM
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM
5:45 PM - 6:45 PM






WFRN Program

1. Early Career Fellowship Preconference (PARTICIPATION BY INVITATION ONLY)
Wednesday | 9:00 am-5:00 pm | MB9-D
2. Predoctoral Preconference (PARTICIPATION BY INVITATION ONLY)
Wednesday | 1:00 pm-5:00 pm | MB9-AB
3. Big Ideas Talks [Plenary]
Wednesday | 2:30 pm-3:30 pm | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
  • “I Feel So Lonely I Could Burnout?” Studying Work Loneliness across Time. .....Jarrod Haar, Massey University
  • What If All Fathers in the U.S. Had Paid Paternity Leave?. .....Richard Petts, Ball State University
  • Can Robot Vacuums Save Us All From Housework Drudgery?. .....Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne
4. Big Ideas Talks [Plenary]
Wednesday | 4:00 pm-5:00 pm | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
  • Rethinking Boundary Control Toward Work-life Equality for the Front Line. .....Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University
  • Not My Necessary Evil: 10 Perception Glitches about Work (and How They Hurt Us All). .....Scott Schieman, University of Toronto
  • Tech Imaginaries: How We Think and Feel About Technology. .....Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) - École des Sciences de la Gestion (ESG)
5. Big Ideas Talks [Plenary]
Thursday | 8:00 am-8:45 am | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
  • Decisions that Define Us: The Ripple Effect of Inclusion. .....Subha Barry, Seramount
  • Three Lies We Tell Ourselves About Work-Family Conflict. .....Kimberly French, Colorado State University
  • What Happened to Quality Time? A Kid’s Eye View. .....Melissa Milkie, University of Toronto
6. A Life Course Perspective on Entry to Parenthood 1 [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.210

Presider: Belinda Hewitt, University of Melbourne
  • Normative and structural drivers of young adults' reproductive trajectories in Germany. .....Hannah Zagel, WZB - Social Science Research Center Berli; and Martin Gaedecke, University of Oxford
  • This paper investigates what are dominant patterns of young adults’ reproductive trajectories in terms of partnership status, partnered sexual activity, and contraceptive use, and how they are socially stratified by education. Reproductive behaviour beyond childbearing is rarely considered in mainstream stratification, social demography and life course scholarship, but the field is mostly left to public health and sexuality research. This is a crucial shortcoming, because stratification in early reproductive trajectories will affect patterns of family life courses, which are tightly linked with employment and income careers and structured along gender and class dimensions. Understanding how reproductive trajectories are experienced differentially across social groups helps to uncover the extent to which people are locked in to particular life courses from early adulthood. We use sequence analysis and regression models on longitudinal data from the German Family and Relationships Panel survey (pairfam) on partnership status, partnered sex and contraception over twelve years of young people’s (18-27 years) lives (N=1,370). Pathways of partnered sexual activity and contraception appear to differ between education groups already at this life stage, when many move on to initiate family formation – a substantive share of men and women mostly with low education remains single with little experience of partnered sex at age 27.
  • The Impact of Work-Family Conflict and Child Development: Evidence from South Korea. .....Jaeseung Kim, Sungkyungkwan University; and Myungchul Park, Sungkyunkwan University
  • With the rise of working mothers and growing concerns over the low fertility rate in South Korea, the balance of work and family responsibilities of working mothers and its potential impacts on their child development has become a critical issue in Korea. However, limited research has explored how work-family conflict influences the development of school-aged children and the role of maternal depression and household income in this context. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, the study examines the influence of working mothers’ work-family conflict on internalizing and externalizing behaviors of school-aged children and the mediating role of parental depression. In addition, drawn from Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001), the study examines whether the effect of mothers’ work-life conflict on child behavior problems is moderated by household income. Using two waves of the representative sample of the Panel Study on Korean Children (N=650), the study employed lagged-dependent variable models and Process Macro Model 4 to answer the proposed research questions. Overall, the study found that mothers’ work-family conflict was positively associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors and that maternal depression fully mediated these associations. This finding suggests that mothers’ work-family conflict leads to their elevated depressive symptoms, which in turn increases child behavior problems. Moreover, the positive association between mothers’ work-family conflict and child behavior problems was stronger among mothers from low-income households, confirming the moderating effect of household income. Based on the findings, we discuss work-family policy and interventions to curtail work-family conflict among working mothers in Korea.
  • Aspiration Versus Reality: Family Transitions and Emerging Adulthood. .....Belinda Hewitt, University of Melbourne
  • Overwhelmingly the extant research on aspirations of emerging adults focusses on education, work, and economic outcomes. We use unique longitudinal panel data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) study to examine whether the importance young people (age 15 – 29) attached to meeting family formation milestones was associated with family outcomes at age 35. In Wave 4 of HILDA participants aged 15 – 29 (n = 3,052) were asked to rate the importance they placed on a range of milestones relating to work and family by the age of 35. We examined the associations between the importance of having children, being married, and living with a partner and participants relationship status and whether they had a child at age 35 (some of the younger participants aged 15 – 17 were not 35). Adjusting for demographic, family, and socioeconomic characteristics, results indicated that a higher importance placed on being married was positively associated with the likelihood of being married and negatively associated with cohabiting or being single at age 35. A higher importance placed on living with a partner was negatively associated with being single, but not significantly associated with being married. A higher importance on having children was significantly associated with having a child. We conclude that, despite the discourses that young people face greater barriers to adulting than in previous generations, many still achieve their goals. We plan to further develop the paper by further examining how this may differ by gender and socioeconomic factors.
  • Sociological Analysis of Family Size and Education; A Quantitative Mode of Inquiry. .....Waqar Ahmad, Bacha Khan University Charsadda
  • The present study was carried out in District Swabi under quantitative mode of inquiry to explore the relation between education and family size reduction. A sample size of 450 respondents with education level of master was randomly selected through rigorous data analysis and survey. We investigated that how higher education effects individual decision about family size. The study further explored that how dynamics of family planning shading light on the impact of education and fertility choices. However, findings from this empirical work contributed to the broader understanding of socio-economic factor shaping family size.
7. Women at Work [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.265

Presider: Yi Zhao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • The Propensity Towards Women’s Entrepreneurship: A Qualitative Study With Unemployment Women in Italy. .....Medina Letizia, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Mila; Maria Letizia Bosoni, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Mila; and Sara Mazzucchelli, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Mila
  • International research documents that entrepreneurship is a gendered phenomenon, with yet a small women presence. Female entrepreneurship is still limited in the Italian context and is strongly affected by the gender gap. Several studies have highlighted that not only men are more likely than women to start their own business but also that when women do so they encounter more obstacles. Theorizations about motivations that drive entrepreneurship distinguish between necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. Starting from these premises, the present study is aimed at identifying the key variables that influence women’s entrepreneurship choice, investigating the propensity towards entrepreneurship among women as well as hindering and facilitating factors. The study is part of a larger project, conducted in Italy in 2023. 4 Focus groups with 36 Italian non-working women of different age and family burdens (with/without children) have been conducted to understand if they are planning or can consider starting a venture. The focus sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed with the Nvivo and T-lab software. The results highlighted a low propensity of women to engage in entrepreneurial activity, which is hindered by numerous factors: the low support of the Italian state, the economic risk (the fear of losing money), the difficulty in reconciling work and family and the impact of a gender stereotype. In summary, necessity-entrepreneurship is little present, in favour of opportunity-driven motivations, because unemployed women could consider starting their own businesses to feel more fulfilled in their job.
  • Women in the Gig Work Economy: A Review and Implications for the Work-Family Literature. .....Camille Desjardins, Renmin University of China
  • The gig work economy has followed a sharp rise over the past years and this trend is set to continue. Gig work is usually characterized by project-based pay, temporary labor and a certain level of flexibility in the execution of work (Watson et al., 2021). While much research on the topic of gig work has been conducted among men (e.g., in the ride-hailing and delivery industries), there is evidence that women are increasingly turning to this new form of work (MBO Partners, 2022). However, our knowledge of women's experiences in gig work is limited and the literature on the topic has developed haphazardly, resulting in a lack of clarity regarding what is known and what requires further exploration. In this paper, I take stock of the literature on women’s work and career experiences in the gig work economy by conducting a systematic review of 87 articles on the topic. This interdisciplinary research reviews the multi-level antecedents (from environmental -macro, meso and micro levels- to personal factors) that can shape women’s gig work experiences and the resulting outcomes for the women concerned (from financial to work-family and health outcomes). Bridging the interdisciplinary divides, the papers in this review are organized into an integrative framework of women’s gig work experience, which reviews past research to provide insights into the topic and outlines a way forward to shed light on a phenomenon for which many aspects remain to be explored. In the presentation, the implications for the work-family literature will be discussed.
  • The height and security of domestic workers’ wages: The role of household-, worker- and relationship-level characteristics. .....David de Kort, Utrecht University; Tanja van der Lippe, Utrecht University; and Anne-Rigt Poortman, Utrecht University
  • Overarching concerns: Many households around the globe rely on the services of a domestic worker who helps them out with tasks like cleaning and laundering (Abrantes, 2014a; Duffy, 2020). Due to a lack of effective regulations on statutory minimum wages and income protections for domestic workers, households continue to play an important role in setting domestic workers’ wages. Scarce previous research indicates that many of these households provide their domestic helper with low wages (see Schierholz, 2013; Stacey, 2005; Theodore et al., 2018). In this study, we aim to improve our understanding of domestic workers’ wages in two ways. Firstly, households do not just have to negotiate how much they pay their domestic helper, but also whether they continue paying their domestic helper when cleaning appointments are cancelled due to illness, injury or holidays. We therefore do not just take into account the height of wages that households pay for domestic service, but also consider to what degree these wages are secure. Secondly, we expect that the lack of enforceable regulations on domestic workers’ wages gives rise to considerable differences in the wages that are paid by different households. We aim to describe these differences and to identify potential sources of these differences. Specifically, we hypothesize on the extent to which the height and security of wages are dependent on characteristics of households (such as their financial resources, volume of housework and time availability), domestic workers (such as ethnicity and age) and qualities of the relationship between the two (such as the recruitment channel used and the years of service). Research questions: We pose the following two research questions: (1) to what extent do the height and security of wages that households pay for domestic services differ across households? (2) to what extent do characteristics of households, domestic workers and qualities of the relationships between the two play a role in explaining differences in the height and security of wages that households pay for domestic services? Statement on methods: In October 2023, we presented a survey to 4334 members from a representative panel of Dutch households (response rate: 83%). Respondents were asked if they paid someone to clean their homes and those that did were presented with a list of questions about their domestic help and the formal and informal qualities of their relationship with their domestic help. 639 respondents stated to hire a domestic worker. After excluding respondents that received domestic help through state-funded cash-for-care and care-in-kind schemes and respondents with missings on relevant items, our analyses draw on data on 421 respondents. To measure the height of wages, respondents were asked how much they pay their domestic help for one hour of help. The security of wages was measured through three statements: ‘When your domestic worker is unable to work for two weeks due to (1) illness; (2) the help being on holiday; (3) you being on holiday, do you continue to pay his/her wage?’. Respondents that answered ‘yes’ to at least one of these items were given a score of ‘1’, other received a score of ‘0’. To answer our research questions, we use both descriptive and OLS/logistic regression techniques. Important findings: Preliminary descriptive findings indicate that the majority of Dutch households that hire a domestic worker pay above the minimum wage of roughly 12.25 euros per hour. The average hourly wage of 15.15 euros per hour even lies well above that minimum. Few households do however continue paying these wages in the event of cancelled cleaning appointments (only 16 percent), indicating that the security of domestic workers’ wages may present a more pressing issue than the height thereof. Results from the OLS/logistic regression analyses will be elaborated upon during the paper presentation.
8. Work-Life Boundaries in the Context of Remote and Hybrid Work [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.270

Presider: Samantha Metselaar, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Reactive and Proactive Regulation of Work-Nonwork Boundaries. .....Shelia Hyde, Texas Womans University; Ariane Froidevaux, University of Texas Arlington; Sabrina Speights, Wheaton College; and Wendy Casper, University of Texas Arlington
  • Overarching questions/concerns What boundary management behaviors enable effective functioning within and across domains for individuals that work from home? How and why do people actively, or purposefully, switch between integration and segmentation of roles, and vice-versa? How and why do people reactively, or reluctantly, switch between integration and segmentation of roles, and vice-versa? Statement on methods Study 1: We collected qualitative data via online survey (N=103) and interview data (N=27) from first-time remote workers during the summer of 2020. Participants answered questions about their behaviors and positive outcomes associated with sudden remote work, revealing boundary management strategies were important behaviors. Study 2: Interview data (N=15) collected in 2022-2023 further explored how participants who work from home separate and combine the work and nonwork roles. Two authors used the Modified Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR-M) method to code transcripts in both studies, using inductive logic to identify and code data into major domains, categories and subcategories. Important findings (bulleted list) • Study 1: Participants described engaging in segmentation of their work-nonwork roles at times and in integration of these roles at other times, suggestive of cycling boundary management behavior in which people engage in both integration and segmentation iteratively. • Study 1: Further exploration suggested that people engage in active integration, passive integration, and passive segmentation. • Study 2: We have identified four types of proactive cycling: preparing for integration, preparing for segmentation, willing integration during segmentation, and willing segmentation during integration. • Study 2: We have identified two types of reactive cycling: reluctant integration during segmentation, and reluctant segmentation during integration. Implications for research, policy, and/or practice Our research contributes to boundary management literature. Identification of alternating boundary management strategies will contribute to the exploration of potential benefits and risks of switching between integration and segmentation of work and nonwork roles based on the situation. This understanding of agentic boundary management could spark research leading to intervention activities aimed at educating employees regarding proactive boundary management in the pursuit of work-life balance and general well-being.
  • How Work Flexibility Can Enhance Strain and Conflict Through Telepressure. .....Brandon Smit, Bentley University; Nabi Ebrahimi, University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Tamara Montag-Smit, University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Scott Boyar, University of Alabama Birmingham; and Carl Maertz, University of Louisville
  • Despite the unprecedented growth in employee flexibility in the wake of the pandemic, relatively little is known about the potential drawbacks of the ability to determine where and when to engage in work. Drawing from conservation of resources theory and the self-regulation literature, we test a model that demonstrates how flexibility can actually increase strain, rather than mitigate it. In a three-wave panel of 266 employees from diverse occupations, we find that flexibility can increase telepressure – defined as a sense of preoccupation with work-related messages – but only among individuals with a high future focus. Furthermore, a greater sense of telepressure was linked to both exhaustion and work-family conflict. Indirect effects revealed that for individuals with a high future focus, flexibility increased strain and conflict via greater telepressure. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the idea that flexibility can create unintended and undesirable externalities.
  • Navigating Through Work and Personal Life: A Daily Diary Exploration of Working From Home and Its Impact On Goal Completion. .....Samantha Metselaar, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Jonas De Kerf, KU Leuven; and Laura den Dulk, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Overarching research question and hypotheses Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic working from home has become more prevalent in many organizations across the world. In many countries, working from home is no longer an exclusive perk but a core privilege for all employees (Smite et al., 2023). This is among others due to better-than-expected working from home experiences for a large group of employees, as well as changes in attitudes towards remote workers (Barrero et al., 2021, Smite et al., 2023). So, on the one hand, there is a trend towards working from home to a greater extent. This is facilitated by developments in information and communication technologies, fostering the possibility to conduct an increasing amount of work tasks at distance. Organizations jump in on this opportunity by closing down office buildings to safe costs (Hajal, 2022). In addition, it has been argued that the upside of working from home, among others, concerns the possibility to combine work and personal life. Enabling individuals te meet demands and expectations from these different domains. However, little is known about the day-to-day effects of working from home compared to working at the office, respectively. In this paper, we examine these effects in a post COVID-19 era. We specifically examine the effect of working from home on goal completion in both the work and the personal domain. Hence, our research question is: What is the effect of the day-to-day use of working from home, as opposed to working at the office, on goal completion in the work and personal domain? Based on the existing literature we propose two potential pathways that may explain this relationship. The first pathway posits that working from home reduces interruptions from coworkers, enhancing work-related goal completion. However, this may hinder personal goal completion by keeping individuals deeply focused on work (Kelliher & Anderson, 2010). On the other hand, the second pathway assumes that working from home facilitates the ease to transition between work and personal life, improving personal goal completion (Delanoeije et al., 2019). However, excessive switching between domains may impede work-related goal completion in the personal domain (Kossel, 2016). These pathways are deconstructed in the following hypotheses: H1 At the day level, working from home will be negatively related to work interruptions H2 At the day level, work interruptions will mediate the positive indirect relationship between working from home and work goal completion H3 At the day level, work interruptions will mediate the negative relationship between working from home and personal goal completion H4 At the day level, working from home will be positively related to work-to-home transitions H5 At the day level, work-to-home transitions will mediate the positive relationship between working from home and personal goal completion H6: At the day level, work-to-home transitions will mediate the negative indirect relationship between working from home and work goal completion Moreover, literature suggests that the effects of working from home are also related to the nature of work (Metselaar et al., 2023). To that respect, some jobs are more suitable for working from home than others. In this paper, we will therefore also incorporate the nature of work, by focusing on job interdependency and work scheduling autonomy: H7 Job interdependence will moderate the daily relationship between working from home and work interruptions, so that the relationship will be negative at lower levels of interdependence, whereas it will not be significant at higher levels of interdependence H8 Work scheduling autonomy will moderate the daily relationship between working from home and work-to-home transitions, so that the relationship will be positive at higher levels of autonomy, whereas it will not be significant at lower levels of autonomy Statement on methods For this study, a daily diary study among Dutch employees working in public sector organizations was deployed (N = 290, N = 2610). Employees were recruited via a call that was distributed among a panel of respondents from Flycatcher. A requirement of participation in the study was that employees switched between working from home and working at the office during a regular work week. We started the data collection with a baseline questionnaire in which we measured our trait variables as well as demographics. Then, respondents received a daily questionnaire for 10 consecutive workdays. Preliminary findings Initial descriptive statistics indicate that there is no significant difference between in goal completion at work between office days and working from home days. However, for goal completion in the personal domain we did find a significant difference: goal completion was higher when working from home compared to working at the office. Regarding work interruptions, there were significantly more interruptions on office days than on days respondents work from home. Respondents also make significantly more work-to-home transitions on days they work from home compared to the office. During the next phase, we will conduct multilevel structural equation modeling to test hypotheses.
  • Exploring the Interplay of Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors, Work-Home Interference, and Well-Being in the Era of Hybrid Work. .....Melanie De Ruiter, Nyenrode Business Universiteit; Martine Coun, Open Universiteit (Open University of the Netherlands); and Pascale Peters, Nyenrode Business Universiteit
  • Over the past decade, an increasing body of knowledge has accumulated on the employee-level outcomes of family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSBs). While such studies are invaluable for the current knowledge and understanding of FSSBs and its value for employees, scholars have only just begun to unravel the supervisor-level antecedents of FSSBs. Yet, considering the increased importance of work-family balance and the increased opportunity for hybrid working, it is important to understand what facilitates and hinders supervisors’ engagement in these behaviors. Moreover, following recent interest in the potential undermining role of engaging in certain leadership styles (e.g., servant leadership) on the supervisor’s own health and well-being, it is important to understand whether engaging in FSSBs undermines or fosters a supervisor’s own emotional wellbeing and engagement. To gain a better understanding of the nomological network of FSSBs, we used student-recruited sampling to conduct a quantitative cross-sectional, multi-source study to examine the relationships between supervisor negative work-home interference, employee perceived FSSBs, and supervisor emotional exhaustion and engagement. Moreover, in addition to examining the effect of employee perceived FSSBs on supervisor emotional exhaustion and wellbeing, we also examine the effects on employee emotional exhaustion and wellbeing. Our study aims to contribute to the academic conversation on supervisor antecedents and outcomes of FSSBs. Moreover, we aim to address a recent call for more research on dimensions of FSSBs, by examining whether different dimensions of FSSB are differentially affected by supervisor’s negative work-home interference and whether some dimensions are more important for supervisor and employee wellbeing than others.
  • Working from Home and Role Blurring: Ideal Worker Norms, Job Pressure, and Organizational Support. .....Deniz Yucel, William Paterson University of New Jersey; Philip Badawy, University of Alberta; and Scott Schieman, University of Toronto
  • The performance of work-related tasks at home is associated with more frequent role blurring—but how do “ideal worker” norms, job pressure, and organizational support modify that association? We test theoretical ideas related to role integration versus segmentation in analyses of the 2016 National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW), a national sample of American workers. We observe that frequent performance of work at home is strongly associated with more role blurring activities, and this association is stronger among those with higher levels of job pressure, and weaker among those with more organizational support for work-life balance. In addition, we find that the moderating effect of job pressure on the association between working from home and role blurring is stronger for those with elder care responsibilities but weaker for those with a preschool child and those with more children in the household. These results suggest that the link between working from home and role blurring varies by both work characteristics and organizational support, and that some of these moderations further differ by caregiving responsibilities in divergent ways.
9. Changes in Family (Formation) Choices and Reproductive Behavior [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.285
10. Shared Parenting and Family Relationships [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.430

Presider: Laurie Maldonado, Columbia University
  • The Strength & Resilience Factors Blended Couples in Stepfamilies Attribute to the Success of Their First Five Years. .....Charles Coleman, University of Calgary
  • The divorce rate of second marriages is far higher than first marriages and occurs much earlier in the relationship. Sixty seven percent of these unions create stepfamilies where one partner or both already have children. These couples are called a blended couple. Most of the literature on blended couples in stepfamilies examines the challenges they face and their dissolution rates compared to first families. Few studies examine the functioning of strong blended couple unions in well-functioning stepfamilies. And even less have explored the lived experiences and first-hand accounts of these couples. Based on a phenomenological design, this study has sought to understand the lived-experience of blended couples who have successfully navigated the first 5 turbulent years of stepfamily formation around their challenges, strength and resilience factors and their successes. After deciding to start a relationship these couples face immense challenges, often still working through divorce litigation, co-parenting with an ex, moving households, working through parenting differences with their new partner and finding time to invest in all their relationships. Some of the conflict centres on adjusting to two different cultures of how we do ‘mess,’ ‘discipline,’ ‘Christmas traditions,’ etc. Then there are the loyalty binds felt by children attempting to love their stepparent or felt by parents who feel torn between their child and their partner who needs their attention. It is no wonder such couples call it quits earlier than first family couples. How do blended couples navigate the challenges and how do they function well and stay together over the long term? These couples have obviously become resilient. What resilience practices did they use? This study examines the lived experience of a sample of Canadian blended couples and shares the themes, relational practices and successes illuminated by these couples on overcoming the challenges and building resilient relationships through time. Implications for pre-marital educators, policy makers, marriage and family therapy training programs and clinicians will be discussed.
  • Show Me the Money: How Children’s Monetary Support is Split Between Biological Mothers and Fathers in the Contemporary U.S.. .....Kimberly McErlean, University of Texas, Austin; and Jennifer Glass, University of Texas, Austin
  • Overarching questions/concerns Children’s economic resources from biological parents have become increasingly spread across households. In 1960, 73% of children lived with two biological parents (whether married or cohabiting), but that number dropped to just 53% in 2014 (Pew Research Center, 2015). Yet, despite the growing prevalence of children living with both single parents – largely mothers, but increasingly fathers (Cancian et al., 2014) – and non-biological parents, biological parents still remain largely financially responsible for their children, legally and ideologically (Manning & Smock, 2000; Sweeney, 2010; Wiborg & Yahirun, 2024). Although about 70% of children living apart from one biological parent received at least some child support and child support enforcement has increased over time (Grall, 2020), formal payments from non-residential parents have generally declined over time (Cancian et al., 2023; Grall, 2020). At the same time, mothers have increasingly become the financial providers for their households (Pepin et al., 2022), in part, because of men’s changing labor market prospects that have become increasingly polarized on the basis of having a college degree (Autor et al., 2006; Kalleberg, 2011). Although research has examined how the type of parental relationship (biological v. stepparent) and type of romantic relationship (married v. unmarried) affects within-household financial support (Carlson & Berger, 2013; Hofferth & Anderson, 2003; McErlean & Glass, 2023) as well as how nonresident parents, especially fathers, contribute economically to their nonresident children (Garasky et al., 2010; Goldberg, 2015; Manning & Smock, 2000; Stewart, 2010), little research has merged these two streams to examine the distribution of biological parents’ economic resources across households. Our study seeks to fill this gap, asking two research questions: (1) How have the relative financial contributions of mothers and fathers to their biological children changed over time? (2) How have changes differed across social class and racial/ethnic lines? This study is situated in three overarching social and economic trends: the “gender revolution,” whereby women’s economic independence has increased over time as women have become more educated and more likely to be in the labor market (DiPrete & Buchmann, 2013; England, 2010; Goldin, 2006); labor market polarization, whereby the employment prospects of men, and less so, women, have become increasingly stratified by college degree attainment (Autor et al., 2006; Kalleberg, 2011); and the growth in inequality along classed lines, drawing upon the “diverging destinies” framework (McLanahan, 2004), and racial/ethnic identity, drawing upon recent research acknowledging the importance of structural racism for affecting family outcomes (e.g. Cross et al., 2022; Williams & Baker, 2021). Statement on methods We use the 1996 and 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation to quantify changes in how mothers and fathers divide the financial support of their biological children and how this differs across parental characteristics. Our unit of analysis is the child; we restrict our sample to children under 18 years of age who are living with at least one biological or adoptive parent. We focus on earned income, including labor market earnings and child support (as child support typically is paid out of earnings and in some punitive cases, withheld from earnings). We first calculate annual labor market and child support contributions for each parent, then divide these contributions by the number of children supported. We then sum contributions across biological / adoptive mothers and fathers to get a total amount of financial support for children from their biological parents across households. We then allocate these contributions to the mother and father, distinguishing between labor market earnings and child support income to calculate the percentage contributed by each parent. Our analysis is largely descriptive. We summarize moms’ and dads’ contributions to children, stratifying by level of education and racial/ethnic identity. We focus on the biological mother for our demographics, except for when children do not reside with their biological mother, in which case we use the fathers’ characteristics. Important findings • Results confirm the growing family complexity of children. In 1996, 65.4% of children lived with two parents, but that number declined to 53.6% in 2014. • Also confirm the increased educational attainment of the population: college-educated households make up close to one-third of all households in 2014, up from 19% in 1996. • Moms’ contributions have stayed relatively stagnant over time, but at high levels – moms’ financial contributions make up about 44% of the financial support their biological children receive (44.4% in 1996 panel to 44.6% in 2014 panel). • However, overall stability masks important subgroup differences: mothers with some college increased their contributions from 46.0% to 49.6% over time, while college-educated mothers increased from 42.1% to 42.8%. High-school educated mothers, on the other hand, saw a decline in their earnings contributions, from 44.3% to 42.1%. • Black mothers saw a large decline in their contributions, from 66.8% to 62.2%, while Hispanic mothers saw an increase from 38.6% to 43.1%. White mothers’ contributions remained relatively stable over time. Implications for research, policy and/or practice In general, mothers’ large financial contributions suggest the need to rethink work-family policy in the United States that still largely prioritizes fathers as the primary financial providers for their biological children. Results by subgroup align with what we might expect given labor market polarization: mothers with some college increased their contributions their most, perhaps to make up for the declining labor market prospects of men without a college degree. Mothers with a high school degree or less saw declines in their contribution; as women have become more educated, this group has become increasingly negatively selected on economic disadvantage. Trends for college-educated mothers align with the “stalled gender revolution;” moms’ contributions have gone up, but only slightly since the late 1990s. Although the contributions of Black mothers have declined over time, these mothers still contribute close to two-thirds of their children’s financial status; these results may reflect policy emphasis on increasing the financial responsibility of Black fathers for their children, so do not necessarily suggest negative change for women.
  • Joint Physical Custody and Parental Alienation As Key Concepts in the Struggle for Children - The Polish Case. .....Małgorzata Sikorska, University of Warsaw
  • The primary goal of this presentation is to examine the social actors participating in lobbying for Joint Physical Custody (JPC) in Poland, with a particular emphasis on the narratives they present. Since the research project (titled “Analysis of narratives and narrative strategies of social actors who advocate for SC in Poland”) is still ongoing, another purpose is to consult on the methodology and preliminary findings. Feedback, comments, and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. By analyzing the narratives and narrative strategies employed by social actors advocating for JPC in Poland, this research aims to contribute valuable insights to the ongoing debate over custody arrangements not only in Poland but also in other European countries, the US, and Canada. A unique aspect of my research project will be the exploration of similarities and differences in the arguments used by social actors advocating for JPC in different countries, providing a cross-cultural perspective on this issue. Overarching Questions/Concerns: The main questions posed in my research project are: - Who are the main social actors involved in the public discourse on JPC in Poland, and what are their arguments? - How are JPC and PA perceived and discussed? - What are the social and cultural contexts influencing the narrations? - How have the narratives about JPC and PA evolved from the 1990s to the present? - What are the potential implications of legally presuming the JPC in Poland? - What are the similarities and differences in the arguments used by social actors advocating for JPC in different countries, and how do these provide a cross-cultural perspective on this issue? During the presentation, I will focus on answering the first question. Statement on Methods: The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is employed to analyze the construction and utilization of narratives on JPC and PA by Polish social actors to shape public opinion and policy choices (Shanan et al., 2017, 2018; Jones, 2018; Crow and Jones, 2018; Jones and McBeth, 2020). This framework facilitates the identification of the fundamental components of these narratives, including Characters, Settings, Plot, and Moral of the story. During the presentation, I will utilize NPF (Narrative Pattern Framework) to analyze crucial elements of the narratives, including the depiction of Villains, Victims, Heroes, Allies, and Beneficiaries (all falling under the category of Characters). This analysis aims to identify repeating patterns and persuasive methods employed in the narratives. The study utilizes a combination of research approaches (triangulation), which involves the use of three different methods to gather and analyze data: - Content analysis of publicly accessible existing data, including: citizen petitions submitted to the parliament by father’s and mother’s organizations; transcripts of the meetings of parliamentary and senatorial committees that dealt with JPC and PA; transcripts of the Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of PA meetings; interpellations submitted by Members of Parliament; judgments of Polish courts regarding JPC. - In-depth individual interviews with representatives of the politicians as well as the father's and mother's advocacy groups involved in lobbying for JPC. - Expert interviews with judges and experts from the Ministry of Justice. During the presentation, I will focus on the analysis of the citizens’ petitions and the transcripts of the Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of PA meetings. Important Findings: According to the preliminary outcomes: - Fathers’ organizations, as well as individual fathers, are among the key social actors lobbying for the implementation of SC in Poland. - In their narratives, fathers have been documented exploiting the notions of parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome. - As Villains, they identify the following: mothers, family court judges, prosecutors, police, probation officers, court-employed experts, the Polish state and law, the system of “institutional violence,” lawyers, media, and “Soviet family law model”. - As Victims, they describe: children (who are often used and manipulated during parental conflicts, mostly by mothers), and fathers (who are depicted as being reduced to the role of a cash machine). - As Heroes, they present: fathers who fight for their children’s rights, and politicians (particularly those from the Confederation party who support fathers' efforts). - The narratives used by fathers are full of emotions; in some cases, strong accusations are directed towards social actors identified as Villains, and some of the arguments used are populist. Implications for research, policy and/or practice: Policies regarding the well-being of children, where the principle of “the best interests of the child” is frequently invoked, are both socially sensitive and susceptible to manipulation by influential actors with specific agendas, such as father's organizations advocating for JPC in Poland. Hence, it is essential to exhibit significant caution while formulating policies and executing legal modifications. When social actors in Poland advocate for the adoption of the JPC, it is important to consider the specific characteristics of the Polish judicial system and family welfare system. Simply referring to solutions implemented in other countries without taking these specifics into account can lead to the implementation of ineffective and potentially harmful legislation.
  • Shared Parenting in Context. .....Laurie Maldonado, Columbia University
  • In the United States and in Europe, children in separated families are increasingly living with both parents (Cancian & Meyers 2022; Hakovirta, Meyer, Salin, Lindroos, Haapanen 2023). Families have evolved considerably over the past few decades. And yet, despite the diversity of families, many policies that affect families’ work and life have not changed and still favor the traditional two-parent family (Kearney 2023) This comprehensive review of the literature uses a comparative focus to examine trends, demographics, and socio-economic outcomes on shared parenting. It addresses the key issues, challenges, and debates on family diversity. It examines how shared parents are doing in the context of the institutions and policies that surround them including child custody, child support, tax credits, child benefit, parental leave, childcare and education. In conclusion, it provides a summative review and discusses future directions for data collection and for research on shared parenting.
  • Accelerator or Safety Net? Parents’ Role in the Marital Stability in China. .....Wenjun Fan, A Better Balance
  • The divorce rate in China has been rising since 1978 and accelerating in recent decades. However, China still has a relatively low divorce rate, even with a skewed gender division and an intensified masculine culture similar to other East Asia countries. Previous studies focused on the influence of individuals' and the community’s characters on their marital stability while neglecting the ongoing "Neo-Familism" in recent years. This study aims to model the effects of parents' characters and assistance in their adult children’s marital stability through financial aspects and housework aspects. This will be accomplished through the event history analysis using data from Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) between 2014 and 2020. We hypothesize that two competing possibilities could affect marital stability divergently. One is the accelerator effect. Wives' parents with more resources could have more financial support, thereby experiencing higher risks of divorcing. The other is the safety net effect. Parents of either who give more financial and housework assistance could compensate for the husbands' unemployment and wives' housework stress, lending them lower risks of divorcing. We hope that our findings will contribute to moving the focus of the theory of employment, housework, and marital stability from couples to extended families, especially in countries where core families and social welfare are underdeveloped like China.
11. Thriving and Growing Despite It All: Women Entrepreneurs in Growing Economies [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.435

Organizers: Katherina Kuschel, Centrum Graduate Business School and pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Nicholas Beutell, Iona University;
Presider: Katherina Kuschel, Centrum Graduate Business School and pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
  • Gender Wage Gap in Chilean Microenterprises. .....Valeria Scapini, Universidad Central de Chile; Rocío Ruiz-Martínez, Universitat Rovira i Virgili - SBRLab - Social & Business Research Laboratory Group; and Rodrigo Calderón, Universidad de Valparaíso
  • Entrepreneurship is considered as one of the main drivers of economic growth. However, informality, low contribution to employment and a gender wage gap to the detriment of women are characteristic of micro entrepreneurship in Latin America. The objective of this paper is to study the variables that affect the wage gap of microenterprises in Chile. From information on socioeconomic characteristics of the microentrepreneur population benefited by a government program between 2013 and 2016, an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model was estimated to study the relationship between socioeconomic variables and income level. The results show that, in general, women are related to lower levels of sales and sales per hour of work performed. On the other hand, being the head of household is related to higher levels of sales and sales per hour of work, as well as having a level of formalization in the business. These results should motivate the generation of higher levels of business formalization. The article requires the use of the gender perspective as a fundamental element in the research. Finally, the results may be useful for the elaboration of public policies and future research. Keywords: Microentrepreneurship, Gender Gap, Economic Growth, Formalization, Linear regression model.
  • Analyzing Instagram Images: Examining the Representation of Female Entrepreneurs on Mother’s Day. .....Katherina Kuschel, Centrum Graduate Business School and pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; and Ruth Powosino, CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
  • International Mother’s Day recognizes the work as mothers, and it is also an opportunity to increase sales. How are female entrepreneurs being represented online? We analyzed more than 2000 images related to the hashtags #(mama)emprendedora and #mompreneur, as some of the most trending hashtags during 2023 Mother’s Day. The visual content revealed complex ways in which images contribute to online self-presentation as a mother and entrepreneur. We found differences in the use of the hashtags. Latin American female entrepreneurs engage in motivational messages, greetings, and financial education, while U.S. female entrepreneurs show their well curated family pictures and their products. Family images have higher engagement from the followers. Keywords: Female entrepreneurs, mumpreneurs, self-presentation, Instagram, Mother’s Day
  • Women Entrepreneurs’ Self-Presentation in Social Networking Sites During the Scale-Up Process. .....Ruth Powosino, CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; and Katherina Kuschel, Centrum Graduate Business School and pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
  • Previous literature has found that women entrepreneurs participate less often than their male counterparts in networking activities. However, women seem to use networks while they are expanding their businesses abroad. The scaleup is a process that conveys a disruptive change in the way of doing business, not only because the size and structure change, but also because the audience/stakeholders change. The aim of this project is to explore the changes in women’s entrepreneurial identity and how this is reflected in self-presentation in (virtual) social networks and identify the strategies for internationalization success. We will conduct a qualitative study reviewing online profiles of and interviewing 15 Latin American women founders in the process of scaling up their business. The data will be analyzed using a case study method and constant comparison approach. Expected results include: 1) The “when” of changing the entrepreneurial identity occurs before the process of internationalization, gradually after a series of fundraising events. 2) The “who”: other people are involved in advising how the entrepreneur has to be presented online. 3) “What” elements of the personal brand do change during the internationalization process of a startup? We expect that aspects of the identity are modified, and that is reflected in the personal brand that is presented in social networks, considering the social norms (e.g., feminine modesty, aesthetics, charisma) and current norms in virtual social networks (catchy statements, visuals, frequency of messages, transparency). This new knowledge will advance the self-presenting and self-promoting competencies of women in business.
  • Work-Family Boundary Management Among Women Entrepreneurs: A Moderated Mediation Model. .....Jasmine Banu, SwaaS Systems Private Limited; and Rupashree Baral, Indian Institute of Technology Madras
  • While entrepreneurship provides women the desired autonomy and flexibility, having a challenging career like entrepreneurship can impose additional workloads and mental strain, making it demanding for them to achieve a work-life balance. Building on the tenets of the work-home resource (W-HR) model and boundary theory, this study tested the impact of boundary preference toward integration on subjective well-being through actual boundary enactment and work-to-family enrichment as mediators, moderated by the problem-focused coping strategy. Results of structural equation modelling with data from 446 women entrepreneurs collected in two waves from various districts of Tamil Nadu, one of the southern states of India, reveal that the study participants do not see business and family demands as competing entities. Instead, they accept the role demands and prefer to integrate the boundaries. Women entrepreneurs utilize the resources gained through work to enrich their family roles. Moreover, to organize themselves within the roles and to offset additive role burdens, they have mastered several problem-focused coping strategies, such as active operational planning, prioritizing, self-regulatory activities, etc., to achieve subjective well-being. This study concludes that boundary management is crucial for managing the role expectations imposed on women entrepreneurs and enhancing their subjective well-being. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. Keywords: Women entrepreneurs; Work-family boundary management; Work-life integration; Problem-focused coping strategies; Subjective well-being; India
12. Mediated Realities [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 2.445

Organizer: Molly Schmidt, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Discussants:
  • Candice Ruh, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Molly Schmidt, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Misornu Nartey, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
13. Gender: Roles, Contributions, and Responsibilities Across the Life Course 1 [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.210

Presider: Trisha Chanda, University of Wisconsin, Madiso
  • Embracing the Non-Normative Roles? An Exploration of Stay-At-Home Fathers' Caregiving Journeys in Pakistan. .....Rahat Shah, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany; Shah Faisal, University of Stirling; and Fazal E Subhan Safi, Liverpool Hope University
  • This study aimed to explore the caregiving experiences of stay-at-home fathers (SAHFs) in Pakistan, an area of research that has not been fully explored. The study employed a qualitative approach and used the (un)doing gender as framework. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with a sample of 30 SAHFs in Pakistan. The results indicate that despite being in a SAHF role, most men avoided participation in caregiving responsibilities, citing a lack of caregiving skills, the perception of caregiving as a women's domain, stigmatization, and challenges to their masculinity as reasons. These SAHFs also devalued paternal caregiving compared to maternal, reflecting a widespread sentiment that women, particularly their wives, are naturally more adept at caregiving. However, the data shows that caregiving experiences of SAHFs were not homogeneous and their participation in caregiving roles was greatly influenced by household structure (joint-nuclear), levels of education, and residential background (rural-urban). The findings of this study make a valuable contribution to our understanding of how the powerful cultural narratives continue to reinforce gendered practices and perceptions, making it difficult for SAHFs to fully embrace their roles as primary caregivers in highly patriarchal non-western cultural contexts.
  • Running On Empty: Gender, Time Allocation, and Daily Stress Experience Across the Life Course. .....Maria Stanfors, Lund University
  • Stress is a public health concern. One of the explanations to why women, more than men, receive stress-related diagnosis in connection to sickness absence is their responsibility for housework and caregiving. We investigate men’s and women’s time allocation and its association with everyday stress across life course stages (25-74 years), using individual time diary data (N=11,880) from the 2000/01 and 2010/11 Swedish Time Use Survey (SWETUS), including self-reported stress on the diary day. Though Sweden is known for gender equality in both the workplace and in the home, time use is still gendered. Women still perform more unpaid work, including housework and caregiving, across the life course, even if they are employed. Women are also more likely to experience daily stress across the life course, irrespective of life course stage. Results from multivariate regression analysis show that daily stress is higher for ages 25-49 than 50-74. Both determinants of stress and stress associations with time use vary between these groups. Paid work is positively related to men’s stress, while caregiving – to own children or other adults – is the primary determinant of women’s stress. Results hold across the life course and are independent of education, occupation, and income. Gender still structures individuals’ daily life and well-being.
  • Work-Family Balance and Adjustment of First-Time Urban Chinese Fathers During the Transition to Fatherhood. .....Kai Sun, Arizona State University; and Xuan Li, University of Copenhagen
  • Research on the work-family interface typically focuses on mothers. However, men’s participation in the family domain has been increasing around the globe, including in urban China. With little policy support for men’s involvement in family life, it is likely for first-time Chinese fathers to feel squeezed between their two main roles: employee and parent. As such it is necessary to look into their work and family interface around childbirth and understand how today’s Chinese fathers navigate this crucial transition period.   The current study investigates how first-time urban Chinese fathers balance work and family responsibilities, and how their work-family interface relates to their adjustment. Survey data concerning their work-family experiences were collected from 108 first-time Chinese parents (54 couples; mean age=31.5, SD=6.21) living in Shanghai at three time points (3 months before childbirth, 3 months and 9 months after childbirth), among whom 40 couples were also interviewed. Preliminary analyses suggested that fathers’ perceived support in work and family domains played a crucial role in their work-family conflict after childbirth. Moreover, fathers’ psychological well-being after childbirth is influenced by multi-level factors on the individual and family level, including their gender-related traits, marital relationships, and social support. Additionally, interview respondents articulated a tension between the new fatherhood ideals and actual practices and a lack of workplace support for fathers. The finding contributes to the work-family scholarship as it captures paternal experiences during a most challenging transition period and explores multi-level factors related to their work-family balance and adjustment.
  • Are Attitudes and Behavior Aligned? Cohort Dynamics in Gender Attitudes and The Division of Childcare. .....Hyunjae Kwon, University of Minnesota
  • 1. Overarching Questions My paper addresses the following two questions. 1) How do the trends in age, period, and cohort affect work-family practices? 2) Does the trend in gender attitudes explain age, period, and cohort trends in work-family practices? 2. Methods 2.1. Data I use the Work and Family Life Study, which was formerly called the Marital Instability Over the Life Course. The study consists of three cross-sectional waves spanning over 40 years (1980, 2000, and 2022). Only married individuals between the ages of 19 and 55 in the United States were included in the study. I limit my sample to parents with household children and those who do not have missing values in the variables used in the current study. This results in an analytic sample of N = 3,381. 2.2. Variables My dependent variable is work-family practice. Following the approaches used in Pessin 2024 and Kitterød and Lappegård 2012, I perform latent class analysis (LCA) using a group of work-family related measures. These measures are wife's weekly time spent in paid work (in hours), husband’s weekly time spent in paid work (in hours), division of childcare, and division of housework. I compare the LCA results between the following number of classes: two, three, four, five, and six. The AIC and BIC values and my theoretical knowledge point to four as the optimal number. I define the four classes as traditional, egalitarian, his second-shift, and neither full-time. My key independent variable is gender attitudes. A set of seven questions in the survey taps into respondents’ attitudes regarding gender roles. I reverse code responses to some of the questions, so that for all seven questions, higher score indicates more gender egalitarian attitude (1 to 4). For the current iteration of analysis, I simply average responses to the seven questions to create a single index capturing gender attitudes. 2.3. Model I analyze work-family practice using Luo & Hodges’ APC-I model (2022). APC-I is a model that allows users to disentangle age, period, and cohort effects of a social trend. It is an improvement to previous versions in that it does not assume the existence of an independent cohort effect. Instead, it treats cohort effect as an interaction of age and period effects. One way to understand cohort effect is as variation in period that depends on age. 3. Important Findings Findings addressing my first research question: 1) How do the trends in age, period, and cohort affect work-family practices? Age effect As individuals age throughout their life course, the log odds of their work-family practices being egalitarian versus traditional increases. Period Effect The patterns of period effect are unusual at first glance. One would expect the log odds of having traditional work-family practices versus egalitarian to decrease from 1980 to 2022. The log odds decreases from 1980 to 2000 (from -0.426 to -0.856); however, it actually increases from 2000 to 2022 (from -0.856 to 1.226). This set of results highlights the importance of detangling age, period, and cohort effects. When age and cohort effects are accounted for, the probability of individuals implementing traditional over egalitarian work-family practice increases from 2000 to 2022. Cohort Effect Out of the 14 cohort effects (for 14 cohort groups), 12 were statistically significant. The log odds of having traditional versus egalitarian work-family practice decreases slightly from the 1925-1930 to 1956-1960 cohort. And even though the log odds decreases, it remains positive throughout the period, which indicates that the probability of having traditional work-family practice is higher than the probability of having egalitarian work-family practice Deviating from the trend, the direction of the log odds switches for the 1961-1965 cohort. This suggests that the probability of having traditional work-family practice becomes even higher compared to the probability of having egalitarian work-family practice. Then, the direction switches back again for the 1966-1970 cohort. Starting with the 1971-1975 cohort, the log odds is negative. In particular, there is a dramatic decrease in the log odds from the 1971-1975 to 1976-1982 cohort. Then, the log odds actually increases consistently for the subsequent cohorts. This implies that the 1983-1987, 1988-1992, and 1993-1997 cohorts are more likely to have traditional work-family practice than the 1976-1982 cohort. Findings addressing my second research question: 2) Does the trend in gender attitudes explain age, period, and cohort trends in work-family practices? When I add gender attitudes variables to the model, the general cohort patterns remain the same. However, there are two key differences in detail. The positive log odds are higher in value, and the negative log odds are lower in value. This suggests that without the observed trend in gender attitudes, the log odds of having traditional versus egalitarian work-family practice would have been higher for all cohorts. However, statistical tests show that none of the differences in cohort effects between the model without and with gender attitudes are statistically significant. 4. Implications for research, policy and/or practice My findings show that disentangling age, period, and cohort effects is crucial to understanding the trend in individuals’ work-family practices. Contrary to my expectation, the trend in gender attitudes does not explain the cohort differences in work-family practices. References Kitterød, R. H., & Lappegård, T. (2012). A Typology of Work-Family Arrangements Among Dual-Earner Couples in Norway. Family Relations, 61(4), 671–685. Luo, L., & Hodges, J. S. (2022). The Age-Period-Cohort-Interaction Model for Describing and Investigating Inter-cohort Deviations and Intra-cohort Life-course Dynamics. Sociological Methods & Research, 51(3), 1164–1210. Pessin, L. (2024). Gender Equality for Whom? The Changing College Education Gradients of the Division of Paid Work and Housework Among US Couples, 1968–2019. Social Forces, soae028.
14. Economic Empowerment in a Global Perspective [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.265

Presider: Veronica Freitas de Paula, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
  • The Challenge of Gender Equality in Brazil. .....Flavia Ivana de Melo Santos, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia; Vérica Freitas, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia; and Veronica Freitas de Paula, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
  • Gender equality is a worldwide challenge, with the countries of the Global South usually ranking among the countries with the worst rates, and it is well known that increasing gender equality contributes to entrepreneurship, innovation, and consequently, economic, and social development. One of the main factors identified as inhibiting gender equality is related to motherhood and family configurations, through social constructions that assign responsibility for care in general, with children, the elderly, family members, and the sick, to women - in Brazil, women devote almost double the time of men to caring for people and household chores. This context affects the lives of Brazilian women, as well as women's participation in the labor market where, despite having more schooling, there is: less participation in the formal labor market (53% vs. 72.4% in 2022); more women working reduced or part-time hours (28% vs. 14% in 2018); an average income of 78% of that received by men in 2022; fewer women in management and leadership positions (37.8% in 2016) and as political representatives (15% of parliamentarians in 2022). The discrepancy is even greater if other criteria are considered, such as social class, color, race, place of residence (national or regional), or areas and sectors of activity. In this context, public policies and organizational actions are needed so that social precepts are rethought, and discriminatory stigmas are condemned, contributing to promoting equality and protecting human rights.
  • Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Is Economic Empowerment Good For Women?. .....Rhonda Breitkreuz, University of Alberta; and Marian Baird, University of Sydney - Business School
  • Globally, women’s economic empowerment has been touted as a game changer and the next frontier for social transformation. The UN’s former Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, wrote that “gender equality remains the greatest human rights challenge of our time. Economic empowerment is a uniquely potent way for women to achieve greater control over their own lives” (UN, 2017). National governments and other international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization have identified women’s economic empowerment as a key priority. While improving women’s economic security globally is certainly an important and laudable goal, the means by which this is to be achieved is debated. Although governments and major NGOs are investing in initiatives such as employment activation programs, entrepreneurship, business development, and other market-based solutions, feminist scholars point to the reality of many women’s lives including poor employment conditions, the predominance of informal work, the gender pay gap, violence against women, and the disproportionate unpaid care and household work that women perform worldwide. In this presentation, we provide a conceptual analysis of women’s economic empowerment globally, situating this concept within social, economic, policy and geographic environments, and ask: is women’s economic empowerment good for women? Identifying the major themes central to a discussion of women’s economic empowerment, we discuss the opportunities and risks for women amidst this international policy trend.
  • Gender Ideology and Health Status Among Individuals: A Global Perspective. .....Glory Narjinary, International Institute for population Sciences
  • Amid the global shift in gender ideology from traditional to modernization, it becomes increasingly essential to understand how ideological change and self-actualization influence different spheres of society. While the literature addressing these changes has been burgeoning, the health status of the individual with gender ideology has been not well-researched despite health being the most important aspect of human life. Thus, this study tends to investigate the association between gender ideology and health status. To study this we used data from the ISSP 2012 module, and we employed ordered logistic regression and marginal effects to observe the level of association. Additionally, using multiple robustness checks the propounded result is reaffirmed. We find that individual with egalitarian belief is associated with good health level, suggesting the construction of more gender-equal societies where every individual can achieve their optimal health status.
  • Multi Level Factors Associated with Husbands’ No Opposition to Wives’ Economic Activity Among Married Syrian Refugee Women Living in Non-Camp Settings in Jordan. .....Nabila El-Bassel, Columbia University; Anindita Dasgupta, Columbia University; Ajita Singh, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Maysa Kadra, University of Jordan School of Medicine, Amman, Jordan; and Neeraj Kaushal, Columbia University
  • We examine the relationship between IPV, women’s agency, and husbands’ no opposition to wives’ economic activity using Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological framework. We hypothesize that married Syrian refugee women who report no lifetime physical and sexual IPV as well as also report themselves as head of households will be more likely to report husbands’ no opposition to wives’ economic activity compared to married Syrian refugee women who report lifetime physical and sexual IPV and who do not report themselves as head of households. We recruited 344 married Syrian refugee women for project ASPIRE study using time and venue-based random sampling from health clinics in Jordan in 2018. We asked if their husbands would have a negative reaction towards their learning of a vocation in Jordan. We used multivariable logistic regressions to examine the hypothesis. In both the unadjusted odds ratio (OR=3.44 95% confidence interval, CI=1.80-6.54) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR=2.65, 95% CI=1.33-5.29) models, women who reported themselves as head of the households were associated with increased odds of husbands’ no opposition to wives’ economic activity. Likewise, in both the unadjusted odds ratio (OR=7.97 95% confidence interval, CI=2.40-26.40) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR=5.82, 95% CI=1.66-20.40) models, women who reported no IPV experiences as well as who reported themselves as head of the households were associated with increased odds of husbands’ no opposition to wives’ economic activity relative to women who reported lifetime IPV experiences and who did not report themselves as the head of the households.
15. Contemporary Work-Family Challenges and Policy Implications [Paper Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.270

Presider: Heather Hofmeister, Goethe University Frankfurt
  • Generational Change in “Ideal Worker” Norms Among Postdocs in the Life Sciences. .....Heather Hofmeister, Goethe University Frankfurt; and Anne-Kathrin Kronberg, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
  • Overarching Questions Half a century after second-wave feminism, one main focus of inquiry still is the persistent underrepresentation of women in higher level academic science. The persistence of the “ideal worker” norm (Williams 2000) and the inability of the primary caregiver in a household to fulfil it has been offered as one explanation for the underrepresentation of women in many fields. We examine the degree to which resistance to the “ideal worker” model may play a role in strategic career decisions and future expectations for the next generation of top scientists in the life sciences. Do they reject a long-hours work culture? How do their ideals differ from their supervisors' expectations? Methods We use qualitative in-depth interviews with 22 life sciences postdocs (13 men, 9 women) in their final year from the same highly competitive research institution, and follow-up interviews, plus 5 interviews with principal investigators from their supervisors. Findings We found that all nine women and 12 of 13 men in the sample felt internal resistance to imitating the lives of their supervisors. The supervisors, in turn, were critical of the postdocs’ values. Despite these postdocs being among the best and brightest scientists in a cutting-edge industry, and wanting an alternative path, they largely did not see themselves as holding negotiating power for alternative ideal futures. Implications Our research may help predict the likelihood of change or continuation of labor market inequalities in one scientific field along gender lines. Parenthood status, gender, and region of origin played a role and will be discussed.
  • Post-Pandemic ‘Work From Home Revolution’ Discourses and the Invisibilisation of Women’s Unpaid Care Labour in Australia.. .....Amanda Peters, Monash University
  • In Australia, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns brought changes in work practices marked by a significant rise in the number of employees engaging in remote work arrangements. In the media and other public discoursers this shift in employment patterns has been dubbed ‘the work from home revolution’. This presentation critically analyses these ‘work from home’ discourses using a gendered perspective to understand how they may sustain existing patriarchal economic and social structures. A category analysis of Australian media and industry narratives of a ‘work from home revolution’ will explore how these narratives reinvigorate hegemonic masculine discourses of work. It is well established that the devaluation of unpaid care work, which is predominantly performed by women, is a key driver of gender inequality. This occurs in part via invisibilisation, a process in which unpaid care labour is simultaneously devalued and exploited within capitalism by obscuring the fact that labour has been performed. Invisibilisation of women’s unpaid care labour occurs via patriarchal socio-cultural mechanisms which tie definitions of work exclusively to forms of labour for which someone is paid, such mechanisms exclude women’s unpaid care labour despite it being an essential part of the production system. This presentation will explore how ‘work from home revolution’ discourses invisibilise women’s unpaid care work, and thus reinforce patriarchal economic and cultural structures which drive gender inequality.
  • Redefining Boundaries: The Evolving Dynamics of Work-Life Interface in the Digital Age. .....Moses Kayanja, Multitech Business School; and Moses Kayanja, Multitech Business School
  • The advent of the digital age and the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic have thrust the global workforce into a reevaluation of traditional work structures. This research examines the new intersections forming between work and family in this era of change. Using a multi-modal approach, we gathered qualitative and quantitative data from professionals across various sectors, regions, and family structures. Our findings suggest a shift in the definition of work and its significance at varying life stages, especially among the younger generation who prioritize flexibility and work-life integration. Concurrently, the dynamics of family experiences are changing, with a noticeable decline in traditional family models in high-income nations, coupled with increased feelings of isolation despite being more digitally connected than ever. Furthermore, the paper investigates how these changes affect transitional stages in the life course, from childhood to old age, emphasizing the evolving challenges and coping mechanisms. Finally, our research highlights innovative solutions and practices from both global north and south that can serve as models for creating a balanced and inclusive work-life paradigm. By understanding these intricate dynamics, stakeholders can better navigate the future of work and family, ensuring resilience, equity, and holistic well-being.
  • “Now I Have Two Dads and No Mom”: Investigating the Familial Experience of Adults Learning ‘Not Parent Expected’ News From an At-Home Ancestry DNA Test. .....Juliette Careau, McGill University; and Rob Whitley, McGill University
  • According to recent estimates, over 30 million people have taken at-home DNA tests with companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. These tests reveal details about a user’s ethnic ancestry, and also match users with biological relations on their database. This process can throw up sudden and surprising news. The most shocking may be a ‘Not Parent Expected’ (NPE) discovery, where a user learns that an assumed father is not a biological father. In this presentation, the authors will report the results of a qualitative study aiming to document the psychosocial experience of people receiving NPE news from an at-home DNA test. This involved 52 semi-structured interviews with affected individuals, analyzed using thematic analysis. Results indicate that learning NPE news revealed unknown truths about a user’s conception such as marital infidelity, sperm donation and other uncommon stories. Most participants reported that the discovery had a profoundly negative impact on family dynamics, especially concerning their mother, leading to ruptured relationships and shattered trust. Participants often used the language of grief, trauma and loss in this regard. In some cases, participants established positive and rewarding relationships with their new biological family, including the biological father and half-siblings. But overall, the discovery typically had negative implications for mental health. Some participants sought help from therapists and psychologists in response to the news, but these were often considered ill-equipped to help. All this suggests the need for tailored training for family therapists and psychologists, as well as targeted interventions that can help the NPE population.
  • Teaching, Research, Administration and Family: A Comparative Case Study of Professor’s Work-Life Balance in Brazil and Canada. .....Ana Luiza Leite, Santa Catarina State University; Linda Duxbury, Carleton University; Dannyela da Cunha Lemos, Santa Catarina State University; and Mario Cesar Barreto de Morais, Santa Catarina State University
  • The term work-life balance (WLB) came into use in the 1970s concomitant with the influx of women into the workforce. Since then, research in this domain has exploded as academics and practitioners sought a better understanding of the phenomena. Most of this research has focused on the balance between work (defined most often as a unitary construct - work) and family roles. Few studies have examined the challenges faced by employees who job requires them to balance the demands imposed by multiple competing work roles with their roles outside of work. Our study contributes to the WLB literature by looking at how University faculty in two countries (Canada, Brazil) balance the competing demands imposed by three quite different work roles (teacher, researcher, and administrator) and how this impacted their role performance at work and at home. We use Role Theory to theoretically frame our qualitative study which involved interviews with 23 Canadian and 24 Brazilian business school professors. Participants were asked questions pertaining to their work and family demands during COVID. We also administered a short survey designed to collect demographic data as well as data on time spent in work/ non-work roles. Most informants reported high levels of conflict between the teaching and research roles and that this conflict split over into the family domain. Results from this study can be used by universities to design mechanisms to support their professors’ desire to balance having a life with their aspirations as researchers and teachers.
16. Embracing Interdisciplinarity In Work-Family Research: Implications Across the Research Life Cycle [Workshop]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.430

Organizers: Heidi Cramm, Queens University; Melissa Richardson, Queens University; Lauren Roberts, Queens University; Lisa Vaters, Queens University; Margaret Campbell, Queens University; Vanier Institute of the Family;
Presiders: Heidi Cramm, Queens University; Melissa Richardson, Queens University; Lauren Roberts, Queens University; Lisa Vaters, Queens University; Margaret Campbell, Queens University; Vanier Institute of the Family;

Panelists:
  • Heidi Cramm, Queens University;
  • Deborah Norris, Mount Saint Vincent University;
  • Melissa Richardson, Queens University;
  • Lisa Vaters, Queens University;
Discussant:
  • Margaret Campbell, Queens University; Vanier Institute of the Family;
17. Leaders, Flexibility, Inclusion and Wellness [Thematic roundtable with multiple presentations]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.435

Organizers: Jessica DeGroot, ThirdPath Institute; Scott Behson, Fairleigh Dickinson University;
Presider: Jessica DeGroot, ThirdPath Institute

Panelists:
  • Beth Livingston, University of Iowa;
  • Heather Cluley Bar-Or, Villanova University;
  • Richard Petts, Ball State University;
  • Rachael Pettigrew, Mount Royal University;
  • Scott Behson, Fairleigh Dickinson University;
18. Getting A New Perspective On (Work)Life: Updating Conceptualizations of the Work-Life Interface to Incorporate Diverse Experiences and Growing Inequality [Workshop]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB 3.445

Organizer: Susan Lambert, University of Chicago
Presider: Susan Lambert, University of Chicago

Panelists:
  • Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University;
  • Ameeta Jaga, University of Cape Town;
  • Sydney Colussi, University of Sydney - Business School;
  • Erin Carreon, University of Chicago;
19. Author Meets Reader: "Work in Black and White: Striving for the American Dream" [Author Meets Readers Session]
Thursday | 9:00 am-10:30 am | MB9-B

Organizer: Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
Presider: Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)

Panelists:
  • Enobong (Anna) Branch, Rutgers University;
  • Caroline Hanley, William & Mary;
  • Jasmine Hill, University of California, Los Angeles;
  • Yue Qian, University of British Columbia;
  • Erin Cech, University of Michigan.;
20. Presidential Plenary [Plenary]
Thursday | 10:45 am-11:45 am | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute

Panelists:
  • Marie Gendron, Le conseil de gestion de l’assurance parentale (The Management Board of Parental insurance) – The Québec Government;
  • Noémie Mercier, Noovo;
  • Pauline Marois, Former Prime Minister of Québec;
  • Julie Gingras, Finances Deputy Minister - The Québec Government;
  • Sophie Mathieu, Vanier Institute of the Family;
21. Lunch – Sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons
Thursday | 12:00 pm-1:15 pm | LB Atrium
Lunch is sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons. Please join others for lunch and conversation. Lunch boxes (free) will be distributed in the LB atrium. Specific lunch boxes, designated by name, have been set aside for those who have identified special dietary needs in advance of the conference. A variety of options are available for all other participants. Organizers request that after obtaining your lunch, you find a comfortable space to eat and converse with friends and new acquaintances. All of the conference-designated rooms are open for use and you can also seek out nearby parks and benches. Kindly dispose of lunch materials appropriately so that rooms are in good order for the afternoon sessions. Note that organizers tried their best to estimate the number of lunches needed by providing surveys to gauge intents to join lunches and special dietary needs in advance of the conference. In the event that demand exceeds inventory, there are many eating establishments located within the blocks surrounding Concordia University.
22. Invited Session: Kanter Award Symposium - Amplifying the Impact of Work-Family Research [Thematic roundtable with multiple presentations]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.210

Organizers: Jennifer Fraone, Boston College - Center for Work & Family; Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Purdue University;
Discussants:
  • Maggie Wan, Texas State
  • Sarah Thebaud, UC Santa Barbara
  • Christine Pfeiffer, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
23. The Life Course Experience of Diverse Populations: LGBTQ+ Perspectives [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.265
  • Occupation and Housework Time in Same- and Different-Gender Couples. .....Jisu Park, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State); and Elena Pojman, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
  • Theoretical framework: Unequal time input to housework by men and women in different-gender partnerships is well established (Bianchi et al., 2000, 2012), though greater egalitarianism in housework has been found among same-gender couples (Civettini, 2015; Giddings, 1998; Goldberg, 2013). Partner differences in housework time within different-gender couples are explained using sociological theories that separately stress the role of relative resources, time availability, or gender roles, and these theories have found support across several studies (Aassve et al., 2014; Carriero & Todesco, 2018; Killewald & Gough, 2010; Nitsche & Grunow, 2016). More recently, the relationship between time in paid work or earnings and housework time has been explored among same-gender couples in addition to different-gender couples. Specifically, this study found paid work time is significantly related to housework time among sexual minority (SM) men and women, though earnings were only significant among SM men (Fischer, 2024). Less clear however is how occupation could differentially shape how men and women in same-gender couples spend time across various housework tasks. Within different-gender couples, having a gender-deviant occupation is associated with spending more time performing same-gender tasks (Schneider, 2012). Occupational characteristics such as overwork also help to reinforce gendered breadwinner-homemaker norms within different-gender couples (Cha, 2010) as well as gender segregation in occupations at the macro level (Cha, 2013). Sexual minorities, especially sexual minority men, are less likely than their heterosexual counterparts to find jobs in conventionally gender-typed occupations (Finnigan, 2020; Ueno et al., 2013), professional fields (Tilcsik, 2011), managerial positions (Aksoy et al., 2019), or jobs that require constant interaction with colleagues and supervisors (Lim et al., 2018; Tilcsik et al., 2015). The occupational segregation of sexual minority individuals operates at two levels. On the demand side, sexual minorities are discriminated against in male-dominated and professional fields (Mishel, 2016; Pedulla, 2014; Tilcsik, 2011). On the supply side, sexual minorities may stay out of certain occupations as a strategy to avoid discrimination and occupational disadvantages (Tilcsik et al., 2015). Despite our understanding of both the occupational segregation of sexual minorities and the relatively egalitarian division of housework in different-gender partnerships, it is presently unknown how occupation, as well as the partner’s occupation, separately and concurrently shape housework time among men and women in same-gender couples. Further, it is unclear whether occupational differences function similarly or differently across same- and different-gender couples in their housework time. Analytic strategy: To examine the role of occupation on housework time among men and women in same- and different-gender couples, we use data from the 2003-2019 American Time Use Survey which encompasses 64,520 individuals (34,468 MF, 209 MM, 265 FF, 28,992 FM). We examine gender composition of the occupation, and separately model the relationship between one’s own and partner’s occupation on daily minutes spent in housework. We include controls for the race-ethnicity, age, and college attainment of the reference partner, number of children, urbanicity, and marital status of the couple, as well as weekday, year, month, and state fixed effects. Key findings: Association between gender composition of occupation and daily minutes spent in housework - Time in total housework decreases for men and women partnered with men as the male composition of their occupation increases, whereas time in total housework increases for men and women partnered with women as the male composition of their occupation increases. These changes are more dramatic among people in same-gender couples. - Positive relationship between male composition of one’s occupation and their time in male-typed housework for all except men in same-gender couples. - Male composition of occupation shapes men in different-gender couples’ time in female-typed housework very negligibly. Association between own occupation, partner’s occupation, gender composition of couple and daily minutes spent in housework - Own and partner’s occupation matter for time spent in total and female-typed housework, but the extent to which they matter also varies by own and partner’s gender. - Partner’s occupation appears to matter more for time spent in male-typed housework. Implications for research and policy This project has several implications for both research and policy. First, we contribute to a burgeoning literature on the factors shaping time in housework for men and women in both different- and same-gender couples. Specifically, we analyze the role of own and partner’s occupation on time in housework among same-gender couples. Finally, we provide evidence to policymakers on how structural conditions of paid employment in the United States shape how men and women in both same- and different-gender couples spend time on housework.
  • Precariously Positioned in Unsettled Times: Work and Well-Being Among LGBTQ+ Adults in the COVID Era. .....Layne Amerikaner, University of Maryland, College Park
  • Overarching Questions/Concerns: The rise in precarious employment in recent decades has left a substantial portion of the U.S. workforce in insecure, low-quality jobs, with the divide between “good” and “bad” jobs becoming even starker during the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about how LGBTQ+ workers (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other individuals with minoritized sexual and gender identities) are faring in this context, even though previous research suggests they may be among those most vulnerable to negative structural and interpersonal factors affecting workers’ well-being. The present study examines how LGBTQ+ adults in the United States are experiencing and responding to an unequal work landscape during the COVID era. Methods: The study examines paid work experiences and well-being for LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. through semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews with a racially and occupationally diverse sample of 43 LGBTQ+ workers. Roughly half of the sample (47%) identifies as a member of a racially and/or ethnically minoritized group; roughly half (47%) hold a minoritized gender identity (e.g. non-binary, transgender, agender); all hold a minoritized sexual identity (e.g., lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, pansexual). The interview guide centered on three broad topics: 1) day-to-day paid work experiences during COVID, including the role of work location; 2) work climate and workplace mistreatment; and 3) perceptions of work-related factors influencing well-being. In-depth interviews (45 to 90 minutes in length, on average) were conducted on Zoom between late 2022 and early 2024. Interview transcripts are being analyzed using a “flexible coding” approach through multiple cycles of data coding and analytic memo-writing in Dedoose. All participant names are pseudonyms. Important Findings: Although analysis is ongoing, preliminary analysis suggests that for some LGBTQ+ workers, remote work may be protective against mistreatment in cisheteronormative, racialized work environments. For example, Jen, an Asian American queer woman in an office job, noted that remote work during the early pandemic reduced “the likelihood of, to be blunt, running into a creeper.” She explained: “Because it was all online, it was like you had to schedule time to talk with people. And that also reduced the amount of those, kind of, casual microaggressions or outright sexual harassment.” Similarly, Alicia, a Black bisexual woman who primarily works remotely, noted that her occasional in-person meetings stood in stark contrast to the dynamics of remote work: “The in-person meetings, in between the remote meetings, have allowed me to see [my co-workers] in-person and have different interactions with them. And some of them were just not very savory.” Other participants described working from home as providing the opportunity to explore gender expression or other aspects of identity. Danny, a white bisexual man employed in manual labor, briefly worked from home in the early pandemic and began regularly painting his nails during that time. Danny recounted: “I wore them around the house for a couple of days. And then I finally went out and ran some errands and went shopping, whatever, and had my nails painted, and nobody freaked out.” Regarding the nail painting, he explained that working from home “gave me a bit more freedom to go ahead and do it.” Now back on-site in a manual labor job, Danny continues to wear painted nails every day—a practice that has been a source of connection with other queer/supportive coworkers in a large-scale warehouse work context. For other LGBTQ+ adults, COVID-related strains may be compounding existing workplace minority stress, particularly among in-person workers who already faced demanding and/or precarious job conditions. For example, Ash, a Native American and white pansexual non-binary worker, recounted multiple layers of challenging work experiences across various manual labor jobs. These included mistreatment related to their minoritized identities, such as misgendering; COVID-related stressors, such as confrontations related to masking; and other job condition-related stressors, such as working outdoors in extreme heat. Implications for Research, Policy, and/or Practice: This research project advances existing literature on LGBTQ+ workplace inequality by considering how a changing work context during the COVID era may shape work experiences, exploring critical new factors such as the role of work location (remote work vs. in-person work) for LGBTQ+ workers’ well-being. Rich qualitative data on how LGBTQ+ adults’ workplace experiences may be shifting during the current era provides updated information about the perceptions and needs of a marginalized group of workers—data necessary for effective policymaking to address workplace inequality. Funding Acknowledgement: This work has been supported (in part) by Grant #2301-41649 from the Russell Sage Foundation. Any opinions expressed are those of the principal investigator alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of the Foundation.
  • Transition to Parenthood and Earnings Trajectories of Male Same-Sex Couples in Sweden and the Netherlands. .....Eva Jaspers, Utrecht University; Weverthon Machado, Utrecht University; and Marie Evertsson, Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI)
  • A growing scholarship on same-sex couples has expanded our understanding of the interplay of work and family across the transition to parenthood. For example, previous studies have found that, after parenthood, the within-couple earnings gap increases much less in female same-sex couples than in different-sex couples. However, there is comparatively little quantitative evidence on the determinants and consequences of the transition to parenthood for male same-sex couples. Compared to other families, male same-sex couples who wish to become parents have fewer paths to do so. Thus, it is important to understand which couples eventually have children. Furthermore, in view of the common finding that the arrival of a child has relatively little impact on the careers of fathers in different-sex couples, we ask whether and how becoming parents shapes the earnings trajectories of male same-sex parents. We investigate these questions using longitudinal population register data from Sweden and the Netherlands. First, we employ event history analysis to explore the socioeconomic and demographic attributes predicting the transition to parenthood in male same-sex couples. Second, for the couples who transition to parenthood, we track the earnings trajectories of both parents from before to several years after the arrival of the first child.
  • Queer Parenting As Resistance. .....Amelia Eppel, McGill University; and Kristen O'Sullivan, McGill University
  • For generations, Queer “chosen” family have been a life force sustaining the most marginalized through a model of community care that decenters the heterosexual two parent structure (Mamo, 2007. ). In recent years, with the advent of assisted reproduction and the legalization of same-sex relationships in North America, an estimated 77% of LGBTQ+ people of childbearing age are already parents or are considering having children through either fertility treatments or adoption (Family Equality, 2019). Most of the literature that considers queerness in relation to parenting has focused on the outcomes of children in two parent same-sex families, framed in terms of comparison with “gold standard” heteronormative families (Mendez, 2020). There is very little literature that considers the processes of parenting or the possibilities that alternative family structures open up (Klesse, 2018). This project will consider how queering the concept of family is an act of resistance. Most, if not all, queer-identifying people still face barriers to forming their families, whether in accessing healthcare, by social services or within their own families (Gregory et al., 2022; Farr, 2020). The anticipated value of the results of the study are that some insight will be gained into the experiences of queer parenting in Canada. Results of the research will be published in an edited collection called Queer Joy as Resistance (proposed publisher: New York University Press) with an anticipated publication date of Spring 2024. Our presentation will share results from the study including interview excerpts, our experiences of collecting data with families and how our findings compare with those in the literature.
24. Labor Market Policies and Effects [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.270

Presider: Kristin Smith, Dartmouth College
  • Is There a “Fatherhood Bonus” in Spain? The Impact of Children on Wages According to Occupational Characteristics, Family Structure and the Use of Longer-Term Care Leaves. .....Marta Dominguez-Folgueras, Sciences Po; M. José González, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; and Irene Lapuerta, Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNA)
  • This paper examines the impact of fatherhood on earnings in Spain, using panel data from 2006 to 2021. While there is extensive research on the negative effects of motherhood on earnings, our understanding of the effects of fatherhood, particularly in the Spanish context, remains limited. In some countries with available data, fathers tend to experience a financial advantage, commonly referred to as the "fatherhood bonus". This phenomenon has been attributed mainly to gender role specialisation, with women taking on caring responsibilities while men are in paid employment, employers' preferences for male employees and self-selection into parenthood, as those more established in the labour market may also be more likely to become fathers. This paper seeks to assess the impact of fatherhood on men's earnings and to explore its underlying factors by focusing on three understudied dimensions: the wage advantage of fathers' occupational categories, family structures (men living in heterosexual partnerships, same-sex partnerships or single-parent households) and the use of extended care leave to care for young children after an initial period of maternity and paternity leave. The study is based on the Continuous Sample of Working Lives, a survey of individuals who have made contributions to, or received benefits from, the Spanish social security system during the reference years. To estimate the expected earnings of men with and without children, we use unconditional quantile regression on longitudinal data. In addition, we integrate quantile regression with fixed effects techniques to account for self-selection into fatherhood.
  • Scheduling Standards in Union Contracts and in Public Policy—Substitutes or Complements?. .....Peter Fugiel, Rutgers University
  • Unpredictable schedules can wreak havoc in the lives of workers and their families. To address this problem, policy makers, advocates, union leaders, and other practitioners have developed novel scheduling standards, most notably in the United States and Canada. While the provisions vary across industries and jurisdictions, they include limits on employer discretion in assigning shifts, a minimum length of advance notice, premium pay for unsociable shifts, and compensation for schedule changes. To date the most ambitious and consequential scheduling standards take the form of union contracts or subnational (i.e. state or local) legislation. Research and media reports on scheduling standards mostly focus on legislation, framing it as a substitute for the protections of a union contract, particularly in fast food restaurants and other industries where union density is low. However, comparative research shows that public policy and union contracts can complement each other, resulting in broader coverage and stronger enforcement than either achieves in isolation. Drawing on case studies of scheduling standards and stakeholder interviews in Seattle, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, this paper identifies institutional conditions, organizational practices, and discursive frames that promote complementarity between scheduling legislation and collective agreements, rather than substitution of one for the other. I argue that complementary standards hold considerable promise for proponents of fair scheduling, but they demand broader solidarity and strategic coordination to realize this promise.
  • What Ever Happened to Employment Activation?. .....Madeline Robbenhaar, University of Alberta; and Rhonda Breitkreuz, University of Alberta
  • Between 1995-2010 prolific research was conducted on income support programs in Canada, with scholars critiquing the ‘welfare-to-work’ model of income support and challenging the liberal-welfare assertion that income support programs should focus on ‘activating’ the employment potential of recipients. Much research during this time focused on lone mothers, a vulnerable demographic of income support recipients that struggled to meet welfare-to-work requirements and complete necessary unpaid family labour. Although over the last 14 years research with lone mothers in welfare-to-work programs in Canada has slowed, the precarious economic context of lone mothers has not. Seeking to re-contextualize lone mother’s experiences balancing unpaid family labour and welfare-to-work requirements in Alberta, we employed a critical human ecological approach to review the literature related to the macro-level of the Canadian welfare state and Albertan income support policies, the micro-level of lone mother families in Canada and unpaid reproductive work, and the meso-level of lone mother’s experiences balancing welfare-to-work requirements and family labour. This paper highlights the connections between income support policies and the precarious economic context of lone mother families in Alberta, as they struggle to raise children with limited financial resources, shoulder unpaid family labour, and try to meet the welfare-to-work requirements of income support policies. Policy recommendations regarding provincial income support and lone mothers are also discussed.
  • Adaptation: A Boundary Management Framework. .....Christina Dreger-Smylie, Carleton University; and Linda Duxbury, Carleton University
  • In an increasingly volatile world, the capacity to effectively meet the demands of a new environment, known as adaptation, is critical to maintain a good quality of life. As such, adaptation has remained a topic of interest among work-life scholars (Park & Park, 2019). Despite a growing body of evidence that the environment plays an important role in adaptation (Jundt et al., 2014) scholarly work has continued to focus on personal factors (cognitive, behavioural) as the most important determinants of adaptation. As a consequence, existing theory is not adequate to address emerging work-life challenges (Mithani et al., 2020). Drawing from the literature on boundary management, we advance a framework describing how adaptation unfolds that considers both the person and the environment. 17-individuals from a science-based government department provided panel data during the transition to forced remote work in response to COVID-19. Self-report scales were used to create profiles of individuals based on cognitive and behavioural factors. Data on work and life environments was collected from external sources (COVID-19 events), organizational communications (emails, policies, practices), and from participants (childcare and eldercare responsibilities). Interviews conducted at six-month intervals (March 2020-March 2022) assessed work-life boundary preferences (integrating vs. segmenting), adaptation challenges, mitigation strategies, and outcomes (performance, productivity, dominant emotions, mental health). We contribute a richer understanding of adaptation and meaningful insights for researchers and practitioners.
  • The Role of Occupation, Gender, and Work Hours in the Gender Wage Gap. .....Minjin Chae, Harvard University
  • Overarching questions/concerns Recent literature has focused on the role of long work hours and inflexible work schedules in shaping the persistent gender wage gap. However, it has paid less attention on what leads to the increased pay for such hours and schedules which disproportionately benefit men. Previous studies have highlighted technical and normative characteristics of occupations but has not provided direct empirical evidence. Statement on methods Drawing on Current Population Survey (CPS) data, this study examined how returns to long work hours by occupational groups are associated with various occupational characteristics. I also employed Coarsened Exact Matching to identify the role of gender within occupations, adjusting for the selection into long work hours. Important findings Returns to long work hours vary significantly by occupation, but previously proposed occupational characteristics do not fully explain these variations. Returns to long work hours also vary by gender, with these patterns varying by occupations and worker’ positions within the occupation. Implications for research, policy and/or practice The findings suggest that between-occupation variations are important in explaining why long work hours lead to disproportionately high pay. At the same time, the substantial within-occupation heterogeneity in long work hour premiums indicates that not only the nature of occupational tasks but also the context of where and who performs the work affects the concentrated compensation for long work hours.
25. Eldercare: Family Complexity, Dynamics, and Wellbeing [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.430

Presider: Hugh Bainbridge, University of New South Wales
  • Caregiving Trajectories and the Well-Being of Caregivers. .....Bram Audenaert, KU Leuven; and Lore Van Herreweghe, KU Leuven
  • Population ageing puts pressure on the fiscal sustainability of most European Welfare states, in particular on the funding of pensions, health and long-term care (LTC). Over the past decades, policymakers across Europe have been aiming to reduce the fiscal strain by increasing the retirement age or increasing employment, in particular among older working-age adults and by restructuring the use of public funds to provide LTC services. Despite substantial differences in care policies across European welfare states, a general shift occurred towards ‘active citizenship’ of older people including policies to promote home-based familial care provision (Eggers, 2022). This however increases the burden on adult children or partners of elderly in need of care. Not only are older adults increasingly expected to be engaged in paid employment, which limits their availability for familial care provision, the provision of informal care might also have adverse effects on the well-being of caregivers. Consequently, a focus on safeguarding the economic sustainability of welfare states may come at the expense of the social sustainability of informal care provision. However, the impact of informal care on the well-being of caregivers is not clear yet. In the literature there seems to be a prima facie consensus that informal caregivers experience lower levels of well-being compared with non-caregivers. Despite this extensive body of literature, there are many ambiguities impeding us from drawing a firm conclusion. Two major issues arise. Firstly, research on the well-being of informal caregivers usually neglects the fact that caregiving careers are dynamic and transitional in nature. Research on informal care mostly has a cross-sectional design which limits its potential to answer socially relevant questions. The cross-sectional design struggles to capture caregiving trajectories over time and the trade-offs people make in terms of paid work and providing care over the life-course. Secondly, the literature has a limited view on caregiving trajectories by focusing on only one characteristic of these trajectories at the same time. For this paper we chose the life-course perspective as our analytical framework. The life-course perspective regards individual lives and caregiving trajectories as long-term sequences and transitions that form distinctive trajectories. Caregiving trajectories can be defined by four distinct elements: (1) the sequencing of caregiving episodes, (2) the duration of caregiving episodes, (3) the timing of caregiving episodes and (4) the density or the speed at which caregiving episodes alternate. Because of this clear lack of information on caregiving trajectories, two research questions arise. First we want to know how caregiving trajectories occur based on the four distinct elements of trajectories (RQ1). Secondly, we want to know how different caregiving trajectories are distributed across our society (RQ2). To answer our research questions, this paper is devoted to empirically map the dynamics of informal caregiving trajectories. We will do this by using the longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we will conduct a sequence analysis of care trajectories over the life-course. Caregiving trajectories will be defined for caregivers over the period 2004-2020 based on the four distinct elements of caregiving trajectories: sequencing, duration, timing and density. Subsequently, we will perform a cluster analysis to identify patterns in these career trajectories. Only participants of countries that have participated in at least four waves will be used (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Slovenia). Only participants that have reported to have cared for someone in at least one wave are included in the study. Both care inside the household as care outside the household are taken account of.
  • Perceived Support and Job Search Barriers Among Unemployed Carers of Elderly or Disabled Relatives. .....Hugh Bainbridge, University of New South Wales; Lukas Hofstätter, Carers NSW; and Sarah Judd-Lam, Carers NSW
  • Many people of working age are also unpaid caregivers for an elderly or disabled relative. Extensive research has linked this caregiving role to withdrawal from the workforce. Caregiving demands may lessen over time though and returning to paid work is often a desirable individual, organisational, and policy goal. However, while job search is challenging for caregivers, little consideration has been given to the re-employment process. The current study moves to address this gap by examining the extent to which job seeker beliefs about societal recognition of a role that is central to their identity (caregiving) affect perceived barriers to employment. We then extend this by exploring how this effect occurs (whether the effect is mediated by social connections), and when this occurs (whether the effect is moderated by three forms of support). In a survey of job seekers with caregiving responsibilities, greater societal recognition of caregiving was associated with lower perceived job search barriers. This effect was mediated by social connectedness and moderated by support in the form of coaching and planned respite from caregiving. Job seekers who reported lower societal recognition of caregiving benefited most from coaching and planned respite from caregiving.
  • The Role of Culture in Senior Caregiving: Preliminary Analysis of Canadian National Surveys of the Care Economies in Context Project. .....Ito Peng, University of Toronto; and Pelin Gul, University of Toronto
  • It is now widely acknowledged that Canadian population is ageing, and it will continue to age over the next several decades. Today, people over the age of 65 make up 19% of the total population, up from 11% in 2000. This population is projected to increase to 26% by 2068, with those aged 85+ ageing faster than other 65+ subgroups. What is less well known is that today over 30% of Canadian seniors are foreign-born, as compared to 21% in the total population. As these seniors begin requiring care, the number and proportion of 1st and 2nd generation caregivers will also grow. Public support for long-term care is never more important now; yet families remain the main source of caregiving for Canadian seniors. Our surveys of unpaid family caregiving in Canada show families continue to provide much of senior care. Amongst 1st and 2nd generation caregivers, culture plays an important role in shaping their understanding of and perceptions about their caregiving roles, and who and how care should be provided to older people. Culture is used to justify the familial division of caregiving responsibilities. More specifically, men are more likely to justify the allocation of caregiving responsibilities based on cultural norms—and thus perpetuating the unequal roles of men and women in senior caregiving—while women frequently shoulder much of caregiving responsibilities, regardless of the need for such justification.
  • Household Headship, Filial Expectations and Mortality in Older Widows: Evidence from Panel Survey of India.. .....Babul Hossain, International Institute for Population Sciences
  • The presence of older widows is always symbolic of power for families in India. An older widow is in India correctly cared for and respected by their family, which implies the widow represents a good family. If a widow is left to manage independently, is not taken care of properly and is treated less respectfully, in other words, experiences a lack of filial responsibility, the older widow represents a bad family. Thus, in Indian culture, the household dynamics and familial aspects can be more relevant when discussing the well-being of older widows. In this context, this study investigates the relationship between household headship and mortality experiences for widowed women aged 45 and above in India. The study used the India Human Development Survey, a nationally representative panel survey. The results indicate that no excess mortality risk was observed for widows compared to married women, where widows or their sons were household heads. On the other hand, when the widows in households are headed by others (viz. brothers, sons-in-law, grandsons and extended family members), they experience heightened mortality risk than married women. Subsample analysis suggests that widow-heading households if they were expecting financial support from sons, had higher mortality than widows who did not expect financial support from sons. By adjusting for the endogeneity between household headship and economic status using an instrument variable regression model, the study confirms that older widows in households headed by others have double the mortality risk compared to widows heading households themselves.
26. Work-Family Experiences and Negotiations During the COVID-19 Pandemic [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.435

Presider: Melissa Milkie, University of Toronto
  • Lessons from the COVID 19 Pandemic: The Lingering Impact of a Reduction in Parental Self-Care Behaviors. .....Leslie Forde, Mom's Hierarchy of Needs; and Kelly Basile, Emmanuel College
  • The COVID-19 pandemic created significant challenges for working parents, particularly mothers, in terms of their ability to manage work and family roles (Hjálmsdóttir & Bjarnadóttir, 2021). A common by-product of increased challenges to work-family role management is a reduction in self-care among those with caring responsibilities for others (Coye et al., 2020). This study seeks to examine some of the challenges to self-care that have lingered despite the lifting of COVID restrictions and resumption of traditional services and resources. This study involves an ongoing survey of parents about their goals, behaviors and barriers related to self-care. Data has been collected from nine separate cohorts of participants since the survey began in March 2020. The use of time-based cohorts allows us to track trends in parents’ self-care behaviors during and post COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary results from the 3,280 participants suggest that parents continue to engage in self-care behaviors at a level that is lower than pre-pandemic behaviors. Further, results also suggests that within the past year, parents are more likely to report that they are doing ‘terribly’ or ‘not as well as usual’ in their role as a spouse or partner and in their role as a caregiver to themselves than they were during the first year of the pandemic. However, parents are also less likely to report that they are doing ‘terribly’ or ‘not as well as usual’ in their roles as partners or workers. Results suggest the importance of identifying ongoing barriers to self-care behaviors that have persisted beyond pandemic conditions.
  • More equal, more satisfied? Division of unpaid work and different-sex parents’ satisfaction with this division. .....Ilyar Heydari Barardehi, University of Warsaw; and Anna Kurowska, University of Warsaw
  • Overarching questions/concerns: We explore the relationship between the perceived division of childcare and housework tasks and the degree of satisfaction parents derive from this division. We examine linear as well as nonlinear relationships between unpaid work arrangements and satisfaction. This approach allows us to assess whether an equal division of unpaid labor is more satisfactory for partners than over-involvement or under-involvement in the unpaid sphere. We also examine whether it is more satisfactory for both genders. In this study we also investigate the moderating role of paid work engagement for studied relationships. Specifically, we seek to explore whether mothers' paid work hours moderate the relationship between unpaid work arrangements and satisfaction with these arrangements. Statement on data and methods: For our empirical analyses, we used the Familydemic Harmonized Dataset, a collaborative international project dedicated to exploring facets of family dynamics, gender roles, and work-related dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. This survey initiative encompassed substantial random samples, with a minimum of 2,000 respondents per country, consisting of parents with dependent children. Data collection occurred from June to September 2021 and spanned six nations: Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. To examine the association between the division of unpaid work and parents' satisfaction with their unpaid work arrangements, we employed regular Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions while incorporating country-level fixed effects. Given the hierarchical structure of our data, with individuals nested within countries, it was crucial to account for this structure appropriately. However, before proceeding, we conducted a preliminary analysis to assess the proportion of total variance attributable to differences between countries. We performed a straightforward Interclass Correlation (ICC) test, which indicated that the between-country variation was relatively small compared to the within-country variation (ICC = 0.005). Consequently, we focused on models that are suitable for capturing within-country variation. Our approach involved implementing a fixed-effect strategy that included country indicators, thereby allowing us to account for unobservable country-level factors. We also estimated alternative specifications where we estimated gender differences in satisfaction by interacting our key explanatory variables with the gender identifier. In order to explore the role of other moderators, we applied three-way interactions. In addition, a quadratic term of our scales was introduced into our regression models to test the hypotheses on the nonlinearity of studied relationships. Important findings: We show that satisfaction levels follow a nonlinear, reverse U-shaped pattern with perceived equity in the division of childcare tasks between partners. Both mothers and fathers are more satisfied with a more equal division of childcare compared to situations where they under-benefit or over-benefit. Interestingly, mothers who over-benefit in the division of housework display higher satisfaction levels than those with a relatively equal division, which may be due to the symbolic value of men's involvement in housework. Women's satisfaction is more significantly affected by perceived self-inequality in the division of unpaid labor than men's. Furthermore, only women's satisfaction is influenced by the intensity of engagement in paid work, which reflects the negative impact of a 'dual burden' on women's well-being. Lastly, women consistently report lower satisfaction levels with the division of childcare and housework tasks than men, which aligns with the persisting gendered patterns of unpaid work distribution. Implications for research: Our study's findings partially support to the equity theory, indicating that a relatively equal distribution of household responsibilities is associated with higher levels of satisfaction with unpaid labor among fathers. Nevertheless, gender emerges as a significant factor influencing satisfaction with household work divisions, particularly when analyzed together with involvement in paid work. Furthermore, the type of domestic work (childcare versus housework) matters because the division of unpaid tasks is related to satisfaction from this division. Our findings contribute to the literature on maternal well-being at home, emphasizing the adverse consequences of mothers' extensive involvement in domestic labor, particularly among employed ones. Given the persistent unequal distribution of responsibilities, the relatively higher satisfaction cost associated with under-benefiting inequality at home adds to the prevailing gender gap in life satisfaction experienced by working mothers in contemporary societies. It also emphasizes the necessity to incorporate gendered preferences into future theoretical and empirical investigations of the intrahousehold division of unpaid work. As a growing number of empirical and theoretical endeavors suggest, family scholars should embrace an integrated approach that acknowledges the interplay between socioeconomic equity considerations and gender complexities
  • The Contours of Emotional Gaps Between Mothers and Fathers: Deflecting Guilt During Pandemic Times. .....Melissa Milkie, University of Toronto; Laila Omar, Princeton University; and Casey Scheibling, University of Nevada, Reno
  • Parental guilt is an important social problem tied to fathers’ and especially mothers’ wellbeing. Although research suggests a guilt gap, with women feeling moral pressure to sacrifice work for family and meet very high standards, examining how parents deflect guilt to buffer other negative emotions and distress can extend knowledge of the contours of the gendered gap. Within a stress process framework, we analyze the construction and deflection of guilt with interview data from 150 American, Australian and Canadian parents in 2021. Results indicate 73% of mothers report some guilt compared to 42% of fathers. Parents utilize rich vocabularies of guilt in maintaining a “good parent” identity. Many mothers (and a few fathers) seem unable to deflect feelings of inadequacy, describing guilt as the “fabric of life” of parenting. Mothers’ descriptions of “mom guilt” include both relief and humor but also foretell relentless pressure. Yet parents also discursively deflect guilt in three notable ways. First, some parents effectively deflect guilt to narrow channels of activity or isolated spheres of emotion. Second, parents of both genders, but especially fathers, are able to thwart some negative emotions from guilt through deflection to macro causes like the pandemic. Third, fathers articulate connected deflection by emphasizing guilt as a shared experience with their partners, potentially minimizing negative emotion. We discuss how the gendered nature of work and family ideologies link to the differential power to deflect guilt, leaving many mothers to contend psychologically with responsibilities across a broad array of family and child problems.
  • Revisiting Gender Inequality in Housework during the Pandemic 2019-2022. .....Haoming Song, Case Western Reserve University
  • Overarching questions: How did the gender inequality in housework change during the pandemic? An emerging line of work documents the gendered consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but studies on housework division are limited. Most of them focused on parents in 2019 and 2020 and showed inconsistent results. In this study, I use high quality data to adjudicate existing evidence and call for specific attention to childless couples and longer time trends. Statement on methods: Using nationally representative time diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), I examine total, routine, and non-routine housework among different-sex dual-earner couples from 2019 to 2022. Important findings: My population-level estimates echoed prior studies to show an overall increase in housework time across gender and parental status in 2020. Two new findings emerged. 1) from 2019 to 2020, only among childless couples but not parents were changes in gender housework gap statistically significant and sizable. Specifically, childless women contributed more total and routine housework than male counterparts, exacerbating the gap by over thirty minutes daily. 2) such trends were relatively short-term and reversed in 2021 and 2022. Implications: The study highlights the power of gender in guiding housework division particularly among childless couples and indicates parents’ potential prioritization of childcare at chaotic times. Broadly, it informs future studies on using high-quality data to intentionally incorporate family diversity into studying the gendered and unequal consequences of disruptive events in the long term.
  • Relationship Between the Work-Family Interface, Gender Role Ideology, Household Chores and Organizational Citizenship Behavior During Covid.. .....Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, Governors State University; Zeynep Aycan, Koc University; Feldt Taru, University of Jyväskylä; Rantanen Johanna, University of Jyväskylä; Dilem Cinli, Koc University; Meryem Seyda Zayim, Koc University; and Ayse Burcin Baskurt, University of East London
  • Current COVID-19 studies suggest that the pandemic particularly negatively affected women in terms of work-family balance. We advance this research line by examining how conservative gender ideology (CGRI) is related to this phenomenon by utilizing a pan cultural perspective as opposed to a more commonly used cross-cultural perspective. The 2022 Global Gender Gap Index ranks Turkey 133rd, UK 30th, US 23rd and Finland 2nd out of 156 countries. This increased the variance in CGRI in our data (n = 819 working parents, 60% women) which was collected during COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 via one time point e-surveys in these four countries (Turkish participants representing 32% of the whole sample and US, UK, and Finnish participants 32%, 18% and 18%, respectively). More precisely, we investigated how CGRI, time spent on household chores, work-to-family and family-to-work conflicts (WFC, FWC), work-family balance (WFB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) were linked to each other. Structural equation model (SEM) analyses showed that among both genders high CGRI was linked to higher time spent on household chores which was further linked to high OCB via high WFB. Instead, only among women high CGRI was linked to higher time spent on household chores which was further linked to high OCB via low WFC. These findings seem to suggest that high CGRI and involvement in household chores, possibly both reflecting strong family values, were assets for working parents during COVID-19 pandemic conditions forcing them into very intensive reconciliation of remote work and household chores (e.g., due to 24/7 childcare).
27. Precarious Work, Gigs, and Entrepreneurship [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 2.445

Presider: Jeffrey Dixon, College of the Holy Cross
  • The Precarity of Part-Time Work? Examining Multiple Dimensions of Job Quality for Women and Men in the U.S., 2002-2018. .....Jeffrey Dixon, College of the Holy Cross; and Andrew Fullerton, Oklahoma State University
  • Overarching questions/concerns: Literature on “precarious work” has increasingly adopted the view that part-time work is not necessarily of poorer quality than full-time work, with some arguing that part-time work may be of higher quality than full-time work on selected dimensions of job quality. Whether such a view is empirically justified—and if so, for whom—is a matter of debate, as extant research in the US has examined few dimensions of precarity, yielded conflicting findings, and little accounted for traditional gender roles and women’s over-representation as part-time workers. The present study addresses this debate and contributes to literature on precarious work, job quality, and gender by examining the relationship between part-time work and precarity, using more indicators of job quality than prior research and disaggregating the analyses by sex category. Statement on methods: We use ordinal logistic, logistic, and OLS models of General Social Survey (GSS) data for selected years between 2002 and 2018, examining such dimensions of precarity/job quality as job insecurity (perceptions of job loss), labor market insecurity (perceptions of not being able to find a comparable job), autonomy, promotion and training opportunities, economic security, income, and satisfaction with fringe benefits. Important findings: • The preliminary results indicate part-time work is consistently and negatively associated with perceived promotion opportunities, economic security, income, and satisfaction with benefits. • The findings of other dimensions of job quality, such as job insecurity, autonomy, and scheduling flexibility, are generally more variable across job quality indicators, part-time work measures, and sex category. • Among the aforementioned dimensions of job quality, however, part-time workers are more likely to report they are able to take “time off during [their] work to take care of personal or family matters,” regardless of sex category. Implications for research, policy, or practice: The sum total of our preliminary findings paint a more nuanced picture of part-time work in the US with implications for workers’ work-life interface.
  • Work-Life Balance for Solopreneurs. .....Veronica Freitas de Paula, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia; and Vérica Freitas, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
  • What are the main criteria for choosing a job? If you are an entrepreneur, would you consider your family before making decisions regarding business growth? Do these decisions change if the person is a man or a woman? This article reflects on changes in the career choices of male entrepreneurs living in Finland and the impact of family time on their decisions regarding starting a business or changing careers. Factors such as nationality, age, and place of residence are considered when comparing different cases of entrepreneurs. We also analyzed the possible interference of local and regional policies, as gender equality might be closer in some areas than others. Through interviews for data collection, it was possible to identify some crucial information regarding these entrepreneurs’ paths and decisions in their professional lives. The interviews aimed to determine business growth in the initial stages of company development, but despite not being listed as a possible factor, work-life balance was frequently mentioned. This recurring aspect prompted the reflection on the differences that might be perceived between the Global North and South.
  • Gendering the Gig Economy: How Women and Men Make it Work on Digital Platforms. .....Brendan Churchill, University of Melbourne
  • The labour market rarely ‘works’ for women in the same way that it does for men. Women are more likely to find themselves in poor-quality jobs, poorer working conditions and consequently, poorer pay than men. Some women turn to self-employment to overcome this because it offers flexibility and greater control over their work schedules. It is thus no surprise that some women are turning to digital platforms for work because like owning one’s own business, platform work offers flexibility and schedule control, which for many women seems like a better way of obtaining greater work-life balance. This reflects that digital platforms like Uber and Airtasker sell themselves to prospective workers as flexibility havens. This research paper looks at how the gig economy is gendered and whether the gig economy ‘works’ for women in a way that the traditional labour market does not. Drawing on survey data from the Making it Work in the Gig Economy (2020-2023) project as well as in-depth qualitative interviews (n=40, this research paper examines the experiences of women (and men) in the gig economy. The findings suggest that women benefit from having greater autonomy and flexibility over their working lives, particularly their schedules, but the gig economy does not deliver in other aspects, such as pay and remuneration or better work-life balance. Moreover, they encounter significant stress in looking for and securing work, which impacts their time with partners and children. These findings are discussed concerning current attempts to regulate the gig economy.
  • “Moral Work” of Precarious Workers-Caregivers in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic. .....Radka Dudová, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences; and Hana Hašková, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Due to the familialist orientation of welfare state policies and low work flexibility, parenthood in the CR has a larger negative impact on women’s employment than in other EU countries, and women are viewed as primary caregivers and secondary earners. Persons with care commitments rely relatively often on non-standard forms of employment (NSFE) in order to combine paid and unpaid work. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a risk that impacted especially those in precarious employment (characterised by low pay, insufficient and variable hours, short-term contracts and limited social protection rights), mixing labour market contraction and instability, economic crisis, health crisis and care crisis. This paper explores how caregivers make sense of their precarious employment situation and how it, according to their narratives, reflects in their caregiving. Based on qualitative research of caregivers - parents of young children and persons providing care to their elderly relatives - during and soon after the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic, we develop the concept of “precarious parents – precarious caregivers” and we study the forms of “moral work” caregivers in precarious work conditions employ in order to make sense of their experience. In an attempt to reconstruct their subjective stability and positive self-image, the participants in the interviews tried to redefine their situation in such a way as to turn the moral meanings of precarious work to their advantage or at least to minimize their negative content. This reconstruction of the self then led to their further precarization.
  • Fragmented Employer Liability and Challenges to the Equitable Implementation of Fair Workweek Laws: The Case of Franchise Ownership. .....Hyojin Cho, University of Chicago; and Susan Lambert, University of Chicago
  • Many low-wage workers are employed in retail and food service industries, which are known for employers’ widespread use of precarious scheduling practices, such as posting the schedule with short notice, making last-minute changes once posted, and varying the number and timing of hours week to week. To address these issues, several municipalities in the US, including San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and the state of Oregon, have enacted Fair Workweek Laws (FWLs). These laws are intended to establish new labor standards that regulate precarious scheduling practices by requiring employers to provide greater schedule predictability and access to work hours for their low-paid employees. However, the high prevalence of franchising ownership in retail and food service sectors is likely to challenge the implementation of FWLs. Studies show that franchises are more likely to violate labor standards due to limited resources and weaker compliance incentives compared to corporate-owned businesses (Ji & Weil, 2015). Drawing on in-depth interviews with frontline managers in worksites covered by Seattle and Chicago’s FWLs, we compare the extent to which managers’ practices align with FWL provisions between franchise and corporate-owned businesses, examining factors that may contribute to ownership-based divergence in the implementation process of FWLs. Additionally, we unpack variation among franchises to identify the conditions under which franchises are able to align their practices with FWL provisions. Franchising's rapid growth in low-wage service industries is a global trend. Our study aims to provide policy and practice insights to effectively implement labor standards protecting low-paid workers.
28. Class, Gender, and Race: Privilege and Stratification in Work-Life Experiences [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.210

Presider: Marie-Hélène Budworth, York University
  • Work-Life Balance, But For Who: Examining the Construct Through the Lens of Privilege. .....Marie-Hélène Budworth, York University; and Huda Masood, Sam Houston State University
  • Changes to the nature of work have altered how work and family are experienced. A key driver of this shift being the identification of essential and non-essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic (van Zoonen & Hoeven, 2021). As a result, the early 2020s created a divide between those who have an option to work from home and those who do not. In general, flexibility is available to those who are in a “privileged labour market position” (Felstead, Jewson, Phizacklea, & Walters, 2002, p.214). Although the pandemic has ended, hybrid work arrangements persist, revolutionizing the structure of the workforce globally. This change raises important scholarly questions about who has access to work-life balance. The purpose of this paper is to advance theory by applying a critical lens in understanding the role of “privilege” as it relates to the work-life interface (Shuck et al., 2016). This work examines the following questions: (a) How is the concept of work-life balance experienced differently by those who have choice or flexibility in how the work is organized versus those who do not? (b) How has this concept evolved relative to the context created in recent years? (c) Who is disadvantaged due to the work-from-home arrangements? How? and (d) Who benefits from such an arrangement? How? The aim of this research is to support a critical dialogue on what it means to maintain a balance between work and life domains in today’s world.
  • Can Workplace Inclusion Close Racial and Ethnic Gaps in Work-Family Spillover?. .....Ipshita Pal, St. John's University; Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute; and Stacy Kim, Life Junctions
  • Work-life scholars and practitioners have consistently found organizational practices, formal and informal, are linked to employees’ work-life spillover. However, few studies have examined whether such practices have similar consequences across ethnoracial groups—an important gap—given differences in relevant demands and resources, both work-related (such as, access to benefits, interpersonal relationships, and social exclusion) and nonwork-related (such as household division of labor, caregiving responsibilities and kin support). In this study, using a diverse nationally representative sample of U.S.-based employees from the 2016 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 1489), we examine ethnoracial differences in work-life spillover and its association with workplace inclusion, a set of relational practices that make employees feel accepted, valued, supported, and involved, through workgroup support and belongingness, a culture of respect and trust, participatory decision-making, and a whole-employee approach. Using logistic regression models, adjusted for demographic, socio-economic and occupational characteristics, we estimate and compare probabilities of spillover between white and non-white employees over the distribution of inclusion scores. We find work-to-family spillover is high for both groups and negatively associated with workplace inclusion, but ethnorcial differences are not significant; however, while family-to-work spillover is also high; it is significantly negatively associated with workplace inclusion only for non-white employees. Overall, the ethnoracial difference in work-family spillover is significantly smaller in more inclusive workplaces. Our findings provide new evidence on the role of employer practices in shaping work-family outcomes and indicate that they may be more consequential for non-white employees.
  • An (Un)necessary Separation from Families? The Case of Migrant Farmworkers in Canada. .....Jill Hanley, McGill University; Guillermo Ventura Sanchez, Concordia University; and Pankil Goswami, McGill University
  • The experience of migration for temporary foreign workers in Canada provides novel perspectives in understanding critical issues of work and family studies. Focusing on the injured migrant farmworkers in Quebec and Ontario, the research studies throw light on how injured migrant farmworkers survive in alien and challenging conditions in Canada and experience radical changes in living and working without their family. Precarious conditions of work aided by exploitative employers and lack of family care and support in cases of work injury amplifies the need to better respond to challenges that arise for these workers. The initial findings point out the need for family to be accompanied by workers while they venture out on this long treacherous path to work on Canadian farmlands. However, the design of the program for temporary foreign workers working in agriculture makes it more difficult to bring families points out to the larger theme of bordering practices for temporary workers. The current study tries to provide new contributions in the field of work and family studies and the transitions that families experience from the perspective of migrant farmworkers in Canada. The study also brings forward the issue of migration of workers from the global south within the realm of family and work studies.
  • When Multiple Oppressions Intersect: Breastfeeding and Muslim South African Mothers in the Workplace. .....Feranaaz Farista, University of Cape Town; and Ameeta Jaga, University of Cape Town
  • Overarching questions/concerns 1. What are Muslim mothers' breastfeeding experiences and decisions during maternity leave and in anticipating their return to work? 2. How do their intersecting social identities within interpersonal contexts, organisational practices, and wider societal processes affect these experiences and decisions? Statement on methods Data from 36, one-on-one, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Muslim mothers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa were thematically analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step guide. Important findings 1. Embodied Motherhood: Navigating Modesty and Taboos, delves into the complexities of maternal identity within societal and religious frameworks, exploring issues such as breastfeeding, Islamic modesty, and the abject maternal body. 2. Maternal Paradox: Tradition and Modern Realities, delves into the dual challenges faced by modern mothers, balancing Islamic-specific motherhood expectations with contemporary pressures such as returning to work amidst economic constraints and family disapproval. It will explore the complexities of fulfilling Islamic duties while navigating the demands of modern life. 3. Maternal Mental Load, explores how workplace support affects mothers' mental health, balancing motherhood with employment, addressing postpartum depression risks, and the challenges and benefits of flexible work arrangements. Implications for research, policy and/or practice Our research offers nuanced contributions to understanding the experiences of Muslim mothers from the global South. By departing from predominantly Eurocentric perspectives, we enrich the literature with empirical insights, challenging universalising narratives that overlook cultural diversity. Additionally, we interrogate epistemological assumptions about maternal subjectivity, highlighting the necessity of considering diverse cultural contexts. Through a feminist, intersectional lens, our study serves as an epistemic intervention, deconstructing existing hegemonic norms and revealing hidden biases. This approach deepens our understanding of maternal experiences and prevents the homogenisation of Muslim mothers. Furthermore, integrating transnational psychology with intersectionality sheds light on the complex identity dilemmas and decisions confronted by Muslim mothers during their maternity leave. Our recommendations emphasise the necessity of culturally sensitive, family-friendly policies to support lactating Muslim mothers, fostering greater inclusivity of diverse women in the workplace.
29. Health and Well-Being in the Work-Family Context [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.265

Presider: Stefania Molina, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin / Humboldt University of Berli
  • "Betwixt and Between": How Liminal Experience Facilitates Work Recovery and Well-Being. .....Soo Min Toh, University of Toronto - Rotman School; and Xue Xiang, University of Toronto - Rotman School
  • The trend toward remote work raises critical questions for work and family researchers. As the boundaries between work and personal life blur, the role of liminal activities comes into the spotlight. With its roots in anthropology, the construct of liminality refers to the suspension of "ordinary social structures" (Johnsen & Sorensen, 2015, p. 321), such as the social roles individuals perform in their work and family lives. Individuals can enter this state of liminality by performing liminal activities that are not part of their social role requirements (e.g., exercising, commuting) to facilitate psychological role transitioning and recovery from work (e.g., McAlpine & Piszczek, 2022). Building on resource theories (Hobfoll, 1998), our ongoing empirical study identifies mechanisms that may hinder individuals from entering this liminal state and reaping associated recovery benefits. Central to our investigation is the role of reflection in liminal experiences (Beech, 2011). We posit that while positive self-reflection can amplify the benefits of liminality, rumination might serve as a deterrent. Additionally, we posit that individuals’ positive and negative affect play a key role in the liminal experience such that entering into the liminal space with high negative affect prevents individuals from realizing the benefits of liminality. Furthermore, we investigate the roles of conformity and varying levels of collectivism in the experience of liminality, determining if they serve as facilitators or barriers. This research advances our understanding of evolving work-life dynamics and resource recovery strategies and has implications for managing work boundaries, especially in the digital age.
  • Divorce and Mental Health: Analysis at the Intersection of Age, Gender, and Income. .....Stefania Molina, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin / Humboldt University of Berli; Enrique Alonso-Perez, Charité Berlin; and Michaela Kreyenfeld, Hertie School
  • This paper examines how divorce relates to mental health, and how this association is stratified by gender, age, and individual income. Data is drawn from German register data, which includes marital histories of divorcees and diagnosed health outcomes. The analytical sample includes persons aged 30-59 in 2015 (n=23,426,639). We employ a Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA), a method considered to operationalize intersectionality in quantitative research, to compare the patterns of the newly divorced (divorced for less than four years) to the patterns of the never divorced. The outcome variable is the annual incidence of mental disease diagnosis. With this approach, we aim to identify high-risk populations along the age-gender-income spectrum. Findings: - Compared to the never divorced, we find a very strong age gradient among newly divorced women. - While age seems to be a general risk factor, the small group of women with a very high income face a relatively low risk of receiving a mental disease diagnosis. - Among men, older and low-income males are at particularly high risk of being diagnosed with a mental disease. Divorced low-income men ages 40-59 are an explicitly high-risk group. This group deserves more attention in the analysis of the effects of divorce, given their highly elevated risk profile. Moreover, the findings may suggest that the negative effects of gray divorce on women's mental health may be mitigated as women become more integrated into the labor market.
  • The influence of demands and resources in work and domestic domains on return to work. .....Maaike de Jong, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / UMCG; Tialda Hoekstra, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen/UMCG; Nicole Snippen, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / UMCG; Haitze de Vries, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / UMCG; Jolanda Schreuder, Schreuderarbo; Sandra Brouwer, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / UMCG; and Corné Roelen, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / UMCG / Arbo Unie
  • Overarching questions/concerns Due to changes in both work and domestic environment within the past decades, employees find themselves struggling to balance the competing demands of work and domestic life more and more. This struggle had adverse effect on workrelated outcomes, such as sickness absence and return to work. To date, research in the field of occupational health mainly focuses on the influence of work demands and resources on work outcomes, showing that higher demanding jobs and lack of social support are associated with unfavorable work outcomes. The influence of domestic demands and resources, (i.e. household tasks and care for elderly) on work outcomes has hardly been investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the association between demands and resources in both the work and domestic domain on return to work. Statement on methods This prospective study with 2-year follow-up used survey and sick-leave registry data from a longitudinal cohort study among sick-listed employees of a large occupational health service in the Netherlands. Participants were asked to fill in the questionnaire in the first 6 weeks of their medical sick leave. A 2-year follow-up was used, because in the Netherlands employers are responsible for return to work for 2 years after an employee reports sick. During this 2 year period employers and employees are advised by an occupational physician. The outcome measure of this study was return to work after 2 years. The validated Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) was used to measure work demands and resources. Work demands were measured by three scales: quantitative demands, emotional demands and cognitive demands. Work resources were measured by two scales: social support at work and influence at work. As no validated questionnaire is available to measure domestic demands and resources, the COPSOQ scales were adjusted to conceptually mirror the original questionnaire to fit the domestic domain. Statistical analyses were conducted by logistic regression analysis. Important findings • A total of 120 employees were included (44% female, mean age 52.4 (SD 10.8)). • Stratified by self-reported diagnosis, 66 participants called in sick because of a somatic cause, 26 participants had a mental cause and 25 participants had a mixed (both somatic and mental) sickness absence cause. • Work resources were significantly associated with return to work, but only in sickness absence due to mental causes. In this group, participants with higher perceives scores for work resources, were less likely to return to work (OR 0.904 [0.831-0.982], p=0.017). • No significant associations were found between work demands, domestic demands and domestic resources and return to work. Implications for research, policy and/or practice In this study, it was shown that work resources negatively influence return to work in participants on sick leave for mental reasons. No other significant findings were found, which might be due to the limited study sample. More research is needed to examine the relationship of demands and resources in the work and domestic domains and work outcomes in larger samples and with validated instruments. In further research it might also be interesting to focus on more longitudinal data, as demands and resources in the work and domestic domain might change over time.
  • Connecting After Hours: A Multilevel Analysis of How Off-Clock Work Affects Psychological Detachment and Emotional Exhaustion. .....Kristine Lescoeur, OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University; Vilde Hoff Bernstrøm, OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University; Jan Malte Runge, Oslo Metropolitan University; and Wendy Nilsen, Work Research Institute OsloMet
  • This study examines the role of psychological detachment in explaining the relationship between staying connected to work during nonwork time and emotional exhaustion, using a longitudinal approach. Drawing on the stressor-detachment model, we test a mediation model in which after-hour connectivity is positively related to emotional exhaustion via psychological detachment, both within and between persons. We used longitudinal data from an online panel survey with four measurements, separated by six months, between 2021 and 2022. Our analytical sample included 3192 Norwegian employees (49% female, mean age=47 (SD=11.2)). Overall, the results from multilevel analyses supported our hypothesized model. Our findings showed that: • After-hour connectivity was positively related to emotional exhaustion via psychological detachment. • Within persons, periods of higher after-hour connectivity were related to lower psychological detachment and higher emotional exhaustion. • Between persons, respondents who were generally more connected after workhours, had lower psychological detachment and in turn higher emotional exhaustion. • Analyses of emergent effects revealed that the strength of the paths in the model were stronger between persons than within persons. Expanding on previous research, our findings show the importance of detaching from work during nonwork time for employees’ wellbeing. The implications of these findings suggest that employees can benefit from disconnecting at times when it is not strictly necessary to be working after workhours.
  • Communion Job Demands/Resources and Well-being: Unpacking the Mediating Role of Work-Family Conflict Across the Lifespan. .....Miriam Dishon-Berkovits, Ono Academic College; Egidio Riva, University of Milano-Bicocca; and Mario Lucchini, University of Milano-Bicocca
  • In this study, we delve into the fundamental human desire for interpersonal closeness and connection in the workplace, exploring its potential impact on reducing work-family conflict (WFC) and subsequently enhancing overall well-being. Drawing on job demands-resources (J-DR) and self-determination (SDT) theories, we investigate how the influence of communion job resources (specifically, employee involvement and supportive leadership) and job hindrance demands (particularly, surface acting) varies across different stages of the life course. Our focus lies on three critical dimensions of employee well-being: mental health, sleep quality, and work engagement. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey encompassing 35,377 employees across 35 countries, we uncover noteworthy findings. Communion job resources were found to be linked with reduced WFC, which, in turn, correlates with improved overall well-being. Conversely, communion job hindrance demands are associated with heightened WFC, subsequently leading to diminished well-being outcomes. Notably, these findings hold significance for both men and women across various age groups, with a more pronounced effect observed among women aged 50 and above. The implications of these findings shed light on the importance of fostering interpersonal connections and support in the workplace, not only for reducing work-family conflict but also for promoting employee well-being. This study provides valuable insights for organizations and policymakers seeking to create healthier and more fulfilling work environments for their diverse workforce.
30. Women's Economic Decision Making [Paper Session]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.270

Presider: Chiung-Wen Tsao, National University of Tainan
  • Women’s work-related decision making and implications for economic well-being: Evidence from India. .....Vedavati Patwardhan, University of California, San Diego; Katherine Hay, University of California, San Diego; Anita Raj, Tulane University; Apoorva Nambiar, International Institute for Population Sciences; Shruti Ambast, University of California, San Diego; Abhishek Singh, International Institute for Population Sciences; and Lotus McDougal, University of California, San Diego
  • OVERARCHING QUESTIONS / CONCERNS Worldwide, women participate in the workforce at lower rates than men. At 32%, female labor force participation (FLFP) in India indicates not only a female-male gap, but is also much lower than the global average of 50% (ILO, 2023). Regardless of women’s work status, men are more likely to make household financial decisions, both in India (Maxwell & Vaishnav, 2021; Steinert et al., 2023) and other geographical contexts (Munoz Boudet et al., 2013; Anderson et al., 2017; Njuki et al., 2019). Women retain little control over the ability to decide how money is used, whether for savings, investments, or consumption. Our paper aims to advance the literature on factors affecting women’s economic inclusion in India, particularly the role of female agency. A commonly used indicator of women’s agency is participation in household decision making. Decision making related to work likely plays an important role in shaping women’s propensity to work and financial autonomy, however, few empirical analyses have examined these relationships. Nationally representative surveys measure decision making as women’s agency over economic decisions such as spending on food, large household purchases, health care, social decisions such as children’s education and marriage, and mobility. Measures of work-related decision making are absent, and correspondingly, literature on the relationship between women’s decision to work and their propensity to work and control money is scant. Qualitative research from India (Steinert et. al, 2023) shows that women have very limited say in the decision to work as well as in financial decisions, including control over their own income and savings. Understanding these issues empirically must be prioritized, given that expansion of policies and programs designed to increase women’s workforce participation in India has had limited success in improving FLFP (Fletcher et al., 2017; Klasen, 2019). This study is designed to fill this conceptual and methodological gap in the literature by examining women’s decision making related to work and its association with women’s economic well-being outcomes, using new survey evidence from India. Here, we define decision-making via an assessment of who has final say over the woman’s decision to work (husband, wife, or both). STATEMENT ON METHODS Developed by the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH) at the University of California, San Diego, in partnership with the International Institute for Population Sciences and with advisement from UN Women, the survey sampled 6634 households in three states and is representative at the state level. Our study sample includes 2786 married women across the three states (956 women in Bihar, 966 women in Uttar Pradesh, 864 women in Maharashtra). These are the three most populous states in India, collectively accounting for around 35% of the national population. The primary outcomes of interest — women’s participation in paid work, control over personal income, household finances, savings, and remittances —were assessed using binary measures. We use logistic regressions to estimate the associations between women’s decision making about work and paid employment, control over personal income, household finances, savings and remittances in each state. We employ an inverse probability weighting (IPW) approach to account for differences in women’s observable characteristics and the probability of having decision making power. As a robustness check, we use a partial identification method (Oster, 2019) to calculate bounding values for co-efficients, and also demonstrate that our results are robust to using linear probability models. IMPORTANT FINDINGS •In all three states, we find a positive relationship between women’s sole and joint decision making agency related to work and their economic outcomes. •Sole decision making about work: Compared to those with no decision making agency, married women who were sole decision makers were 15, 12, and 36 percentage points (pp.) more likely to have engaged in paid employment in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, respectively. Women who were sole decision makers about their work were also 40 percentage points and 20 percentage points more likely to have control over household finances in Maharashtra and Bihar, respectively. •Joint decision making about work: Women in Maharashtra who reported joint decision making with their spouse were 24 percentage points more likely to have ever worked, compared to those whose spouses made the final decision. We did not observe this positive association between joint decision making and the probability of women’s employment in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. However, women who were joint decision makers were 11 pp., 13 pp., and 32 pp. more likely to have control over money in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, respectively, relative to those whose spouse was the final decision maker. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH, POLICY AND/OR PRACTICE Our study highlights the importance of women’s agency for economic inclusion, with the goal of guiding policy solutions that more directly consider women’s agency and norms. Through a new survey measure of economic agency that includes both sole and joint decision making about work, our paper broadens the conceptualization of women’s agency in the existing literature. Overall, our findings suggest that a programmatic focus on intrahousehold factors is necessary and is an important complement to other approaches to improve women’s economic participation and agency. Research on programs involving men in women’s economic programs, for example by increasing information about women’s work opportunities, is not promising (Lowe & Mckelway, 2021; Dean & Jayachandran, 2019), but should continue to be monitored for insight. Interventions that raise women’s aspirations to work also hold promise (Ahmed et al., 2023; McKelway, 2023; Orkin et al., 2023), as do community-based initiatives such as self-help groups, co-operatives and village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) that help change norms around women earning and controlling income (Britt, 2022).
  • Ill Matched or Right for Each Other? An Exploration of Copreneurial Ventures, Family Dynamic, and Firm Performance. .....Chiung-Wen Tsao, National University of Tainan
  • The number of copreneurial ventures (couple-owned businesses) is on the increase, however, little is known of the factors that influence the success of this type of family business. Wives have traditionally played many subtle roles in family firms: spouse, parent, in-law, and family leader. And most importantly, they play the role of care givers for the peace and harmony in the family and in the firm. Wives’ involvement is critical and substantial in both family and business spheres, however, a consideration of the potential effects of wives’ involvement in family business is largely absent from the general family business research literature. The decision to launch a business should depend not only on analysis of the opportunity, but also on the degrees to which one's spouse shares a common vision about the goals, risks, and rewards of the business. This research draws upon resource-based view (RBV) and family capital perspectives in order to identify the various facets of wives’ involvements in copreneurial ventures, and aims to extend our understanding of the involvement of wives that predict the family dynamic and success of couple-owned businesses. This study employed the multiple-case study interview and documentary data to capture the thought and behavior of the co-entrepreneurial couples from five successful Taiwanese family businesses. A conceptual framework and related propositions were developed, which provides a practical tool for understanding the various facets of wives’ involvements and their impact on both family dynamic, and firm performance of copreneurial ventures.
  • The Feminization of Freedom: An Analysis of Love, Happiness and Freedom From the Perspective of Single, Never-Married, Childfree Women of Color. .....Kimberly Martinez Phillips, Memorial University
  • This article addresses singleness as a state of being and not a transition for single, never-married, voluntarily childfree women of color. As the characterization of adult romantic relationships has evolved, the meaning of singleness has also gone through a transformation. My research applies the theoretical frameworks of feminist standpoint theory and decolonial feminism through an intersectional lens to explain how women of color experience love and relationships in a non-traditional way, and how they create a singular corridor that allows them to exist on the boundaries of heteronormative marriage and romantic love. I examine two research questions: 1) How do never-married, voluntarily childfree women of color experience and feel about romantic love, singleness, sex, and attachments in society? and 2) how do their experiences within these contexts construct a sense of self? My study utilized a qualitative research methodology with an inductive inquiry approach. I conducted forty semi-structured interviews with women between 36 and 61 years old. I argue that these women have a unique positionality in society. They are women who have remained free from the heteronormative obligations to a husband or children, and they are also women who have not had the privileges of some of their white counterparts. Therefore, they have a group-based experience and knowledge that is rooted in group identity.
31. Exploring Family Wellbeing Through the Lens of Family Work: Job Characteristics and Inequalities in Diverse Families in Canada [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.430

Organizers: Sophie Mathieu, Vanier Institute of the Family; Margo Hilbrecht, Vanier Institute of the Family;
Presiders: Sophie Mathieu, Vanier Institute of the Family; Margo Hilbrecht, Vanier Institute of the Family;

Panelists:
  • Heidi Cramm, Queens University;
  • Kim de Laat, Waterloo University;
  • Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay, TELUQ University;
32. The Future of Fatherhood [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.435

Organizer: Richard Petts, Ball State University
Presider: Richard Petts, Ball State University

Panelists:
  • Marc Grau Grau, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya;
  • Brad Harrington, Boston College - Center for Work & Family;
  • Jasmine Kelland, University of Plymouth;
  • Margaret O'Brien, Univ of London;
  • Fatima Suarez, University of Nevada, Las Vegas;
33. Work-Life Boundary Management in a Technology-Driven Work Era: Enablers of Performance and Well-Being (sponsored by the WFRN special interest group for 'Work, Family and Technology') [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB 3.445

Organizers: Kaumudi Misra, California State University, East Bay; Angela Grotto, Montclair State University;
  • Effective Boundary Control and Equality Outcomes: Moving to the Future. .....Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University
  • Work is becoming more digitalized and intensified, due to rising connectivity. This is changing boundaries between work and personal life, causing employees and organizations to experience boundary control tensions. One strategy organizations are implementing involves experimenting with redesigning work to allow more flexibility. Employees are also seeking new boundary management strategies. Unfortunately, flexible work means different things to different people in different job contexts across job levels (workers, managers), creating challenges for research and practice. To advance alignment, I suggest conceptualizing flexibility policies as a means to have different forms of control over the work role boundary. I encourage researchers to effectively measure the mixed consequences of the differential availability and use of flexibility and its varying boundary control challenges for different workers across occupations, gender, and cultures. I argue that the ability to have control over the work and nonwork boundary is a rising form of job inequality. In particular, virtuality is a double-edged sword for women, which I illustrate with results from intervention studies. The first study is on the flexstyle leadership training assessment of boundary management styles, i.e., the varied strategies individuals prefer to manage work-life boundaries. Individuals can be clustered into separators, integrators, and cyclers who vary in boundary control and identity alignment, and work/nonwork outcomes. (Kossek, 2016; Kossek & Lautsch, 2008, 2012). I also share results from recent studies on professionals, drawing on STEM faculty samples and focusing on the gendered consequences of disrupted boundaries, and conclude with future research directions.
  • How and When TASW-Fairness Influence Personal Initiative and Work Withdrawal: The Role of Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. .....Sunjin Pak, California State University, Bakersfield; Amit Kramer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaig; and Boreum Ju, California State University, Bakersfield
  • Employees increasingly conduct supplemental work outside the work domain using information and communication technologies, such as laptops, smartphones, or other mobile devices. This work is not covered by a formal contract or being directly compensated. While different studies have addressed technology-assisted supplemental work (TASW) using fairness-related research questions, very limited work addressed this theoretically, grouping these questions under the overarching “fairness” framework. To address this, we propose the concept of TASW-fairness and use conservation of resources theory to examine the relationship of TASW-fairness with two resources-investment strategies: acquiring new resources (personal initiative behaviors) and conserving resources reserves (work withdrawal behaviors). We also examine whether energy mediates these relationships. We collected a sample of 728 U.S. employees and found support for the mediation hypotheses. When employees perceive TASW as fair (unfair), they report higher (lower) energy levels and are thus likely to conduct personal initiative (work withdrawal) behaviors. As individual differences may alter the relationship between perceived fairness and energy, we test a moderated-mediation model with conscientiousness and neuroticism as moderators of the indirect relationships of TASW-fairness with personal initiative and work withdrawal behaviors. We find that among highly conscientious employees, the relationship between TASW-fairness and personal initiative is more pronounced, and the link between TASW-fairness and work withdrawal behavior diminishes.
  • A Qualitative Study of Cross-Cultural Differences in Manager Experiences With After-Hours Interruptions From Work. .....Angela Grotto, Montclair State University; Kaumudi Misra, California State University, East Bay; and Ronit Waismel-Manor, The Open University, Israel
  • Role theory suggests that culture shapes identification with work and nonwork roles; such differences may shape experiences with after-hour interruptions from work and tactics for establishing boundaries. Yet, cross-cultural differences remain largely unexplored in the boundary management literature. Boundary management research also rarely focuses on managers or has not distinguished the experiences of managers from employees. Yet, the manager experience is likely unique, given power differences and their responsibility to set interruption norms for their team members while adhering to their bosses’ norms. Consequently, there is a lack of understanding of the tactics that managers use to establish and communicate boundaries. This qualitative study is part of a larger study in which we examine cross-cultural differences in manager experiences with after-hour interruptions from work. Interviews with managers from Israel and India revealed differences in role identification, expectations and thresholds for interruptions, responses to interruptions, and boundary management tactics (for themselves and their employees). Additionally, themes of power and gender emerged in relation to boundary setting and communication. Since power distance and gender differentiation vary across cultures and are relevant in workplace interactions, such as interruption, we will explore these cultural values in a survey study.
Discussants:
  • Kaumudi Misra, California State University, East Bay
  • Angela Grotto, Montclair State University
34. Dual-Earner Couples and the Work-Family Interface: Understanding Dynamics from a Dyadic Perspective [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Thursday | 1:30 pm-3:00 pm | MB9-B

Organizers: Anna M. Stertz, RWTH Aachen University; Bettina S. Wiese, RWTH Aachen University;
Presider: Anna M. Stertz, RWTH Aachen University
  • Dual-Earner Couples’ Sharing of Work-Related Events: Effects on Relational and Personal Well-Being. .....Yue Yang Sun, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Tianyuan Li, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Anna M. Stertz, RWTH Aachen University; and Bettina S. Wiese, RWTH Aachen University
  • With the increasing attention paid to personal growth and self-expressive goals in modern marriages, dual-earner couples’ sharing of work-related events with the partner can be of real essence in promoting mutual support for each other’s personal growth, and this could thereby contribute to both partners’ relational and personal well-being. In the current study, a total of 102 heterosexual dual-earner couples were recruited from communities in Hong Kong, with wives’ average age being 41.8 (SD = 9.8) and husbands’ average age being 44.0 (SD = 10.4). The duration of the marriage ranged from 0.25 to 35.33 years, with an average of 13.87 years (SD = 10.63). They completed a pre-test survey, a 14-day daily diary study, and a follow-up survey one year later. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model was adopted to analyze the dyadic effects of sharing positive and negative work-related events on relationship satisfaction and personal well-being on the same day and one year later. In general, the sharing of both positive and negative work-related events had beneficial effects on the outcomes. Specifically, sharing positive work-related events had more immediate effects on both partners’ relationship satisfaction, while sharing negative work-related events benefitted relationship satisfaction more in the long run. Also, wives’ sharing had more immediate effects on both partners’ relational and personal well-being, while husbands’ sharing had more long-term effects on the partner’s personal well-being. The findings highlight the importance of work-related sharing in dual-earner couples and the need to differentiate its short-term and long-term effects.
  • How Both Parents’ Career Commitment Affects Couples’ Decisions About Parental Leave. .....Anna M. Stertz, RWTH Aachen University; and Bettina S. Wiese, RWTH Aachen University
  • This study examines couples’ parental leave decisions from a psychological perspective combining career and relationship research. We investigate (a) how a partner’s career commitment influences this partner’s leave length (actor effect), (b) how one partner’s career commitment influences the other partner’s leave length (partner effect), and (c) how the interaction of both partners’ career commitment influences the mother’s and the father’s leave length (interaction effect). We analyzed longitudinal dyadic data (N = 365 heterosexual couples mainly from Germany) collected during pregnancy to 18 months postpartum using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Overall, we found similar patterns of actor and partner effects for mothers and fathers. The more career-committed a partner, the shorter the leave of this partner. The more career-committed one partner, the longer the leave of the other partner. For fathers, we also found an interaction effect: in couples where the mother was highly career-committed but the father was not, fathers took the longest parental leave. In contrast, if the father was highly career-committed, he took a short leave regardless of the mother’s career commitment. Thus, mothers seem to be willing to become more involved in the family in favor of their partner’s career ambitions, but fathers do so only if they themselves do not have a high level of career commitment. The study highlights that a view of career commitment limited to individuals does not do justice to dual-earner couples. Here, a dyadic perspective contributes to a deeper understanding of couples’ career-related decisions in the early-family phase.
  • Financial Integration Variation Among Same-Gender and Mixed-Gender Couples. .....Joanna R. Pepin, University of Toronto; and Chandler Fairbanks, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
  • Overarching questions/concerns: Married mixed-gender couples are more likely to report they ‘put all of their money together’ compared with married same-gender couples. Our first aim is to determine whether this gap is accounted for by variation in demographic characteristics, such as dissimilar work-family arrangements. Our second aim considers whether differences in financial pooling associated with relationship stability and quality vary by the gender composition of the couple. Statement on methods: We use the 2020–2021 data from the National Couples’ Health and Time Study (NCHAT), a nationally representative sample of U.S. couples aged 20–60 (N = 3348). Our dependent variable is a survey question asking respondents whether they (1) We keep all of our money separately, (2) Put some money together, or (3) Put all of our money together. Based on the gender of the respondent and their partner, we constructed a couple-type variable with four categories: (1) Man with woman, (2) Woman with man, (3) Man with man, and (4) Woman with woman. Relationship stability and quality were measured using legal marital status (cohabiting or married) and three relationship scales: dissatisfaction, instability, and negativity. We run a series of logistic regression models predicting full financial integration, focusing on the effects of marital status, work-family arrangements, and three relationship scales. Next, we interact couple-type with marital status and the three scales of relationship stability and quality. Important findings: • Same-gender couples were substantially less likely than mixed-gender couples to report full financial pooling, even after adjusting for demographic characteristics, relationship stability, and relationship quality. • At average levels of dissatisfaction, instability, and negativity, woman-woman couples remained less likely than mixed-gender couples to report full financial pooling. • Odds of pooling money were significantly lower with greater dissatisfaction and instability, with one exception. Among men partnered with men, higher levels of dissatisfaction were associated with greater odds of pooling money. • Negativity and pooling money were positively associated for all couple-types. Implications for research, policy and/or practice: Same-gender couples’ reduced likelihood of pooling their finances compared with mixed-gender couples are not explained by demographic differences, nor necessarily indicative of lower relationship stability and quality. We demonstrate that using mixed-gender couples’ level of financial integration as a reference point may provide misleading interpretations of the stability and relationship quality among same-gender couples. We also argue that relationship stability and quality might be differently associated with financial integration amongst all couples.
  • Work-Family Reflection: A Decision-Making Intervention for Dual-Earner Couples. .....Courtney Masterson, University of San Francisco- School of Management
  • In this experimental study, we test the effects of a “work-family reflection” intervention on dual-earner couple’s engagement in collaborative and effortful decision-making processes when faced with events at the intersection of their work and family lives—such as a promotion, relocating to a new city, or becoming the primary caregiver for an aging parent. March (1994: 14) explains that “Decisions are framed by beliefs that define the problem to be addressed, the information that must be collected, and the dimensions that must be evaluated.” We propose that when dual-earner couples reflect upon the constellation of their work and family roles, goals, and experiences, they are more likely to frame decisions in a way that captures the full picture of their lives as workers and family members. When they pause to consciously think about, analyze, and question the past as a means to generate greater knowledge and consciousness (Ardelt & Grunwald, 2018), they may be more likely to frame the work-family event at hand as necessitating a “we” decision (vs. me) and as one that require their attention, effort, and collaboration. Extant research suggests that reflection may help a couple to slow down the decision-making process to better understand one another’s perspectives and, ultimately, resist gendered or power-based scripts in decision-making (Gerace et al., 2017). In the proposed session, we will present the work-family reflection intervention and share results from the pilot experimental study.
35. Coffee and Poster Session 1A
Thursday | 3:00 pm-3:45 pm | MB9-A
  • In the Company of Animals: Recommendations for Pet-Friendly Organizations in a Post-Pandemic World. .....Souha Ezzedeen, York University; and Tina Sharifi, York University
  • One of the most visible manifestations of the pandemic was the shift to remote work for office workers, accompanied by the unprecedented adoption of millions of pet animals across North America and around the world. These “Covid Puppies” or “Pandemic Pets,” along with their pre-pandemic counterparts, are reported to have significant health and well-being outcomes for individuals. More recently, remote work has transitioned to a hybrid work environment, whereby employees are mandated to balance work partly at home and partly remotely. While research reports substantial benefits of this newfound work structure, pet owners are faced with significant psychological challenges in parting with their companion animals as well as logistical and financial challenges in ensuring their care during their absence. As a result of this shift, reports indicate that a greater number of pets are being surrendered or relinquished by pet owners. To address the challenges of this post-pandemic work environment, many global organizations have endeavored to reshape HR and corporate policies and practices to better engage and leverage their flexible workforce, including ramping up their pet-friendly policies. The trend of pet-friendliness, which at times includes permission to bring pets to the office, had begun before the pandemic and appears again on the rise. In this presentation, we explore different ways for organizations to be pet-friendly and respond to pet ownership among their workers within a post-pandemic world.
  • Remote Work, Stock Market Participation and Inequality. .....Lorenz Meister, Free University of Berlin / DIW Berlin; Lukas Menkhoff, DIW Berlin / Humboldt University of Berlin; and Carsten Schröder, DIW Berlin / Free University of Berlin
  • Stock market participation jumped upwards in Germany in the year 2020 by about 25%. A major cause for this was the enforced use of remote work. We show this by repeating a benchmark study with demanding data requests and adding remote work to the explanatory variables. Moreover, we implement an instrumental variables estimation based on commuting distance and work-from-home capacity. The transmission channel seems to work via relaxing time constraints: the effect is not present for households with children, presumably because they invest the time gains in childcare. Finally, we show that remote work has a distributional effect. Using a Theil-index decomposition, we show that income inequality between those who own stocks and those who do not decreases significantly. Thus, remote work makes the stock market accessible to a broader population, including lower income groups.
  • Towards a Better Understanding of the (Unequal) Influence of Parenting: It’s About Time!. .....Renske Keizer, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • The key objective of my research project is to create a breakthrough in our understanding of the mechanisms by which social class influences parenting and child outcomes. I argue that such a breakthrough can be obtained by treating time as a resource. With large social class discrepancies in people’s ability to use, control, and negotiate time, I propose that how parents deal with unexpected events, and how this is reflected in, and transpires into, their parenting behavior, and subsequently child development is an important but overlooked mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of inequality. The proposed project is timely and relevant: inequalities in child outcomes have grown over the last decades, governments have been unsuccessful in putting a halt to this development, politicians and policy members are in urgent need for scientific input for better-tailored policies to reduce inequality in children’s outcomes, and scholars have not been able to come to a consensus on the underlying mechanisms. I propose to kickstart a new, interdisciplinary, research field that links the sociological stratification literature to developmental psychology theory on parenting, while making use of recent advances made in analyzing daily within-family data. My mixed-method multi-actor study will be the first to embed rich Experience Sample Method (ESM) data on how parents deal with unexpected events, collected amongst 200 mothers and fathers from both higher and lower social class families, into the large-scale ongoing longitudinal data collection on stratification processes within and across families in Rotterdam that I am leading. The collection of rich qualitative data will allow me to develop time-sensitive theory based on findings derived from the ESM data collection.
  • The Effect of the Home Domain on Career Sustainability. .....Jeffrey Greenhaus, Drexel University; Gerard Callanan, West Chester University of Pennsylvania; and Gary Powell, University of Connecticut
  • The concept of sustainability, traditionally viewed as the protection and renewal of the natural environment, has increasingly been applied to the study of careers. Interest in sustainable careers—that is, careers in which individuals experience happiness, health, and productivity at work over the life course—has grown substantially in the last several decades because dramatic changes in work (e.g., impermanent, unstable work arrangements), family life (e.g., single parenthood), and personal characteristics (e.g., deterioration of skills) have either disrupted individuals’ continued employment or have threatened their positive experiences at work. Although the empirical literature has provided insight into the individual and organizational factors that can affect the sustainability of a career, the effect of the home domain on career sustainability has been widely neglected, despite the insistence of many scholars that the intersection of the work and home domains is central to understanding a sustainable career. To overcome this limitation in the literature, we develop a conceptual framework of the career sustainability process and demonstrate that the home domain can affect career sustainability in three broad ways; as a (1) facilitator of action that individuals can take to achieve happy, healthy, and productive experiences at work, (2) source of potentially disruptive change over the life course and as a resource for coping with change, and (3) repository of experiences that spillover to affect happiness, health, and productivity at work. We conclude with a research agenda to guide theory development and stimulate empirical research.
  • Examining a Work-Family Balance Measure Through an IRT Lens. .....Alyssa Lezcano, University of South Florida; Stephen Stark, University of South Florida; Tammy Allen, University of South Florida; Michelle Hughes Miller, University of South Florida; Kimberly French, Colorado State University; Eunsook Kim, University of South Florida; and Grisselle Centeno, Florida Southern College
  • Interest in the construct of work-family balance (WFB) has grown considerably over the past decade (Casper et al., 2018). One of the most popular brief measures of WFB is the 5-item measure used in Greenhaus et al. (2012). The purpose of the present study is to examine the psychometric properties of the Greenhaus et al. (2012) measure based on a sample of 956 university faculty. Specifically, we test whether the data fit a unidimensional model, the efficacy of each item, and whether there are differences in item responses across gender. Item response theory (IRT) analysis shows that the scale is unidimensional, and that a four-item measure may be equally informative as the original five-item measure. Further, differential item functioning analyses provide evidence indicating that men and women do not have a different probability of endorsing specific options for the four included items. Recommendations are made for future research and practice.
  • Chasing Dreams or Paying Bills: How Multiple Jobs and Calling Influence Work-Life Conflict. .....Grace Vestuto, Illinois Institute of Technology; and Roya Ayman, Illinois Institute of Technology
  • This study explores the relationship between multiple job-holding, work as a calling, and work-life conflict. As the prevalence of individuals engaging in multiple jobs continues to rise, it becomes imperative to investigate the potential effects this has on work-life balance. Additionally, separating multi-job holders by considering how they perceive their work to account for their motivation to hold multiple jobs (i.e., solely to generate income or to support pursuing a calling) can provide valuable insights into the interaction between holding multiple jobs and work-life conflict. Then, holding multiple jobs presents a unique condition in which multiple work domains might interact with one another, thereby introducing a new variable of "work-work conflict" explored in this study. Results showed that individuals with a single job experienced higher levels of work-life conflict that those in either multi-job holder group (i.e., group pursuing a calling and group working non-calling job). Furthermore, multi-job holders pursuing a calling experienced higher levels of work-work conflict than multi-job holder who were not. Implications and future directions are discussed.
36. Coffee and Poster Session 1B
Thursday | 3:00 pm-3:45 pm | MB9-EFG
  • Parental School Runs Program, Economic and Man-Hour Loss; A Nigerian Perspective.. .....Cosmas Uhuo, Ebonyi State University Abakaliki
  • Parental school run is a direct activity of parents and other older ages in the practice of manning and undertaking the welfare of their children at tender age. This is the parental involvement towards safe taking, keeping and picking of their children from schools prior and during resumption of their professional duties. An open-ended questionnaire was administered on one hundred civil and public servants working under the employment scheme of Ebonyi State Government who volunteered for inclusion right from the premise of Godis international school Abakaliki. Chi square results showed that out of 58 males enrolled in the program (4.6%) lost their jobs due to their employer’s ethical standards to zero tolerance. The ages between 30-40 years of age were highly affected with hourly loss to duty and economic and job losses while (8.2%) of women who participated in the test were neither recorded with any job and economic loss. The study attest to high productivity and efficiency to duty with attendant economic increase to males than females across Ebonyi State employment scheme. Therefore, the study advocates for the recruitment of child care personnel who will be engaged with school run activities. This will drastically reduce any loss occasioned by school runs programs by parents. This will also reduce unemployment and boast national economic growth.
  • Caregivers and Providers: The Impact of Parental Role Disclosure on Hiring Evaluations. .....Elizabeth Eley, Concordia University
  • This research explores the impact of parenthood disclosures on hiring recommendations. We empirically test whether disclosing one’s parental role as a primary caregiver or a financial provider in a job interview influences hiring evaluations of men and women. Research has shown that women face motherhood penalties in the workplace due to being viewed as less than ideal workers, but increasingly men are also taking on more active parenting duties in the home and it is possible that caregiving fathers could also face penalties. At the same time, prior research has found that both women and men face backlash when they violate gender norms of femininity (e.g., nurturing) and masculinity (e.g., agency), respectively. We hypothesize that violations of gendered ‘home norms’ (e.g., a male primary caregiver or a female breadwinner) and gendered ‘work norms’ (e.g., a male in a caregiving occupation or a female in a STEM occupation) can also impact hiring evaluations. Using an experimental design, we manipulated applicant violations of gender norms by varying gender, occupation (i.e., nursing and engineering), and parenting disclosures (i.e, provider, primary caregiver and no disclosure) of an applicant for a fictional nurse manager or facilities manager position. Pilot data were collected from university students, and participants in the main study are individuals with hiring experience recruited from a panel service. Participants heard a “phone interview” and viewed the applicant’s CV and job description. Then, participants were asked to give their evaluations and hiring recommendations. Results and practical implications for organizations will be discussed.
  • A typology of working time arrangements among dual-earner couples in South Korea: with a focus on working hours, work schedules, and flexibility. .....Seohyun Jung, University of Kent; and Heejung Chung, King's College London
  • This study examines how working time patterns shape the division of labour among dual-earner couples in South Korea. It provides an important extension of the ‘time availability’ perspective, by taking a multidimensional approach to assess the concept of ‘available time’ at the couple level. Specifically, this study measures three aspects of working time: (i) working hours, (ii) non-standard work schedules (e.g., evening, night and weekend work), and (iii) flexible working (e.g., homeworking). Latent Class Analysis (LCA) is used on data taken from the 2019 Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS) to identify the dominant couple typologies based on working time characteristics. It also explores the factors (e.g., marital and job-related characteristics) explaining the variations in working time typologies, and investigates how these typologies affect the division of housework and childcare between partners. This study will provide an enhanced understanding of how heterosexual dual-earner couples manage their diverse work and family responsibilities, shedding light on the dynamics of time allocation within these households.
  • Crossover of Spousal Job Stress to Sleep Outcomes of Their Partner: Proposed Mediation via Anxiety and Moderation via Partner Support. .....Caroline Deal, University of South Florida
  • This study uses dyadic data from 1515 couples to investigate how job stress of the focal spouse relates to sleep quality and duration of both the focal spouse and their partner. Job stress of the focal spouse has been linked to negative impacts on the psychological health and mortality of their partner; however, sleep has yet to be considered as an outcome. Job stress has repeatedly been linked to sleep problems, and sleep is a phenomenon shared daily by most couples, making both variables particularly relevant. My study draws from crossover theory (Westman, 2001), which describes processes through which stressors from one spouse crossover to their partner. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) is also relevant: it postulates that individuals strive to avoid resource loss and that resource loss results in psychological distress. Thus, I hypothesize that job stress of the focal spouse will negatively impact their sleep quality and duration via anxiety, but that these relationships will be moderated by perceived partner support such that higher partner support will correlate with a decrease in the negative impact of job stress on sleep outcomes via decreased anxiety. I further propose that job stress of the focal spouse will negatively relate to sleep quality and duration of their partner through the mechanisms of partners’ increased anxiety and family demands as partners provide more support for their spouses. I will use Actor-Partner Interdependence Models to analyze each member of the couple from the focal spouse and partner perspectives.
  • Examining the Role of Acculturation Strategies in Immigrant Employees’ Work-Family Conflict. .....Maggie Wan, Texas State; and Margaret Shaffer, University of Oklahoma
  • With the forces of globalization and economic shifts, there has been a noticeable rise in the presence of immigrant employees and their families around the world. Acculturation is a critical process through which immigrant employees adapt to a new culture upon relocating to another country, but we know little about how this process influences their work-family interface. Drawing upon the theories of acculturation and belongingness, the study aims to understand whether and how each of the four acculturation strategies - assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization – has unique influences on immigrant employees’ work-family conflict as mediated by the feeling of exclusion at work. In addition, we consider work centrality as a pivotal factor that would enhance the proposed indirect effects. We sampled 696 immigrant employees from 31 host countries to test the hypothesized model. We found that separation and marginalization were positively associated with immigrant employees’ feeling of exclusion at work, which further increased their work-family conflict. Meanwhile, integration was negatively associated with the feeling of exclusion at work and consequently reduced work-family conflict. In addition, work centrality moderated the intervening relationships, such that these indirect effects were stronger when the level of work centrality was higher. Interestingly, an assimilation strategy had no effect on immigrant employees’ work-family conflict. This research not only brings important contributions to the literature, but it also offers timely practical implications that would advance immigrant employees’ work-family experiences.
  • Understanding Work-Family Balance Through the Lens of Partner Work-Family Boundary Negotiation. .....Yu-Shan Hsu, Concordia University; Maggie Wan, Texas State; and Margaret Shaffer, University of Oklahoma
  • As the work-from-home/hybrid work trend continues post-pandemic, how dual-earner couples reconcile each other’s boundary management expectations, in order to achieve work-family balance, has becomes an important topic. While most work-family research focuses on the individual-level effort in achieving work-family balance, we argue that work-family balance can be understood from a system perspective. That is, work-family balance is achieved via successful negotiations with other key stakeholders, such as spouses, regarding boundary management expectations between work and family domains. For example, if both dual-career couples are working after ‘normal’ office hours, who will tend to household tasks such as preparing meals? Also, if both are working during ‘normal’ office hours, which partner will be responsible for picking up a sick child at school? To understand work-family balance as a dynamic process that may fluctuate daily and from a system perspective that involves both employees and spouses, we draw on the theory of identity negotiation and crossover theory. We propose a conceptual model of work-family boundary management negotiation that conceptualizes work-family balance as a negotiation process regarding boundary management between partners. Specifically, our model articulates how partner work-family boundary negotiation, defined as the collaborative decision making of work-family boundary management expectations, helps dual-earner couples meet each other’s expectations regarding boundary management, and in turn, facilitates dual-earner couple’s work-family balance. This research contributes to the work-family literature by making it explicit that work-family balance is a couple-level process of negotiating boundary management expectations between an employee and the spouse.
37. Big Ideas Talks [Plenary]
Thursday | 4:00 pm-4:45 pm | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
  • Skills for Success in School, Work, and Life. .....Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
  • Manufacturing “Care”: What Can We Learn About Care From AI?. .....Yang Hu, Lancaster University
  • Four Challenges to Bridging the Work-Family Divide. .....Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard University - Business School
38. Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research
Thursday | 4:45 pm-5:30 pm | H 110

Organizer: Ellen Galinsky, Families and Work Institute
39. Gala Reception - Windsor Ballrooms Versailles Lounge – Sponsored by the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research and the Purdue Center for Families
Thursday | 7:00 pm-9:00 pm | Windsor Ballrooms - Versailles Lounge
Please join other conference participants for a Gala Reception in the Versailles Lounge at the historic Windsor Ballrooms located at 1170 rue Peel, Bureau 110. The Windsor Ballrooms are a two block walk from Le Sheraton and a five block walk from Concordia University. The reception will feature an open bar and numerous hors d'oeuvres. For more information about the Windsor Ballrooms: https://www.lewindsormontreal.com/en. The WFRN thanks the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research and the Purdue Center for Families for sponsoring this event.
40. Invited Session: Insights from Champions of Age Diversity at Work [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.210

Organizer: Julie Miller, AARP

Panelists:
  • Lona Choi-Allum, AARP;
  • Carly Roszkowski, AARP;
  • Christina Matz, Boston College;
Discussant:
  • Julie Miller, AARP;
41. Gender, Partnerships, and Family Dynamics [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.265

Presider: Nandeen Bhattacharyya, International Institute for Population Sciences
  • Intensive Partnering: Gendered Partnership Aspirations and Household Inequality. .....Yinan Wang, Harvard University
  • Existing scholarship addressing the discrepancy between rising egalitarian gender ideals and persistent household inequalities has either focused on structural/cultural influences on couple dynamics or on couples’ post-hoc justifications. This study identifies an overlooked perceptual mechanism - partnership aspirations - that operates prior to couple dynamics as guidelines that shapes their following interactions, resource distribution, and responsibility allocation. Using 89 interviews with college-educated individuals, I argue that their partnership aspirations can be characterized as “intensive partnering,” a multi-layered support framework emphasizing intertwining support for the partner, relationship, and household. Its maintenance demands intensive and extensive energy, cognitive capacity, and emotional investment; continuous adaptation and incorporation of cultural tools in adjustment to partner’s expectations; and persistent assessment of both parties’ personal and professional lives. Notably, female participants emphasized these demands more frequently than their male counterparts. These insights illuminate the perceptual underpinnings of household gender dynamics, opening new research directions on domestic gender inequality.
  • The Mental Load: Implications for Work-Family Integration Among Canadian Mothers. .....Haneen Abraham, University of Alberta; and Rhonda Breitkreuz, University of Alberta
  • The mental load is a form of labor that describes cognitive and emotional labor undertaken by women, often in the form of rumination or anticipation about tasks pertaining to the functioning of the family system. Unlike tasks typically associated with reproductive work, such as childcare and housework, the mental load is an invisible form of labor. Characterized by its ambiguous boundaries, the mental load is a critical yet often overlooked factor in the work-family integration of Canadian mothers. Employing a socio-ecological, critical feminist approach, this study examines the ways in which the mental load impacts maternal employment choices. To conduct this analysis, data was collected from six focus groups and individual interviews with 58 mothers of preschool children in the Province of Alberta. The findings of this study highlight the diverse ways in which mental load is experienced, revealing how the mental load intersects with paid work and its impact on maternal employment choices. Specifically, we show how spouses' lack of recognition or awareness of the cognitive aspects of reproductive and household labor perpetuates gender inequality within households and hinders mothers' capacity and desire to engage in full-time employment. Because earned income is the key source of financial well-being for the majority of Canadian households, this research is important to explore pathways to enhancing income security while also contributing to the broader goal of gender equality in Canada.
  • Gender Ideology and Marital Dissatisfaction in Global Perspective. .....Nandeen Bhattacharyya, International Institute for Population Sciences
  • The worldwide reduction in satisfaction of marital union is guiding traditional marriages to dissolve rapidly. Despite a sharp increase in research on gender norms and marital interface, most of the scholarly papers are concentrated on certain geographical areas having the advantage of quality longitudinal family data. Since gender ideology is transiting worldwide and has a diversified effect on individuals' decision-making and lived experience, this study provides insight into the ways in which gender ideology influences dissatisfaction in marital unions. This study uses the data from the ISSP 2012 module ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’ to answer the question of whether individuals with varied gender ideologies show dissimilar patterns in marital dissatisfaction. With the help of a multinomial regression model, coefficients of three categories (dissatisfied, neutral, and satisfied) of marital quality are estimated by gender ideology. We find a significant association between marital dissatisfaction and egalitarian gender ideology in a global context. The adjusted percentage of marital dissatisfaction by gender ideology estimated from multinomial regression coefficients converted into Multiple Classification Analysis shows more dissatisfaction in marriage with egalitarian gender ideology rather than traditional ideology and even more among females. The rigid traditional ideologies of society prevent an individual from combining the two spheres of gender roles leading to a higher level of marital dissatisfaction. This global study highlights that individuals specifically females with an egalitarian gender ideology vis-à-vis those with a traditional gender outlook tend to be more dissatisfied in their marriage than their counterparts.
  • In Search of a Suitable Boy: Tracing Gendered Linkages Between Employment Status and Marriage Market Outcomes. .....Shreya Singh, International Institute for Population Sciences; Srinivas Goli, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS); Anu Rammohan, University of Western Australia; and Harchand Ram, International Institute for Population Sciences
  • The Indian marriage market is characterized by its unique penchant for several requisites and restrictions on entering into a marital union. In recent times, these impositions have been undergoing a marked shift. Marriage as an institution is becoming increasingly sensitive to economic indicators. The erstwhile demands of religious, caste, wealth and educational endogamy have now been supplemented by the requirement of a steady job. Using longitudinal data collected by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, this paper seeks to map the gender differentials in employment status and marital status. The Cox Proportional Hazards Model reveals that employed males have a greater hazard ratio of entering into a marital union as compared to unemployed males, while the opposite is observed in the case of females. We thus conclude that linkages between employment status and marriage market outcome are considerably different for males and females, thereby adversely affecting their age at marriage.
  • Moving Beyond Family Borders: An Exploration of Work-Life Balance Experiences of Knowledge Workers Differentiated by Relationship and Parenthood Statuses.. .....Giulia Giunti, St Andrews; Laura Radcliffe, University of Liverpool; Rory Donnelly, University of Liverpool; and Ragnhild Nordset, University of Liverpool
  • Building on Border theory and Boundary theory, this paper elucidates how physical and non-physical borders between work and life are negotiated by knowledge workers in the profession of academia, a context in which boundaries/borders are highly permeable. In doing so, we move beyond the longstanding focus on work-family balance by examining three groups differentiated by relationship and parenthood statuses: (i) partnered/married academics without children; (ii) partnered/married academics with children; and (iii) academics who are single and without children. Drawing on rich insights from semi-structured interviews aided by photo elicitation, the paper contributes to the work-life literature by identifying similarities and differences in the ways in which boundaries/borders are negotiated by the three groups sampled. The findings provide insight into how to build more inclusive flexible working policies and practices.
42. A Life Course Perspective on Entry to Parenthood 2 [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.270

Presider: Sunna Símonardóttir, University of Iceland
  • Women at Work: What It Means and What It Should Mean. .....Anagha Tendulkar Patil, Sophia College for Women
  • Overarching Concerns The structure and functions of the institution of family are being rapidly revised across the globe. One can observe a concomitant change in the status and image of women and their relationship with the society. The study revolves around the category of domestic women workers in urban pockets in India and their ever-evolving relation with the institution of family. The intersectional ties with the families they come from, families they work in, and families they work for are explored and reviewed. As stated by the International Labor organization, Domestic Workers Convention (NO 189), Article 1, the term ‘Domestic Work” means work performed in or for a household or households. The term ‘Domestic Worker’ means any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship. A person who performs domestic work only occasionally or sporadically and not on an occupational basis is not a domestic worker. In addition, domestic workers are workers who perform domestic work for pay and remuneration. In a patriarchal set up women are typically responsible to take care of the domestic front at home. Those women who do not earn living are described as “Women who do not work”. Ironically these are the women who perhaps spent the maximum time working at home. The paper attempts to review the journey of girls to womanhood as they emerge as workers and then of a woman to an older adult as they struggle to refurbish their identity in societal network through their family. The causal processes in this transition could be the process of urbanization or be it of industrialization that impact family functioning and are instrumental in challenging the established algorithm of connection of a woman with her families. It interrogates the participation of women in the work force and studies the wear and tear of ‘not working but busy’ and ‘working but available for housework’ situations from gender lenses. Statement on methods The paper uses a qualitative design to focus on the changing paradigms of gender specific work appropriation which emerge out of the social and cultural guidelines of WORK for women and how women twist, adjust, tweak, engineer their work styles to match it with the then required family commitments and demands. The theoretical base of the paper is of the Life Course perspective, and it uses the technique of unstructured interview to capture the typical trajectories of women and their family life. Extensive library research and review of published material are the additional aid to formulating claims and inferring conclusions. The paper tries to comment on what having a ‘working woman’ implies and what it should imply to the relevant family units. It interrogates the participation of women in the work force and studies the wear and tear of ‘not working but busy’ and ‘working but available for housework’ situations from gender lenses. Important findings Since it is a working paper; though the findings are arrived at using the scientifically sound procedure, these are tentative. The emergent pattern, out of data gathered so far underline the following:  The phenomenon of domestic work is an underrated and undervalued form of work in the heavily populated Indian society.  There is a positive correlation between the demand for and supply of domestic workers in urban pockets of India  There is ‘Feminization’ of domestic work coupled with cultural and social underpinnings.  Domestic Work assumes a complex configuration, if looked at from gender lenses.  Women domestic workers relate with three different types of families. 1. Families they come from: First generation women earners, illiterate, uneducated, violence. 2. Families they work in: Invisible, passive presence, mechanical participation, poor payment, exploitation, insecurity, lack of dignity of work. 3. Families they work for: Bread winners for the family, high wear and tear, burnout, health issues, accelerated ageing process.  Here are three reference points. Families that make domestic workers, families that need domestic workers, families of domestic workers. There exists a curious PULL and PUSH mechanism operational between the domestic workers and the families they belong to; which should be further interrogated. Implications of research, policy and/or practice Domestic work is part of the informal sector. There is a dearth of data, lack of documentation, paucity of official reports. Hence there is no clarity about the problems faced by domestic workers. There is no contract document, and welfare measures are not in place, No national level policy exists for channelization, consolidation of the problems faced by the domestic workers. A systematic and scientific study of the situation of domestic women workers is a need of the hour in a fast-growing Indian economy.
  • Exploring Parenthood Through the Perspective of The Voluntarily Childfree. .....Sunna Símonardóttir, University of Iceland
  • Fertility has decreased drastically across advanced, industrialized nations. One way to understand this development is to focus on individuals’ and couples’ fertility intentions to understand the decision-making process underlying the choice not to have a child and to explore how gendered parenting ideologies and circumstances affect this decision. The Icelandic context presents an interesting backdrop for this research, with its emphasis on gender equality, diverse family forms, and policies that support both parents’ participation in work and care. In this study I examine modern parenthood through the lens of those who are voluntarily childfree by interviewing 22 individuals, and couples who had decided to be childfree. The findings suggest an important divergence in the identity work performed by men and women as they negotiate their wishes to be childfree. The role of the mother is seen as mentally and emotionally draining, intricate, and requiring great personal sacrifice which suggests that intensive mothering narratives have directly influenced and informed decisions on fertility in the Icelandic context. Although the interviewees recognize flaws in the face of the egalitarian society regarding the unequal responsibilities and duties of mothers and fathers, they do not question the ideology of individualism and intensity that characterizes modern parenthood.
  • Parental Leave and Social Sustainability: How Can the Design of Parental Leave Meet a Social Sustainability Agenda?. .....Thordis Reimer, University of Hamburg; and Margaret O'Brien, Univ of London
  • According to the Brundtland Report published in 1987, sustainable development is divided into three pillars: ecological, economic and social development. So far, the concept of social sustainability has mostly been used to consider social consequences that arise from the connection with ecological or economic conditions. We would like to expand the existing concepts to include the perspective of parental leave regulations as a matter of the sustainable development of societies. After presenting already developed concepts of social sustainability, parental leave policies are examined for their relevance with regard to sustainable societies based on previous research. The analysis is structured along three design features of parental leave regulations. This includes the length of parental leaves, the level of benefits during parental leaves and access to these entitlements and benefits according to social or employment status. Comparative policy data are drawn from the International Network for Leave Policy and Research 2023 Review, which comprises 2022 data for 49 countries. In our conclusion, we discuss how the design of parental leave policies can meet a social sustainability agenda according to the UN Sustainable Developments Goals. Also, we use the perspective of parental leave policy as a question of the sustainability of societies in order to look at existing concepts of social sustainability, illuminate their strengths or weaknesses and discuss their further development.
  • Shaping the Future: Insights From a Longitudinal Study on Women's Career Aspirations During Pregnancy and Postpartum. .....Vilma Ražauskienė, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences
  • This longitudinal study delves into the meanings of work for women during a transitional life stage. While the topics of opting out and opting in have garnered considerable attention, certain aspects of career development after childbirth remain underexplored. Existing literature often dichotomises women into two primary groups, and some theories propose a three-group classification. However, such divisions may be overly simplistic and not universally applicable to all women. The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of women's career aspirations. To achieve this objective, two waves of individual semi-structured interviews with ten women at two specific time points were conducted: during pregnancy and four to six months postpartum. Although convenience sampling was employed for data collection, the research participants exhibited variation in marital status, educational level, number of children, breastfeeding practices, and other characteristics. The results of the study demonstrate that the meaning of work for the research participants varied both during pregnancy and after childbirth. Additionally, some participants unexpectedly adjusted their career aspirations after becoming mothers. The salience of the new identity as a mother is discussed as a precursor to temporarily stepping back from a career with aspirations to re-enter the labour market later on. This research enriches the discourse on work-life balance by offering valuable insights into how early motherhood shapes women's career goals, decisions, and expectations.
43. Woman Worker in Emerging Economies: Comparing India Chile and Nigeria [Workshop]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.285

Organizer: Shweta Singh, Loyola University, Chicago
Presider: Shweta Singh, Loyola University, Chicago
44. Cultural Variations in the Work-Family Interface [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.430

Presider: Birgit Pfau-Effinger, University of Hamburg
  • Working Women on India’s Urban Marriage Market. .....Megan Reed, Emory University
  • Many marriages in India follow a male breadwinner model resulting in India having one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation in the world. Despite this pattern, there is evidence of growing labor force participation among the highest educated women in India’s metros. This study uses data from 46 interviews conducted in New Delhi to examines how the urban middle class makes sense of the competing cultural ideals of male breadwinning and dual earner marriage. Men married to working women frequently report that they were explicitly looking for a working woman on the arranged marriage market. Women’s careers were seen as essential to some families because the second income could help insure against financial instability. Working women, on the other hand, report that they want to work because their careers provide them with autonomy and a sense of accomplishment. Countering narratives which idealize the breadwinning household model, dual earning couples argued that working women make better partners and that shared career experience helps facilitate a companionate marriage. There was less willingness, however, to challenge gender roles in the division of household and care work. Dual earner couples employed patchwork of different strategies to manage household labor including employing domestic workers and relying on the labor of other female household members.
  • Social Infertility in Japan: Redesigning Social Policies and Future Trajectories. .....Takashi Mita, Kyoto Sangyo University; and Yukari Ito, Osaka University
  • 1. Overarching Questions/Concerns Japan's low fertility rate (1.26 in 2022) has led to calls for measures to address this decline. The number of unmarried people intending to marry for life is decreasing, and later marriage is becoming more common. A government survey revealed that reasons for not marrying include not finding a suitable partner, not feeling the need to marry, and focusing on work or studies (Japan Cabinet Office 2016). Despite this, Japan's measures are limited to individual infertility treatments, economic support for child-rearing, and expansion of daycare capacities, lacking understanding of the comprehensive situations and difficulties in family formation. The conventional reasons and factors contributing to the emergence of a childless society encompass various aspects of Japanese modern life are commonly discussed, however, there has been limited consideration of the way young people in contemporary Japan live. Having such a background, this study aims to clarify what realities local assembly members, who are in the position to connect residents with city policies, perceive as factors that cause social infertility. In this study, social infertility refers to situations where economic and social pressures make it difficult to form a family or have children. This study aims to explore policies that can lead to solutions regarding social infertility. The authors offer multiple future visions to aid policymaking in addressing social infertility in Japan. 2. Methods The study uses two primary methods: qualitative research based on interviews to uncover issues identified by local government policymakers, and the "deductive forecasting" method from Futures Studies to determine preferred/alternative future policies. In 2022, interviews were conducted with 19 individuals, including city mayors, municipality administrative staff, and city assembly members from seven mid-sized cities on the outskirts of metropolitan cities in Osaka, Hyogo, Shiga, and Mie Prefectures in western Japan. These areas are expected to be hubs for young families. The interviews explored four main questions: 1) the roles of various municipality stakeholders in family formation policies, 2) challenges recognized in family formation, 3) preferred future directions for family formation, and 4) COVID-19-related issues in family formation. Information from Question 2 was used in this study, focusing on 11 municipality council members among all informants. The study was approved by the Kyoto Sangyo University Ethics Committee (No. 0132). In the second part, the deductive forecasting method of Futures Studies, one of the methods in Futures Studies proposed by Jim Dator (1998), was used. Deductive forecasting is a methodology that uses four predefined models to construct futures images based on past and present trends, deductively forecast scenarios, and use the scenario to formulate measures and policies. The following four models are used in this analysis: -Growth Model: Assumes a stage before problems arise, focusing on policies for economic and national development without specific problem-focused policies. -Collapse Model: Depicts a state where parties face significant difficulties in a particular problem area. -Discipline Model: Shows a state where measures are taken against the problem depicted in the Collapse Model through policies and other interventions. -Transformation Model: Illustrates a state where a new method or paradigm different from previous ones is assumed to solve the problem. Each model identifies not only the state but also the factors enabling that state. Methods, policies, and technologies to advance each model are considered and depicted, providing multiple futures images and scenarios. 3. Important Findings 3-1: From Local Government Qualitative Research The following are contributing factors to contemporary Japanese hesitance to start families or have children, based on interview accounts: (A) Social Factors - Increasing numbers of people struggle with communication and have low self-esteem, making social participation difficult. - The phenomenon of severe social withdrawal (Hikikomori) worsens social disengagement. - Younger generations have low participation rates in local community activities. - The average age of city assembly members in some municipalities is increasing, hindering policies for younger/future generations. (B) Limited Support - Raising a child alone with a partner is difficult without nearby parents. - Childless couples receive no support except for infertility treatment subsidies. - Unlike in previous Japanese society, the presence of community members to help match future spouses as well as arranged marriages has shrunk significantly (due to privacy concerns). (C) Limited Availability of Daycare - Many children are on daycare waiting lists, forcing parents to choose between work and having one more children. (D) Social Intolerance - People are often intolerant of public, workplace, and social media displays of child-rearing. 3-2: From Deductive Forecasting Leveraging the insights gained in Part 1, we have generated the following four future visions using a conceptual four alternative futures model: (a) Growth Model: Easier family formation, increased children, driven by economic stability. -Policy Direction: Promote economic growth. -Similar to Japan's high economic growth period. (b) Collapse Model: Harder family formation, decreased children, due to economic instability and social unwelcomeness. -Policy Direction: Lack of policy to promote economic growth, minimized support for parents, and lack of policy to prevent individualization/isolation of child-rearing. -Similar to Japan and East Asia today. (b) Discipline Model: Improved family formation, child numbers recover, with enhanced welfare and societal support. -Policy Direction: Improved welfare policies, societal welcome for children, promotions for parents returning to work, accessible and affordable childcare, more social venues, and opportunities for meeting others. -Similar to some European nations. (c) Transformation Model: Cooperative child-rearing, with communal mutual aid systems and multi-family cooperatives. -Policy Direction: Establish community/regional mutual aid systems, multi-family cooperatives, and a foster parent system. -Similar to some traditional Pacific Islands societies. 4. Implications for Research and Policy Community and citizen efforts in marriage and child-rearing are declining, with insufficient systemic support and social unwelcomeness. Local government officials recognize these factors as contributing to social infertility. Tailored social policies based on the scenarios, except the Collapse Model, are essential for multi-directional social change. Without adaptation, Japan's social infertility problem will persist, hindering demographic balance. Interviews highlight Japan's "Collapse Model" and suggest examining the "Discipline Model" to enhance family formation quality and dignity of individuals. The "Transformational Model" envisions policies that strengthen social capital and collective child-rearing. Collaboration with policymakers is crucial to implement these visions.
  • The Role of Culture for Work-Family Policies – Theoretical Approach and Comparative Analysis. .....Birgit Pfau-Effinger, University of Hamburg
  • There is so far relatively little research about the ways in which cultural ideas influence the development of work-family policies. The paper aims to contribute to the scientific debate in that it theorizes and analyses the role of cultural ideas for change in work-family policies. The paper offers a theoretical framework that theorizes causal mechanisms and processes by which cultural ideas can contribute to institutional change in work-family policies. It evaluates these theoretical assumptions on the basis of a comparative historical analysis in four European societies which represent different types of welfare state traditions, Germany, Denmark, Spain, and the Czech Republic. The focus is on of selected time periods in which work-family policies were changed, between the 1990s and 2022. The study is based on process tracing, using document analysis, analysis of statistical data, and analysis of data of national surveys and of international surveys like ISSP, European Values Survey (EVS) and Eurobarometer. The findings show how, and under which conditions cultural ideas can influence institutional change in work-family policy, regarding the dynamics between social and political actors and different types of cultural and institutional processes, and why specific cultural ideas can be more relevant than others in the reforms in a country. The paper makes an innovative contribution to the theoretical debate and research about the relationship between culture and work-family policy, and about the reasons why work-family policies can differ across countries.
  • Religiosity and the Work-Family Interface Across Cultures. .....Barbara Beham, Berlin School of Economics and Law; Tammy Allen, University of South Florida; Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) - École des Sciences de la Gestion (ESG); Andreas Baierl, Austrian Family Research Institute, University of Vienna; Matilda Alexandrova, University of National and World Economy; Artiawati Artiawati, Surabaya University; Alexandra Beauregard, Birkbeck, University of London; Vania Sofia Carvalho, University of Lisbon; Maria José Chambel, University of Lisbon; Bruna Coden de Silva, Norton; Eunae Cho, National Chengchi University; Sarah Dawkins, University of Tasmania; Pablo Escribano, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez; Konjit Hailu Gudeta, Addis Ababa University; Ting-pang Huang, Soochow University; Ameeta Jaga, University of Cape Town; Dominique Kost, BI Norwegian Business School; Anna Kurowska, University of Warsaw; Emmanuelle Leon, ESCP Business School; Suzan Lewis, Middlesex University - Business School; Lu Chang-qin, Peking University; Angela Martin, Universit of Tasmania; Gabriele Morandin, University of Bologna; Fabrizio Naboa, Universidad San Francisco de Quito; Shira Offer, Bar-Ilan University; Eugene Ohu, Lagos Business School; Pascale Peters, Nyenrode Business Universiteit; Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, Governors State University; Marcello Russo, University of Bologna; Young Woo Sohn, Yonsei University; Caroline Straub, Bern University of Applied Sciences; Mia Tammelin, University of Tampere; Marloes van Engen, Radboud University; and Ronit Waismel-Manor, The Open University, Israel
  • Religiosity has not been a focus of cross-cultural/national comparative research on the work-family interface thus far (Allen et al., 2020), even though it may play a major role in shaping beliefs about work and family roles and responsibilities in social groups (Rogers & Franzen, 2014). Including religiosity into our studies may advance our understanding of work-family relationships across cultures (Allen et al., 2020). Using data from the International Study of Work and Family (ISWAF), this paper examines the impact of religiosity at the individual and country levels on both directions of work-family conflict and positive spillover among 9,985 employees in 29 countries/territories. We draw on conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) to predict individual-level relationships between religiosity and work-family conflict and positive spillover, and on person environment/culture fit theory (Edwards, 2008; Fry, 1987) to explore the impact of religiosity at the country level on those relationships. Contrary to predictions, we find a positive relationship between individual religiosity and family-to-work conflict (but not work-to-family conflict), indicating that religious employees report stronger interference of family into work. However, in more religious countries/territories religious employees report less conflict in both directions than less religious employees. In more secular countries/territories, we find reversed effects. As for positive spillover, we observe the hypothesized significant positive effects of religiosity on both directions of spillover but no significant country or cross-level interaction effects. Hence, religiosity seems to be both a demand and a resource and its effect is partially dependent on the religious country-level context.
45. The Role of Relational Partners in Work Identities and Career Decisions [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.435

Organizers: Elise Jones, U.S. Coast Guard Academy; Alexandra Rheinhardt, University of Connecticut;
Presiders: Elise Jones, U.S. Coast Guard Academy; Alexandra Rheinhardt, University of Connecticut;
  • Relational Visibility and Professional Invisibility?: Collateral Transitions and Career Imprinting in the Trailing Spouse Experience. .....
  • This paper builds theory on collateral transitions—transitions induced by another person’s transition—tracing the career narratives of 55 professionals-cum-“trailing spouses” (47 women, 8 men; 174 interviews and LinkedIn data across 8-10 years) who uprooted to support their significant others during a year-long MBA program. We find that core to collateral transition experiences is a decentered “relational other” role (defining the person by their association), implicating relational visibility and concomitant individual invisibility. At The School of Business (TSB), the “partner” relational other role reflected and propagated an historical gendered imprint: female, family-focused, and thus professionally irrelevant (i.e., professionally invisible). Our data show informants following three experience pathways—adapting to, disregarding, and capitalizing on the relational other role; narratives post-TSB suggest that these related to growing relational visibility / professional invisibility, maintenance of professional visibility, and enhanced professional visibility, respectively. We theorize individuals’ career imprinting susceptibility as moderating the different experience pathways. Our findings shed light on career breaks as differently impacting women who “take turns” with their significant others, and men as benefitting from support roles whose gendered assumptions liberate rather than constrain them. We discuss how our research advances scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of collateral transitions, women’s careers, and career imprinting.
  • Against the Odds: The Role of Identity Partner Husbands in the Construction of Women’s Counternormative Worker Identity. .....Elise Jones, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
  • Although scholars have long recognized that identities are inherently relational, the literature is relatively silent on the role of interpersonal relationships in identity construction. In this study I address the role of an identity partner – a person who plays a significant role in an individual’s identity construction – in the construction of a counternormative identity. I conducted a broader inductive, qualitative study with 50 working mother professionals who, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were socialized from their youth to devote full time to caregiving and rather than pursuing careers. In individual interviews with 27 of these women and their husbands, I discovered that husbands shape women’s identity construction by both facilitating and impeding a worker identity that deviates from the norms of women’s faith community. While men acted primarily as identity partners by validating, cultivating, and collaborating a worker identity that is counternormative in the context of the women’s faith, some impeded women’s worker identities by engaging in deprioritizing and moderating approaches. The findings of this study illuminate the role of an identity partner in identity construction processes and the importance of expanding the context in which identity construction is examined.
  • From Grieving to Career Change: How Personal, Grief-Inducing Events Affect Work Identity. .....Lidiia Pletneva, London School of Economics
  • Building on an inductive, qualitative study of employees who experienced grief-inducing events such as the termination of a significant relationship as the result of bereavement or the breakup of a strong, committed partnership, this paper explores how and with what consequences such events affect identity and work identity in particular. Using the results of 55 in-depth interviews, I develop a conceptual model of the impact of personal, grief-inducing events on work identity. I find that these events prompt identity humanizing that can take two paths: toward self (in both work and life domains) and toward others (in both work and life domains). Such processes were induced by affective, cognitive, and relational triggers generated by grief-inducing events. In turn, identity humanizing leads to the reallocation of work-life balance resources, career path change, or job crafting behavior. This paper advances theorizing on identity, the meaning of work, and the work-life interface.
  • The Impact of CEO Parenthood Status on Flexible Work Policies and Employee Leave and Turnover Decisions. .....Christina Hymer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • This study examines how CEOs’ parental status shapes employee decisions around parental leave. Drawing on Work-Life Events Theory and Upper Echelons Theory, we argue that CEOs who have children are more likely to draw on their life experiences as a working parent to enact flexible work policies than CEOs who do not have children. In turn, we theorize that employees will feel empowered by these flexible work policies to take parental leave, thereby increasing their organization’s rate of leave-taking employees, and return to the firm following their leave period, lowering the organization’s turnover rates of leave-taking employees. We draw upon publicly available information on CEOs and survey data from the Australian government to test our hypotheses. We apply a time-lagged multilevel mediation model with a sample of 278 CEOs within 218 Australian firms from 2017 through 2020. Our analyses support our partially mediated theoretical model, such that CEO parental status leads to more flexible work policies, which then lead to higher rates of employees taking parental leave. In contrast to our theory, however, we find a similar partially-mediated relationship wherein CEO parental status leads to flexible work policies, which then lead to increased employee turnover rates following parental leave, rather than decreased turnover as we predicted. Taken together, our findings advance research on CEOs’ impact on policies and outcomes pertaining to their firm’s workplace environment, which not only contributes to the diversity, equity, and inclusion literature but also have considerable practical implications for firms in their talent management efforts.
46. Four Day Workweek Redux--Distribution, Issues and Progress [Thematic roundtable with multiple presentations]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 2.445

Organizer: Lonnie Golden, Penn State University - Abington College
Presider: Lonnie Golden, Penn State University - Abington College
  • The Preference Gap for the 4-Day Workweek. .....Lonnie Golden, Penn State University - Abington College
  • From three surveys fielded in 2022 and 2023 using Qualtrics, in US and in two states--Illinois and Pennsylvania—it explores the characteristics of workers whose preferences are for a 4-day workweek. Which full time workers prefer fewer work days per week? Which workers indicate a willingness to sacrifice pay for a 4-day workweek? Are there differences between hourly and salaried workers? Parents vs. non-parents? Household income levels? Genders? Do those who report getting matched with their desired workweek also report relatively higher employment quality rating? Does the preference for reduced and/or compressed workweeks reflect relatively higher or lower employment quality, i.e., does the desire for a shorter workweek reflect workers liking their job or disliking their job? More vs. less meaningful work? Do workers who prefer the four day option report experiencing relatively greater work-family conflict? How might we explain the survey finding that workers express a willingness to sacrifice pay to obtain the four day workweek more so than for any other benefit or working condition.
  • Does work time reduction improve workers' well-being? Evidence from global four-day workweek trials. .....Wen Fan, Boston College; Juliet Schor, Boston College; Orla Kelly, University College Dublin; and Guolin Gu, Boston College
  • Overarching questions/concerns: Time spent on the job is a fundamental aspect of working conditions that influences many aspects of individuals’ lives. Despite growing intervention research on work time reduction, these studies have mainly been limited to public sector employees in Northern Europe or employees in a single company, which limits the generalizability of the results. In this ground-breaking research, we study how an organization-wide four-day workweek intervention—with no reduction in pay—affects workers’ well-being. Statement on methods: Participating organizations undergo pre-trial work reorganization to improve efficiency and collaboration, followed by a six-month four-day workweek trial. We analyze data collected from 2,134 employees in 123 organizations located in six countries before and after the trial. Important findings: - The trial leads to improvements in multiple measures of subjective well-being, including burnout, job satisfaction, positive affect, mental health, and physical health. - Larger reductions in individuals' weekly hours predict greater gains in well-being outcomes. - Mediation analysis indicates that three factors significantly contribute to the relationship between reduced working hours and increased well-being: improvements in self-reported work ability, reductions in sleep problems, and decreased levels of fatigue. Implications for research, policy and/or practice: Contributing to existing research, our study reveals that the well-being benefits of reduced work time are not unique to a particular industry or sector but have broader relevance for many workers across multiple regions. In addition, our study highlights that an organization-wide reduction in job demands can stimulate workers to adjust and optimize their work processes, leading to improved perceived work ability and well-being. Given the dual benefits of perceived productivity and well-being, removing constraints on work time is a promising avenue for the future of work.
  • Time for What They Will: Changes in Work Hours and Time Spent on Non-Work Activities, 2003-2022. .....Joe Peck, Urban Institute
  • Joe Peck, from the Urban Institute in DC, will explore the differences in time use allocations by hours worked. It distinguishes between "productive" and "nonproductive" (including pure leisure) time repercussions. It finds nuanced differences in the amount of time sacrificed for more work hours by gender, race/ethnicity, part/full time and parental status. Inferences are made for reducing or compressing workweeks.
  • Reduced and Compressed Work Weeks and Their Gendered Impacts.. .....Maria Foggia, York University
  • Questions and Concerns The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic ushered in a rethinking of traditional workplace arrangements. In Canada, shortened and compressed work schedules have been one such response to the changing landscapes of work following the pandemic. Trials across Canada and beyond suggest an array of positive impacts and improvements in workers’ experiences and perceptions of work. Interviews with thirty workplaces operating on reduced and compressed four day arrangements were structured around overarching questions of productivity, performance, retention, improvements in work-life balance, mental and/or physical health, and gendered experiences. In particular, whether a recalibration of work and life through work week reduction or compression could form part of an effective response to social issues within the workplace and beyond. These issues broadly include alleviation of burnout and job stress, domestic and childcare labour disparities between men and women, and improvement of labour market outcomes and economic equality. Methods A literature review was conducted over a one-year period, between July 1st, 2022 and June 30th, 2023. Based on this review, semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty employers to determine how and if reduced and compressed arrangements responded to overarching questions and concerns. The interview was designed to answer questions related to a broad range of potential benefits and challenges, including but not limited to, improvements in mental and/or physical health, environmental benefits, work-life balance, impacts upon specific groups of workers, and the future of the four day work week based on the participant’s experience. However, participants were not strictly limited to the boundaries of the interview questions, and were welcomed and encouraged to share more if they felt it was important to do so. Approximately one-half of participants were drawn from the private sector, with the other half drawn from the not-for-profit and public sectors. The duration of time since implementing shortened and compressed work schedules ranged from a low of six-months to three decades, with most averaging over a year. Important findings An improvement among women in reduction of burnout and job stress was reported by interview participants. As suggested in the literature review stage, many women participants noted increased utilization of time to engage in labour market activities and career learning opportunities outside of their regular work responsibilities. This included additional training, certification, and mentorship. Parents, specifically mothers, noted a reduction in feelings of guilt from being split between their career, childcare and home responsibilities. Parents reported feelings of achievement in their personal and family lives as a result of increased time off to rest, with some participants reporting feeling like they had more time to work on their interpersonal relationships. Parents were better able to attend to various needs of both themselves and their children, including medical appointments, pick-ups and drop-offs from school and extra-curriculars Many employers were aware and motivated not only by potential productivity and talent recruitment benefits, but equally by the human benefits offered to employees who are parents, employees with disabilities, and employees with medical concerns that require greater flexibility, among many other groups of workers. Compressed work weeks showed only a slight decrease in flexibility for parents compared to reduced work weeks. Out of thirty employers interviewed, only one cited an instance where extended work hours reduced an employee’s ability to complete daycare drop-offs and pick-ups. Implications for research, policy and/or practice The future of the four day work week and other flexible arrangements that reduce work hours suggest an array of human health, interpersonal and social benefits, as well as economic and potential environmental promise. This study examines successes and challenges in trials across Canada, identifying and exploring its impacts upon workers at large and specific groups of workers, including but not limited to, gendered participants. With further exploration, the four day work week can contribute to a future of work that is attuned to human well-being.
  • Emerging Four Day Work Week Trends in Australia: New Insights. .....John Hopkins, Swinburne University of Technology
  • Emerging Four Day Work Week Trends in Australia: New Insights John Hopkins - Detailed Abstract Overarching questions/concerns The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way many employees, and employers, think about the location and timing of work. In the aftermath of what many called ‘the world’s biggest work from home experiment’ (Banjo et al., 2020; Moglia et al., 2021), there has been a significant increase in demand for flexible work arrangements (FWA), from employees pursuing a better work-life balance. One such FWA is the 4-day work week, an idea which can be traced back to the 1970s (Coote et al., 2021; Hedges, 1971; Jahal et al., 2024) - when the oil crisis forced companies into reduced work schedules - which is now attracting widespread attention again form firms around the world. The traditional 4-day work week typically takes the form of a ‘compressed week’ where the same number of work hours are compressed over few days. For example, 40 hours worked over 4 days instead of 5, resulting in 4 longer workdays. However, an alternative form of 4-day work week is now emerging called the 100:80:100 model, which not only reduces the number of days an employee works but also the number of overall hours. The 100:80:100 model works on the understanding that employees are paid 100% of their normal wage, for working 80% of their previous number of hours, in exchange for their commitment to maintaining 100% productivity (WEF, 2023). The existence of this 100:80:100 model emerged during a previous research project and provided the motivation for this current investigation. Therefore, we were interested in learning more about this new work model, in an attempt to answer the following research question: RQ1 – What are the key benefits, challenges, and characteristics, of the 100:80:100 model? Statement on methods Guided by the findings and themes identified during a recent scoping review (Jahal et al., 2024), this research adopts a semi-structured interview method, to gain a deeper understanding of the 100:80:100 model from managers who have been involved in leading transitions to this way of working. The investigation consisted of n=12 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted via video conferencing platform Microsoft Teams, between February 2023 and January 2024. Semi-structured interviews were identified as being the appropriate research method for this investigation, due to their versatility and ability to capture both qualitative and quantitative data, and the flexibility they offer in terms of enabling improvised lines of questioning based upon the nature of the responses received from participants. Important findings • The 4-day work week offers a wide range of potential benefits for both employers and employees, • Not restricted to knowledge workers, • Can be implement for client-facing workers, • Costs and/or additional staff may be required, • Planning, piloting, training, and iterating are all considerations for achieving successful 4-day workweek arrangements, • It’s not the 1970s anymore, and the landscape has changed, earlier research is still valid but new studies are needed. Implications for research and practice This research has implications for both academic scholars and practitioners. It is hoped that the key themes and characteristics identified and discussed will inform future researchers and guide them in identifying appropriate research gaps worthy of further investigation, whilst contributing to the limited post-Covid literature available on this topic. With rising demand for flexible work arrangements, these findings offer managers an insight into the potential viability of a 4-day workweek and the type of benefits they might expect, as well as the challenges they are likely to face if they wish to adopt it. The 4-day workweek is a versatile FWA, which can be implemented outside of the realms of traditional knowledge work, to improve the work-life balance of frontline workers who may feel left behind by the increases in workplace flexibility being enjoyed by their office-based colleagues. References Banjo, S., Yap, L., Murphy, C., & Chan, V. (2020). The world’s biggest work-from-home experiment. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/coronavirus-forces-world-s-largest-work-from-home-experiment Coote, A., Harper, A., & Stirling, A. (2021). The case for a four-day week. Polity Press Cambridge, UK. Hedges, J. N. (1971). A look at the 4-day workweek. Monthly Labor Review, 94(10), 33-37. Jahal, T., Bardoel, E. A., & Hopkins, J. (2024). Could the 4‐day week work? A scoping review. Asia pacific journal of human resources. Moglia, M., Hopkins, J., & Bardoel, A. (2021). Telework, Hybrid Work and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Policy Coherence. Sustainability, 13(16), 9222. WEF. (2023). The world’s biggest trial of the four day work week has come to an end. These are the results. World Economic Forum Retrieved 10/03/2023 from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/four-day-work-week-uk-trial/
47. Health Determinants and Outcomes Across Varied Work-Family Arrangements [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.210

Presider: Soo Min Toh, University of Toronto - Rotman School
  • Performance at Work and at Home: An Exploratory Analysis of the Role of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the Diets of Working Parents. .....Soo Min Toh, University of Toronto - Rotman School; Julie McCarthy, University of Toronto; Cilia Mejia-Lancheros, Institue for Better Health; Jess Haines, University of Guelph; and David Ma, University of Guelph
  • As the world grapples with a cost-of-living crisis and the threat of food insecurity, understanding how workers’ diet affects their health and engagement at work and homes is paramount. Food can be beneficial in promoting well-being and role performance at work and at home. Among dietary nutrients, omega-3 fatty acids (FA) have been shown to reduce depression, anxiety, and stress. The role of omega-3 FA, commonly found in seafood and supplements, in replenishing and building mental and physical resources necessary to engage with work and home responsibilities is poorly understood. This exploratory study examined associations between omega-3 FA in working parents’ diets and their performance, ability to fulfill responsibilities and duties in the workplace and at home, and the mediating role of their mental health status. We examined the 3-day diet records, depressive symptoms, and performance of 146 parents of 82 one- or two-parent families from the Guelph Family Health Study. Pathway analysis was performed using Mplus. Results showed an indirect and positive role of omega-3 FA intake on parents’ working and family performance through diet’s influence on depressive symptoms. Furthermore, this association varied by biological sex and females with greater omega-3 FA intake had lower depressive symptoms. These findings advance work-family research highlighting diet as a potential influence on role performance. Specifically, it highlights the need for adequate omega-3 FA intake so that working parents are equipped to function successfully at home and at work.
  • Precarious Lives, Precarious Work: Social Determinants of Racialized Immigrant Men’s Mental Health. .....Salmaan Khan, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • A pilot study sought to shed light on the impacts of precarious working conditions (unpredictable work schedules, long hours, low-wages, and unsteady contract work) on the mental health of racialized immigrant men. Interviews and focus groups with a sample of racialized men working in precarious jobs, unearthed the intersectional nexus of social forces related to race and gender roles, in addition to their work arrangement, that negatively impacted their sense of wellbeing and mental health. Many of the men dealt with work related stress through substance use issues which in turn had consequences for their relationships with their spouse and children. The men we spoke with lamented the lack of a relationship they have with their children because of their work situation, but also showed an awareness of dominant notions of masculinity and gender roles that only further exacerbated the situation and which equally contributed to shaping how they dealt with work stress and uncertainty. This study is significant in drawing attention to underlying systemic social and economic issues that need to be addressed when considering policies and practices aimed at fostering more healthy parent-child relationships as well spousal relationships. As it stands these topics, with respect to members from racialized communities, have tended to be discussed and addressed in predominantly culturalist terms; in terms of identifying limitations in existing cultural practices or norms.
  • Change and Heterogeneity in Women’s and Men’s Experienced Well-Being. .....Liana Sayer, University of Maryland, College Park; Kelsey Drotning, U.S. Census Bureau; and Sarah Flood, University of Minnesota
  • The pandemic has caused sharp disruptions in work and family patterns and exacerbated chronic and life stressors for individuals and families. Women have also experienced greater care burdens and impacts on employment compared with men. How the pandemic has affected women’s and men’s experienced well-being (EWB) during daily activities is unclear, however. This is a critical gap because of the robust influences of EWB across the life course on health. The uneven experience of pandemic-related stress and strain across population sub-groups may be exacerbating pre-pandemic inequities in EWB. We use the 2010-2013 and 2021 American Time Use Survey and Well-Being Module data to investigate how EWB changed during the Pandemic and how change varies by gender, employment, and family status. We assess change in EWB averaged across activities and experienced during episodes of paid work, household and care work, and leisure activities. Our results show that women and men report more fatigue and less meaning in 2021 whereas stress, pain, sadness, and happiness are similar before and during the Pandemic. Employed women report higher fatigue and less happiness and meaning compared with men and unemployed women. Documenting changing patterns of gender differences in EWB across daily activities for employed and not-employed adults contributes by providing richer and more nuanced evidence about the extent and nature of gender inequality in well-being during the pandemic.
  • Caring for Autism: Exploring the Work-Life Balance of Employed Caregivers. .....Esther Canonico, Imperial College London; and Daniela Lup, ECSP Business School
  • Issues surrounding autism in the workplace affect not only individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but also their carers. Grounded in the work-life interface literature, this qualitative study aims to examine the impact of caring for individuals with ASD on the work domain. While there are some existing studies that have explored the repercussions of caring for individuals with disabilities on work-life balance (Brown & Clark, 2017; Hodgetts et al., 2014), the available research is limited. Prior research has provided evidence of the substantial costs borne by caregivers of individuals with autism, encompassing diminished productivity, missed career opportunities, and reduced income (e.g., Montes & Halterman, 2008; Ganz, 2007). However, little is known about how caring for someone with ASD can affect caregivers' experience at work, their work-life balance, and associated work-related attitudes, such as job engagement, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and organizational commitment (Hurley-Hanson et al., 2020). To address this limitation, we conduct in-depth interviews with working carers, including parents and spouses, of individuals with ASD. The insights gained from this study will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by caregivers of individuals with ASD and the impact on their professional lives.
48. Flexible Work Arrangements: Experiences and Impacts [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.265

Presider: Stephanie Chan-Ahuja, London Business School
  • Remote Work and Gender Inequalities in Paid Work: the Role of Norms. .....Olga Leshchenko, University of Konstanz
  • Flexible working arrangements in terms of work location aim to allow employees to balance work and private domains of life. Nonetheless, there is evidence that flexible working can lead to the expansion of paid labor rather than life beyond work, i.e., a phenomenon named the flexibility paradox (Chung, 2022). Research shows that this pattern might depend on gender identification, with women increasing unpaid work contributions and men increasing their paid work contributions when working flexibly (Lott & Chung, 2016; Chung & Booker, 2023). Some small-N studies show that these findings are not universal but depend on the individual’s work or family devotion (Lott, 2023) and attitudes toward gender roles (Leshchenko & Chung, 2023; Yucel & Chung, 2023). This study goes beyond single-country analysis and examines how contextual gender and work norms moderate the relationship between remote work arrangements and paid working hours for men and women. It uses individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2021) and aggregated country-level data from the European Values Study and World Values Survey on work and gender norms. It applies linear regression with clustered standard errors. The preliminary results indicate that on-site employees work more hours than those working remotely in countries with high work devotion. In countries with higher support for more traditional gender roles, women work fewer hours if they have access to remote work compared to women working on-site, which contributes to the gender gap in work hours.
  • Remote Socialization: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India. .....Stephanie Chan-Ahuja, London Business School
  • Overarching questions/concerns In the past few years, remote working has proliferated across the labor market. From the demand side, job seekers have strong preferences for remote working arrangements (Woźniak-Jęchorek, 2024). From the supply side, offering remote work enables global talent acquisition and increases the diversity of job applicants (Choudhury, 2022; Hsu & Tambe, 2024). As a result, organizations in general, and startups in particular, have been experimenting with being fully remote, where entire organizations are “location-independent” (Rhymer, 2023). In understanding workers’ experiences in fully remote organizations, the remote working literature offers mixed findings. On the one hand, a large body of work finds that employees who work remotely, compared to those working in an office setting, have higher subjective well-being, and lower work-family conflict, among other psychological benefits (e.g., Gajendran & Harrison, 2007; Kelly et al., 2014; Sherman, 2020). On the other hand, more recent research on remote working has found negative work consequences, such as siloed conversations and lower performance (Atkin et al., 2023; Bloom et al., 2022; Emanuel et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2022). I argue that one potential explanation for these opposing results lies in the socialization process of newcomers. Critically, the existing research has almost exclusively studied employees who have been socialized into the organization in an office setting prior to remote working. For example, in the canonical remote working experiment conducted by Bloom and colleagues (2015), participants were required to have worked in the office for 6-months to be eligible for the study. In my job market paper, I study whether starting a job in the office versus remotely influences the newcomers’ socialization experiences and outcomes. Statement on Methods I created a company called Data Lumina to conduct a field experiment in Pune, India (AEA RCT Pre-registration #12248; https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12248-1.0; ethical approval by London Business School Committee #REC892). Participants provided consent to participate in an academic study. The decision to create a company for research purposes was to maximize the internal and external validity of the research. By employing real employees, the study achieved high external validity as the study participants were real employees working for wages. Moreover, I had full control over the study design and data collection process, including the ability to randomize employees into experimental conditions, contributing to high internal validity. I hired employees (hereafter, “participants”) for a three-to-four-week period. Employees were recruited online and have recently graduated from college or will soon graduate from college. During their employment, participants engaged in a data annotation task to classify texts from interview transcripts, a task which involved critical thinking, ambiguity, and learning, while having a clear performance measure. Given that participants worked at the company for several weeks, I was able to collect repeated survey measures each week, which allowed for more precise estimations as well as the ability to monitor changes over time. I randomly assigned new hires into Remote or Office conditions with equal probability. For the first three weeks of the study, participants in the Remote condition worked remotely whereas participants in the Office condition worked from the office. For the fourth week, participants in both conditions worked remotely. My final sample composed of 235 participants, with 125 participants in the Remote condition and 110 participants in the Office condition. To assess newcomers’ experiences and outcomes, I measured socialization success, work-life conflict, performance, and retention. To measure socialization success, I surveyed participants each week using a socialization measure, which captured the three key factors of socialization: company, task, and relationship (Cooper-Thomas et al., 2014, 2020). Also on a weekly basis, I surveyed participants on their work-to-family and family-to-work conflict (Netemeyer, Boles, and McMurrian 1996). To measure performance, I collected unobtrusive data on the quantity and quality of participants’ work. Additionally, they completed a self-reported measure of performance each week (Sherman, 2020). To measure retention, after participants had worked for three weeks, they reported their willingness to stay as well as their reservation wage (i.e., the lowest salary they were willing to work for). Finally, I also captured a number of other organizational behavior and demographic measures. Important Findings (Preliminary) - Participants in the Remote condition reported significantly lower levels of socialization for the relationship factor (b = -.335, p < .000) with no statistical difference in participants’ socialization with regards to the company (b = .036, p = .767) and the task (b = .039, p = .627). - There were no statistical differences in family-to-work conflict (b = -.05, p = .632) between conditions but Remote participants experienced significantly lower work-to-family conflict (b = -.36, p = .002). - Remote participants classified 35% fewer passages per day compared to Office participants (p = .000). Interestingly, there were no differences in self-reported performance (b = -0.014, p = 0.869). - Although there was no difference in the binary measure of willingness to stay (b = .049, p = .329), participants from the Remote condition provided a significantly lower reservation wage to work for an additional week (b = -208.66, p = .008). - 182 participants stayed for the fourth week of their employment and worked remotely. I find that Office participants, while completing marginally fewer passages than the prior week (t = 1.92, p = .056), continued to complete a significantly higher number of passages than Remote participants (b = 63.68, p = .020), with no changes in self-rated performance. Implications for future research, policy, and/or practice This study contributes to the work flexibility literature by deepening our understanding of remote working among demographic subgroups such as new hires. Moreover, I also advance the socialization literature by assessing the role of colocation when joining an organization. By running a field experiment, I provided a rigorous empirical test of the research question. Moreover, this study has immediate implications for practice as organizational leaders continue to grapple with designing the optimal remote working policy. This paper suggests that new hires could benefit from socializing in the office and organizations could consider designing a remote working policy that accommodates newcomers.
  • Dynamic Configurations: How Changing Patterns of Team Members’ Locations Shape Individual and Team Outcomes. .....Aurora Turek, Harvard University - Business School; Salvatore Affinito, Harvard University - Business School; Ashley Whillans, Harvard University - Business School; Leslie Perlow, Harvard University - Business School; and Preeti Varma, INSEAD
  • 1. Overarching questions/concerns: Remote work has become more prevalent in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading many organizations to adopt hybrid work models that blend in-office and remote work to varying degrees. Yet, prior research has identified both advantages and challenges faced by individuals and teams in remote work settings, suggesting that there are tradeoffs to be considered in different hybrid work arrangements. We explore how the tradeoffs between remote and in-office work are balanced in various hybrid work arrangements by examining where individuals work in relation to one another and how these configurations change over time within each type of arrangement. 2. Statement on methods: We review the virtual work literature, with a specific focus on how existing research addresses team configurations - i.e., where team members work in relation to one another - and their implications for both individuals and teams. 3. Important findings: - The virtual work literature illuminates important tradeoffs between remote and in-office work for both individuals and teams. For remote and in-office individuals, key tradeoffs include balancing work and non-work lives, developing social and professional relationships, and knowledge sharing. These individual-level outcomes have significant implications for teams, affecting coordination, conflict, trust, and innovation. - Hybrid work offers the potential to balance the tradeoffs between remote and in-office work, but due to the wide variety of possible hybrid work arrangements, it's necessary to take a configurational perspective to understand how to achieve this balance. Specifically, we suggest that it is crucial to consider how team configurations vary over time to effectively manage these tradeoffs. - We identify the key dimensions along which hybrid work arrangements can vary and provide examples of how team configurations change over time according to these dimensions. -We suggest that different hybrid work arrangements vary in their ability to balance the tradeoffs of remote and in-office work for individuals and teams, depending on the patterns of how team configurations change over time. 4. Implications for research, policy, and/or practice: Implications for Research: Existing literature on virtual teams often examines team configurations as static. We suggest that future research exploring the implications of remote work in today’s hybrid work environments should consider the dynamic nature of team configurations, as different patterns of configurations over time may yield different outcomes. Implications for Policy and Practice: When developing hybrid work policies, leaders should recognize the wide variety of hybrid work arrangements and how they balance remote and in-office work tradeoffs. Leaders should carefully consider these tradeoffs to select arrangements that best align with their organizational goals and maximize the benefits for both employees and the organization.
  • Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Flexible Working Arrangements: Investigating the Role of Ideal Worker Norms. .....Antje Schwarz, Bielefeld University
  • Overarching questions/concerns This research in progress examines the association between flexible working (schedule control and telework) and the willingness to perform organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), as the willingness to take on extra responsibilities in the workplace without being paid, in 30 European countries. The study asks (1) how flexible working is associated with the willingness to perform OCB? And (2) whether the implications of flexible working differ between organizational contexts of expectations of work devotion? Drawing on the social exchange theory, the ideal worker norm theory, and the job demands-resources model (J D-R), the study considers organizational expectations of working overtime and being responsive outside working hours as moderators. Statement on methods A multi-level analysis is conducted using data from the European Social Survey (10). Important findings (bulleted list) The results indicate • a higher willingness to perform OCB for employees who are working flexibly. • that higher perceived expectations of being responsive outside working hours go along with higher OCB. • that higher perceived expectations of working overtime show no significant relationship in the total sample but go along with lower OCB in the subsample of employees in full-time arrangements. • a stronger OCB-enhancing effect of the expectations to be responsive outside working hours for employees without any schedule control compared to employees with schedule control. Implications for research, policy and/or practice The findings support the notion that flexible working arrangements support OCB. Overall, the findings differ by dimensions of ideal worker norms and working hours.
  • Does Working From Home Lead to Higher Employment of Parents? Evidence From Europe.. .....Magdalena Grabowska, University of Warsaw; Anna Kurowska, University of Warsaw; and Anna Matysiak, University of Warsaw
  • Overarching questions The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused a tremendous increase in the share of employees working from home (WFH) in all European countries. Many studies have recently investigated how WFH affects workers’ career opportunities, such as promotion or salary increase, showing that even in the post-pandemic context, WFH negatively affects workers’ career outcomes. Little is known, however, whether this mode of work has the potential to increase the presence of parents in paid employment. This is possible as WFH may allow persons with care obligations, particularly mothers, to enter employment even though it is related to lower promotion opportunities or salary than onsite work. This paper aims to fill this research gap. We use data from 11 European countries and proceed in two steps. First, we adopt a macro-level approach and study the relationship between the spread of WFH in a country and parental employment rates. Second, we move to the micro-level and examine whether the availability of WFH at the country level influences the transitions of individuals between non-employment and employment. We stratify both analyses by gender and parenthood status in order to determine whether the availability of WFH in the country differently affects the employment opportunities of mothers, fathers, and childless individuals. Statement on methods We address our research questions using the data from 2006-2019 from the Labor Force Survey for 11 European countries. Our sample consists of countries where the average share of occasional or permanent teleworkers exceeds 10% throughout the study period. This applies to 8 Western countries (i.e., Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, the UK, and the Netherlands) and 3 CEE countries (i.e., Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia). Our sample choice is based on the assumption that only in countries with relatively widespread access to teleworking might the impact of WFH spread significantly influence the employment rates or individual employment decisions. The analysis uses both macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives. First, we estimate the fixed-effects panel data model for employment rates of parents and childless individuals using country-aggregated data. Next, we estimate logistic regressions to examine individual transitions between unemployment or being inactive and employment using individual-level data. Our main explanatory variable in both models is the share of workers in a country working from home at least sometimes. Since the increasing availability of WFH is presumably noticed by individuals with a delay and changing employment status requires time, we include a one-year lag of this variable in our models. Apart from that, we control for several contextual variables. These are childcare coverage, unemployment rate, the mean age of the adult population, the share of people with higher education, and proxy for gender role attitudes. The last variable is constructed based on a question from the European Values Survey. In addition, for our microanalysis, we introduce a set of individual variables, including sex, age, having a partner, having higher education, and the age of the youngest child. Both macro- and micro-level analyses are stratified by gender and parenthood status, meaning we run separate models for parents, mothers, fathers, and the childless. Important findings - The employment rates for parents are higher in countries with the higher spread of WFH although this relationship is driven by maternal employment. If we consider only fathers, the relationship is not significant. - The employment rate of childless individuals is also positively related to the spread of WFH although the effect is smaller and almost non-significant. - Parents are more likely to enter employment in countries with higher WFH spread. The effect is similar in size for mothers and fathers while it remains insignificant for childless individuals. - For fathers, increased WFH spread also decreases the probability of transitioning from employment to unemployment or being inactive. We do not observe a similar effect for mothers or childless individuals. Implications for research, policy, and practice In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has undoubtedly accelerated the implementation of various labor market regulations regarding teleworking, studying the potential effects of increased access to WFH is of major importance. Our results shed new light on the advantages of working from home from the workers' perspective. The increased availability of WFH positively influences parental employment in terms of country-level employment rates as well as individual chances of transitioning into employment. Therefore, widening access to telework can potentially enhance parents' employment. This, in turn, would benefit the whole economy as parents form a sizeable proportion of the labor force. However, it is worth noting that the cultural context, including the social attitudes toward gender roles, might moderate the magnitude of the effect of WFH spread. Particularly, we anticipate that in countries with more traditional norms regarding gender division increased availability of WFH might not be as important for maternal employment as in more egalitarian societies. Thus, there is a need for further research in different social contexts and on post-pandemic data.
49. Paid Leave Policies and Perceptions [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.270

Presider: Tracey Freiberg, St. John&#x27;s University
  • Parental Leave Policies Presentation in Media: A Comparative Analysis of Croatia and Montenegro. .....Branko Bošković, University of Donja Gorica
  • Parental leave policies play an important role in child’s and parents’ well-being and there is an interest in their effects on fertility behavior. Different policy approaches may result in differing outcomes, but there is a lack of analysis of the perception of parental leave in the media. Media discourse may move from justifying and pro-natalist to more restrictive and protective. Research of the prospective impact it may have on welfare and inequality, especially related to women, is missing. The analysis will look at the leading portals in Croatia and Montenegro and it will focus on the major framing and understanding of parental leave. The two countries have different parental leave policies. Croatia is a European Union member state and Montenegro is a candidate country and it is important to see how leading media in these countries report on parental leave policies. Period from 2017 to 2023 will be covered so the major policy changes are included as well as a period of the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis will inspect a discourse, frequency and framing and it will look at how a discourse is shaped: whether it is political, economic, social or influenced by other factors. It will be compared with the major trends in welfare and inequality, to see if there is a correlation between them. This approach can be an example of the theoretical and empirical analysis that can be applied in different contexts, to see whether media influence perception and use of the parental leave.
  • Debt Crises in a Gendered Economy: Paid Leave as a Social Safety Net for Vulnerable American Households. .....Tracey Freiberg, St. John's University
  • As the formalized global workforce has become more inclusive, it is more common to see households outside of the traditional male breadwinner model, leaving a benefits hole for many Americans. As such, mainstream conceptions of household debt have inadequately captured the sources and, subsequently, sufficient solutions for questions of economic security in the United States. Specifically, states with paid family and medical leave programs (PFML) attempt to shift the responsibility of reproductive work to a shared responsibility with employers, instead of fully on individuals. While PFML in the US is gender neutral in language, usage is overwhelmingly female, seemingly providing a safety net for dual income and female-led households in the form of partial wage replacement. Using the Survey of Income Program Participation, I examine household debt levels in PFML states, versus their non-PFML counterparts. While PFML programs notoriously only provide financial benefits for Americans in formalized employment, and therefore ignore the reproductive work done by full-time (unpaid) caretakers, I aim to show that while PFML may lessen burdens of short-term household debt, PFML ultimately is an insufficient tool for US household debt alleviation, in its current form, as its claimants often come from vulnerable households and work in industries that routinely punish caretakers. Yet, when promoted and used as a part of a larger set of policies for economic stability, paid leave programs may help strike a better balance between work and life constraints.
  • The 2021 Baby Boom in Iceland: Exploring the Role of a Parental Leave Reform and the COVID-19 Pandemic. .....Ásdís Arnalds, University of Iceland; Ari Klængur Jónsson, University of Iceland; and Sunna Símonardóttir, University of Iceland
  • In 2021, during the hight of the COVID-19 pandemic, the total fertility rate in Iceland rose unexpectedly from 1.72 to 1.82. The increased number of births followed an important reform in the Icelandic paid parental leave scheme, which included an expansion of the leave from 10 to 12 months. Analysis of data from Statistics Iceland and focus group interviews with parents who had a child in 2021 were used to explore if and how the parental leave reform and the societal changes related to the pandemic shaped parents’ decision to have a child in 2021. As the rise in fertility was short-lived, the results indicate that the baby boom of 2021 can hardly be explained by the parental leave reform. Rather, at least for educated women, who already had children and were in a good financial state, it seems that the pandemic created a favourable atmosphere for having a child. Parents’ narratives from the focus group interviews suggest that the pandemic might have been a good time to start or add to the family because of the increased time spent at home and the limited involvement in social activities outside the home.
  • Perceptions of Workplace Support for Paid Parental Leave Use in Iceland. .....Ásdís Arnalds, University of Iceland
  • The presentation places focus on perceived support for the use of paid parental leave in Iceland, a country that has offered non-transferable leave for fathers for over 20 years. Iceland provides a unique setting for such research, given the country’s long tradition of emphasizing both parents’ participation in work and care. Although most fathers use their right to take paid parental, about 20% of fathers in Iceland use no leave at all. The presented study aims to explore whether workplace practices and attitudes create hindrances for fathers’ leave use. The findings are based on analysis of comprehensive survey data among employees in Iceland. A special emphasis is placed on examining how leave is perceived to be supported by supervisors and co-workers and to understand respondents’ own attitudes towards the leave use of male and female employees. The findings show that although the vast majority of respondents predict that supervisors and co-workers would support both mothers and fathers in their use of paid parental leave, mothers were perceived to receive greater support than fathers. The gender difference in perceived support was especially evident in workplaces where the majority of employees were male. Thus, the findings indicate that workplace attitudes might create hindrances for fathers’ leave use.
50. Contextualizing Work-Family Conflict: Considering Class and COVID-19 [Paper Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.430

Presider: Marisa Young, McMaster University
  • An Eight-Wave Study of Manager Burnt-Out Risk in New Zealand: Is Covid-19 Impacting Managers Still?. .....Jarrod Haar, Massey University; and David Brougham, Massey University
  • Job burnout refers to a work-related state of exhaustion, characterized by tiredness, lower cognitive and emotional processes, and cynicism. The Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) is unique because a high burnt-out risk can be calculated, representing severe burnout levels. The present study focuses on managers due to their importance in the workplace, not only in decision making, but also due to contagion effects on followers. A quasi-natural experiment was achieved due to studying manager burnout immediately before Covid-19 lockdown in New Zealand (February 2020), immediately post-lockdown (May 2020), and then roughly every six months: December 2020, April 2021, November 2021, May 2022, December 2022, and June 2023. These were paid panels (each wave is unique) between n=268-505. Each study included the BAT plus high work demands with odds ratios calculated. The burnt-out risk rate was 19.5% (February 2020), 20.6% (May 2020), 25.2% (December 2020), 32.7% (April 2021), 52.1% (November 2021), 31.4% (May 2022), 25.9% (December 2022), and 27.2% (June 2023). This provides evidence that high burnt-out risk grew steadily and peaked in late 2021 but remain stubbornly high. Currently, around a quarter of managers are working while burnt-out. High work demands are key, with significant odds ratios towards burnt-out risk of 6.7/5.6/7.8/4.6/3.2/4.6/3.7/10.1 times the risk. The findings suggest managers as a group might be suffering a serious impediment to their well-being, through managing massive change not only through COVID-19, but also managing working-from-home expansion. This group needs greater organizational support and attention to their well-being for their personal and organizational futures.
  • Work-to Family Conflict or Family-to Work Conflict? Variations in Work Family Conflict on Women's Mental Well-Being By Class.. .....Berglind Hólm Ragnarsdóttir, University of Akureyri; Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir, University of Iceland; and Andrea Hjálmsdóttir, University of Akureyri
  • In this presentation we report findings from a study where we estimate the effect of work-family conflict on women’s mental well-being and explore whether that relationship is contingent on class. Prior research finds that high levels of work-family conflict negatively impact women’s well-being. However, most research concentrates on women of high socio-economic status. Variation in the effects of work-family conflict across socio-economic class has been understudied. Moreover, most estimates of work-family conflict do not distinguish between the differing effects of work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, two directional components of work-family conflict that have different antecedents and consequences. We use data from a cross-sectional phone survey conducted on a sample of Icelandic women in spring 2022. Key findings include: i) work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict both have a direct effect on symptoms of anxiety and depression for all women, ii) when we introduce the interaction term for class we find that work-to-family conflict increases symptoms of anxiety and depression across the class spectrum, but, iii) the effect of family-to-work conflict is contingent on class position. Working-class women are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety due to family-to-work conflict than women of intermediate or salariat class. These findings underline the importance of including class-structures in research on work-family conflict and not ignoring class disparities in women’s resources and barriers when it comes to juggling work and family. Moreover, these findings demonstrate the need to consider both work-to-family conflict as well as family-to-work conflict in research on work and family.
  • The Impact of COVID-19 on Childcare and Gender Equity. .....Alicia Modestino, Northeastern University; Jamie Ladge, Northeastern University; Alisa Lincoln, Northeastern University; and Zachary Finn, Northeastern University
  • Overarching questions/concerns The COVID-19 pandemic was labeled by some to be a “She-cession” due to the disproportionate impact on women workers who were more likely to be employed in industries and occupations that suffered large job losses during the subsequent recession. At the same time, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented disruption to caregiving as daycares and schools were closed, exposing the critical link between childcare and the labor market. Prior research has tried to disentangle the differential impact of COVID-19 on the labor market outcomes and well-being of mothers due to the disproportionate allocation of childcare responsibilities, using variations in lockdown, school and daycare closures or comparing households with children of different ages as a proxy for caregiving responsibilities. However, these approaches are unable to separately identify the differential impact of the pandemic on female labor outcomes caused by the childcare shock versus the COVID recession due to the endogeneity of household decision making. To address this shortcoming, we use a national panel survey to directly ask working parents if they lost a job or reduced their hours solely due to childcare and then compare the experiences of households that had a greater exposure to the childcare shock based on their pre-pandemic characteristics. We also estimate the degree to which households had access to and utilized employer benefits to alleviate the effects of childcare responsibilities on labor market outcomes. Finally, we examine whether the lack of childcare during the pandemic differentially affected maternal well-being including sleep qualify, job satisfaction, psychological distress, and parental stress. Statement on methods To answer these questions, we conducted a national panel survey of roughly 2,500 working parents Mother’s Day (May 10) and Father’s Day (June 21) of 2020. The survey included various categories of questions, including individual demographic and household characteristics, household time use before and during the pandemic, changes in work status and the causes of such changes, pre-existing and new employer benefit policies and practices, and changes in individual physical and mental well-being. We directly asked respondents whether adverse labor outcomes experienced during the pandemic were caused by the lack of childcare compared to other factors, as well as how childcare decisions were made during this unique moment in time. To separately identify the impacts of the pandemic on labor outcomes due solely to childcare, we create an affected group individuals who are more likely to be exposed to this negative shock that includes single parents and parents with working spouses who have a child under the age of 10 living in the household. Then to test our research questions, we run a series of OLS regressions looking at the joint impact of being in the affected group and female on the likelihood of experiencing adverse labor outcomes, whether employer policies alleviated these outcomes, as well as mental health indicators such as psychological distress or job satisfaction. Throughout, we control for various demographic and labor characteristics, including race, age, income, education, school closure, access to backup childcare, job type, and industry. Important findings During the onset of the pandemic, women significantly increased time spent per week on schoolwork and playing with children as well as cooking and cleaning. Men saw marginal increases in time spent cooking and cleaning. Although moms were more likely to experience both job loss compared and hours reductions to dads, working mothers in the affected group were disproportionately more likely to have only reduced their hours worked due to childcare responsibilities compared to those with less exposure to the childcare shock. Although moms experienced a variety of declines in well-being compared to dads, working mothers in the affected group were only more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs. Although roughly one-quarter of working parents had access to paid family leave, fewer than 4 percent of working parents used this benefit during the early months of the pandemic. Neither standard policies aimed at lessening adverse labor outcomes, such as family or medical leave, nor newer policies such as childcare subsidies or the ability to work from home, were effective in alleviating the adverse labor market outcomes experienced by working mothers in the affected group. Implications for research, policy and/or practice We learn that gender dynamics and childcare responsibilities played a significant role in the gender differences seen in labor outcomes during the pandemic. This can help to inform future policy makers looking to support working parents and women, by better understanding how childcare decisions are made.
  • Pandemic Shadows: Unmasking Gender Disparities in Academic Productivity and Well-Being. .....Marisa Young, McMaster University; Nicole McNair, McMaster University; Gabriella Christopher, University of Toronto; and Loa Gordon, McMaster University
  • Women academics experience inequalities across multiple facets in the workplace, including research productivity; teaching, advising and mentoring responsibilities; service workload, and cross-over stress between work and family obligations. The recent COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these gender disparities. Drawing upon 2021 data from 475 research faculty and staff at a lead research university in Canada, we highlight such inequalities. Our data suggest that the impact of the global pandemic has been far-reaching and potentially long-lasting for women in academia. Results initially suggest that men and women experienced similar setbacks in productivity due to COVID-19. However, women experience far greater work-family conflict and mental health problems due to COVID-19; and, both work-family conflict and mental health problems due to COVID-19 are strongly associated with lost productivity during this period. In other words, even though it appears women and men have similar productivity, women were disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts during the pandemic because of unequal exposure to work-family conflict and mental health, which ultimately correlates with lost productivity. We discuss these results and conclude our paper with a discussion about the importance of rethinking the operationalization of “productivity” in post-secondary institutions, given the “un-covering” of differential exposure and vulnerabilities to stressors and mental health during the pandemic.
  • Navigating the Interplay of Financial Well-Being, Boundary Blurring, and Work-Life Balance: A Theoretical Exploration.. .....Joan-Ark Manu Agyapong, University of Cape Coast; Abigail Opoku Mensah, University of Professional Studies; Ummu Markwei, University of Professional Studies; Mercy DeSouza, University of Professional Studies; and Mary Naana Essiaw, University of Professional Studies
  • Abstract Purpose This theoretical exploration aims to investigate the interplay among financial well-being, boundary blurring, and work-life balance. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted an extensive literature review and analysis of relevant theoretical frameworks to examine the association among financial well-being, boundary blurring, and work-life balance. Findings The findings of this study indicate that financial well-being notably impacts boundary permeability and work-life balance. Individuals with superior financial well-being demonstrated an increased probability of experiencing enhanced work-life balance and lesser extents of boundary blending. Limitation A constraint of the study is its emphasis on theoretical and conceptual expedition as a research paradigm rather than utilizing a descriptive investigational pattern. Implication This paper underscores the crucial connection between financial wellness and achieving a harmonious work-life equilibrium, highlighting that individuals with sound financial stability are more likely to experience improved work-life balance and enhanced overall wellness. Additionally, the study illuminates the adverse consequences of boundary permeability, wherein the boundaries between occupational and personal life become indistinct, negatively impacting both financial well-being and work-life equilibrium. Originality/value This paper contributes to the current corpus of research by investigating the intricate interplay between financial well-being, boundary permeability, and work-life equilibrium. The findings provide valuable perspective for individuals, employers, and policymakers to devise strategies aimed at promoting financial well-being and preserving work-life balance. By exploring the complex dynamics between these factors, the study contributes new insights to help interested parties establish measures conducive to enhanced wellness in both financial and work-life domains. Keywords Financial well-being, boundary blurring, work-life balance
51. Towards Understanding the Dynamics of Defence and Public Safety Personnel Families [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.435

Organizers: Heidi Cramm, Queens University; Marilyn Cox, Queen&#x27;s University; Deborah Norris, Mount Saint Vincent University;
  • Public Safety Personnel Life After Service: A Scoping Review. .....Marilyn Cox, Queen's University
  • Overarching Questions/Concerns Exiting a public safety occupation (e.g., paramedics, police, firefighters) and entering retirement or alternate employment is unique in many ways. Public safety personnel accept the heightened risks and demands associated with essential emergency services and make personal sacrifices and adjustments to accommodate the requirements of the job – consequently, the absence of this intense role requires further adjustment. Preliminary searches showed that little is known about the experiences of public safety personnel who leave their professions for various reasons including age-related mandatory retirement, forced retirement due to illness or injury, and voluntary early retirement. The nature of the exit and the support, planning, and resources provided by the organization to facilitate the transition may have implications for the health and wellbeing of former public safety personnel, particularly those impacted by job-related illness or injury. Lacking a coherent body of research on the transition of public safety personnel to retirement, a scoping review provided an overview of existing evidence, identified gaps in the literature, and is guiding future research. The research asked: What does existing literature tell us about the experiences of public safety personnel as they transition from the public safety career to retirement or other employment? The concept of “retirement” was applied broadly indicating a permanent departure from public safety work for any reason (e.g., forced: mandatory, illness, or injury; voluntary: age-related normative, early retirement, resignation), and inclusive of both those who exit the paid workforce and those who leave to pursue other employment. Statement on Methods The methodology for scoping reviews outlined in the five-stage framework by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) was followed by identifying the research question, developing search strategies, selecting papers, charting the data, and reporting the results. Search strategies were developed in consultation with two librarians, one within social science and the other within health science. To access a wider range of databases, online searches were conducted through three universities. Seven online databases were searched for both peer-reviewed articles and grey literature, and abstracts were independently screened by two reviewers to determine which articles would move to full-text screening with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Database searches were complemented with hand searches of reference lists from papers selected during abstract screening. Articles were included that focused on workers from any public safety sector who had left the profession; health workers (i.e., emergency in hospital) and military personnel (except Canadian coast guard and RCMP) were excluded. The study sample or target population was either preretirement (perceptions or preplanning) or retired from a public safety profession. In cases where public safety personnel were preretirement, the reference to retirement was explicitly stated. Forced retirement including mandatory and medical retirement, as well as voluntary retirement including age-related normative retirement, early retirement, and resignations were relevant contextual factors. Articles that explicitly addressed psychosocial aspects of the transition were the focus and epidemiological studies, policy briefs, and retrospective retiree accounts directed at recruitment and retention were excluded. Papers meeting initial inclusion criteria underwent full-text screening. The selected papers were exported into MAXQDA for full-text analysis. Segments of text relevant to the research question were identified through a process of open coding which allowed themes and sub-themes to emerge. Visual tools in MAXQDA were used to illustrate connections and conceptualize the overarching themes. Summaries of the emerging themes, sub-themes, and variables (i.e. date of publication, study and sample characteristics) generated a final report to inform further research. Important Findings Abstract screening of 5,801 papers yielded 128 studies for full-text screening which included seven papers found through hand searching. Forty-five papers were accepted by at least two of three reviewers for data extraction and analysis. High-level themes emerged including: • cumulative and lasting occupational impacts • separation from occupational identity and culture • social buffering and protective factors Sub-themes included: • trauma exposure, stigma, maladaptive coping, work-family conflict, physical health • over-identification, loss of peer support, adjusting to civilian culture, abandonment, occupational symbols • pre-planning, career satisfaction, financial security, social support, family wellbeing, bridge employment, leisure interests The implications and explicit recommendations derived from the literature included: • pre- and post-transition programming • screening throughout career • facilitation of gradual exits • continued connections (organization / peers) • encouragement of other interests (mentorship) Limitations of the existing body of research were also stated emphasizing: • a lack of diversity in participant samples • concerns about social-desirability bias • a need for longitudinal studies (pre- and post-transition) Implications for research, policy and/or practice Having a plan, a network of family and friends, bridge employment and/or hobbies and interests, and financial security were factors associated with a positive retirement transition for public safety personnel which warrant further inquiry. Research is limited on the experiences of transitioning public safety personnel and longitudinal studies are needed to understand the perceptions and preparedness of workers both pre- and post-transition. Resources to address issues associated with identity, social support, and the cumulative and long-term effects of trauma exposure are needed to enhance the health and wellbeing of retirees. Existing research suggests that financial planning is often the focus of retirement programming undertaken by organizations. The role of organizations needs to be more fully understood and the extent and effectiveness of existing retirement policies and practices evaluated. Workers exposed to heightened risks and demands throughout their careers to provide essential emergency services merit public support and tailored resources. An appreciation of the all-consuming nature of public safety occupations and an understanding of the experiences of workers during the retirement transition is needed to develop acceptable transition programs, shape retirement processes and policies, and provide ongoing mental health support to public safety personnel both pre- and post-transition.

Panelists:
  • Deborah Norris, Mount Saint Vincent University;
  • Melissa Richardson, Queens University;
  • Marilyn Cox, Queen&#x27;s University;
Discussant:
  • Deborah Norris, Mount Saint Vincent University;
52. Author Meets Reader: Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering [Author Meets Readers Session]
Friday | 8:30 am-10:00 am | MB 3.445

Organizer: Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
Presider: Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)

Panelists:
  • Mary Blair-Loy, University of California, San Diego;
  • Erin Cech, University of Michigan.;
  • Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University;
  • Kim de Laat, University of Waterloo;
  • Jaclyn Wong, University of South Carolina.;
53. Coffee
Friday | 10:00 am-10:30 am | MB Third Floor
54. Remote Work: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.210

Presider: Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne
  • Remote Work and Burn-Out: Gender and Parents Rates into COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery. .....Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne; and Brendan Churchill, University of Melbourne
  • For many employees, remote work is critical to reducing burn-out by allowing workers to better reconcile work and life demands. Yet, workplaces are increasingly weighing whether to scale back access to remote work into the pandemic recovery. It is within this context that this study makes a contribution through three central questions: (1) have workers recovered from the burn-out of the pandemic?; (2) does access to remote work moderate this relationship?; and (3) do these patterns vary by gender and parental status? We apply original survey data collected from a representative sample of Australian workers (n=1,050), a country that experienced prolonged exposure to remote work given it legislated some of the longest, hardest extended lockdowns. We find that access to remote work is associated with less burn-out for men, regardless of parental status. By contrast, only mothers without children reported less burn-out if they had access to remote work. Mothers, by contrast, report more burn-out associated with working remotely. Investigating types of remote work in greater detail, we find that access to remote work that allows employees to dictate when they work flexibly is negatively associated with burn-out for men and women workers alike, with no significant differences by parental status. By contrast, workers in organizations with set at-home work days and those that have workers always working from home reported no significant benefit in terms of burn-out. Our results indicate that worker-driven access to remote work is most beneficial to workers generally but not for mothers.
  • What Are the Individual-Level Consequences of Teleworking in a Post-COVID-19 Era?. .....Joelle van der Meer, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Laura den Dulk, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Samantha Metselaar, Erasmus University Rotterdam; and Brenda Vermeeren, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the utilization of teleworking, as many employees were required to work from home during the pandemic. Even in a post-COVID-19 era, teleworking remains at a relatively high level in many countries and sectors compared to before the pandemic (Eurofound, 2022). The literature presents conflicting findings concerning teleworking and its impact on individual-level outcomes (Kelliher & De Menezes, 2019). Despite the presumed advantages of flexibility, researchers have struggled to establish a clear connection between teleworking, job satisfaction, performance and other outcomes. Gajendran and Harrison (2007) developed a theoretical framework to study the effects of teleworking on individual-level outcomes, mediated by several psychological factors. However, the landscape of work arrangements has significantly shifted in a post-COVID-19 era. For instance, many employees gained experience in working from home, including those who were not allowed to telework previously. Consequently, it is relevant to study the individual-level consequences of teleworking in this new context. We use the model of Gajendran and Harrison (2007) as a starting point to study individual outcomes of teleworking in a post-COVID-19 era. Job satisfaction and performance are included as individual-level outcomes. We will investigate whether the relationship between the intensity of teleworking and these outcomes are mediated by (a) autonomy, (b) work-life balance satisfaction, (c) relationship with supervisor and (4) relationship with other co-workers. We focused on a public sector context and studied teleworking in a large Dutch municipality (N= 3439). Data was collected in October 2023.
  • Towards a Place and Choice Model of Hybrid Work. .....Scott Behson, Fairleigh Dickinson University
  • In the post-pandemic work world, the majority of large employers have settled on some form of hybrid work, with some days in-office and some days work-from-home. Most of the current academic literature and business press have focused on the pros and cons of in-person, hybrid, and remote work, as well as the differences in the number of in-person days that employers require. There is comparatively less work on the notion of choice within hybrid arrangements In this paper, I will explore the implications of the degree of choice within hybrid arrangements (days set by employer vs. choice) as well as who gets to make these decisions. For example, are individuals allowed to choose their in-office days, or do they need to decide with their supervisors? Do teams/departments decide together? Does the employer decide? Is there a combination of approaches? Using company examples and implications from the academic literature on choice and flexibility at the workplace, I will review the various arrangements and their pros and cons to develop a model of hybrid work that includes both the type of arrangement and the amount/style of choice. This model can inform future research and practice.
  • Everything Now, All the Time: The Connectivity Paradox and Gender Equality in the Legal Profession. .....Meraiah Foley, University of Sydney - Business School; Rae Cooper, University of Sydney - Business School; Ariadne Vromen, Australian National University; Talara Lee, University of Sydney - Business School; and Amy Tapsell, University of Sydney - Business School
  • Recent advances in information communications technology and digital connectivity have created a paradox, giving many workers greater freedom about where and when their work is performed, but raising expectations about their availability outside of working hours. This connectivity paradox has negative implications for gender equality in professions where long hours and presenteeism have limited the advancement of women. Using interviews and focus groups with 63 lawyers in Australia, this study examines how lawyers understand and navigate the connectivity paradox, and its implications for gender equitable workplaces. We find that women and men experience the emancipatory potential of digital connectivity, but the proliferation of digital technologies and pressure to be 'always on' are increasing both the volume and intensity of lawyers' work, raising the prospect that digital presenteeism may be replacing physical presenteeism. Digital connectivity thus presents a significant opportunity for, and potential risk to, workplace gender equality, adding weight to emergent policy debates about the need for a ‘right to disconnect’.
  • Stability and Change of Work-Related Connectivity Among Employees Before and After Mandatory Teleworking Periods – A Latent Growth Curve and Trajectory Approach Across a Two-Year Period.. .....Wendy Nilsen, Work Research Institute OsloMet; Karoline Seglem, Work Research Institute, OsloMet - Norway; Nina M. Junker, Universitetet i Oslo; Daantje Derks, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Mari Ingelsrud Holm, Work Research Institute - OsloMet; Kristine Lescoeur, OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University; Tanja Nordberg, Work Research Institute - OsloMet; and Vilde Hoff Bernstrøm, OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University
  • Digital devices have lowered the threshold for being connected to work outside work hours. While studies show that work-related connectivity increase work-family conflict and burnout, few studies examine the stability and change of such patterns. On one side, work-related connectivity is related to situational aspects, e.g., amount of work/family demands/expectations, which is likely to change over time. However, constant checking and communicating digitally is also related to neuroticism, internet addiction and other individual traits and might thus be stable despite changing situational aspects. The study examines the stability and change in work-related connectivity outside work hours in Norwegian employees with and without parenhhood responsibility across four times during and after COVID-19. Data is used from employees (n≈1000) surveyed four times between February 2021 and August 2022. We conducted: 1) Latent trajectory analysis to examine which change profiles of work-related connectivity appeared;and 2) Latent growth curve analysis to examine increases or decreases in connectivity levels across time. Preliminary findings show that a four-profile solution fits the data best, with 1) High, 2) Moderately high; 3) Moderate low and 4) Low work-related connectivity. The profiles were stable and differed with regards to household income and segmentation preferences. The growth curve analyses showed a slightly decline across the period. Findings indicate that intensive work-related connectivity patterns are stable across time, even during and after the mandatory teleworking brought on by the pandemic. Further analyses will be conducted to examine differences between women and men with and without children.
55. Stigma, Discrimination, and Equity In Work and Family [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.265

Presider: Rachael Pettigrew, Mount Royal University
  • Advancing Gender Equity in the US Workplace: Lessons Learned from Exemplary Organizations. .....Christine Bataille, Ithaca College; Margaret Shackell, Ithaca College; and Rachel Ng, Ithaca College
  • Overarching questions/concerns: In 2015, the United Nations committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including gender equality (#5) and reduced inequalities (#10). Both of these goals target gender equity (GE), which is the process of ensuring fairness through measures that dismantle the historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from operating on a level playing field (UNESCO, 2003). The US is behind other developed countries in providing programs and policies that advance GE; however, there are a number of organizations in the U.S. that are making significant strides in closing the gender gap and promoting women into leadership positions. Therefore, the research question we pose in this paper is: How are exemplary US-based organizations advancing GE in the workplace? Statement on methods: In this mixed methods study, we first identified 20 US-based organizations across a range of industries that are exemplary in terms of making progress towards GE. We selected them through Target Gender Equity, gender equity rankings, and articles profiling organizations committed to advancing GE. We first analyzed publicly available sustainability/DEI/GE reports for these organizations and interviewed representatives from four of them. We are currently in the process of developing a survey based on the factors we uncovered as contributing to GE. Our target sample includes executives and managers who hold DEI positions in large, US-based organizations and the survey will be administered by Qualtrics. Important findings: Our results indicate that there are several factors that work to increase GE in organizations, and they all stem from a genuine commitment to gender equity at the top of the organization. Setting GE targets and tracking progress against them is vitally important and includes sharing data with key decision makers and, in some cases, getting third party validation. Making decisions and writing policies through a gender lens is also key and includes offering and encouraging the use of gender-neutral parental leave along with pay parity and other benefits. Intentionally investing in women is another broad category of factors and includes sponsorship, leadership and other development programs for women as well as resource groups/think tanks dedicated to women’s advancement. Implications for research, policy, and/or practice: Our findings to date indicate that there are several tangible actions that companies can take to advance GE in their workplaces. However, it requires serious dedication on the part of the organization. In fact, the most important lesson learned from the exemplary organizations is the depth of their commitment to making progress toward gender equity. For example, one organization’s commitment to sharing data with key decision makers is reflected in their annual “Equity Day” where the company’s top 200 leaders review the race, ethnicity, and gender data in detail. This level of engagement and intentionality has led to these companies being at the head of the pack. Organizations that want to advance towards GE have the opportunity to learn best practices from these model organizations.
  • Everyday Life, Parenting and Family Relations in Poverty in Mature Welfare State. .....Mia Tammelin, University of Tampere; and Katri Viitasalo, University of Helsinki
  • Poverty and economic hardship in families with children are persistent across the Western world. In addition to insufficient financial resources, economic hardship and poverty are often coupled with income insecurity and unpredictability. This places significant pressure on parenting and the management of family life that at the societal level may cement inequality. In this study we argue that poverty is not only about the lack of resources and the experience of material deprivation but has to be understood as a lived experience in relation to others. This brings up experiences of disrespect, stigma, insecurity and deprivation of rights, but also innovative strategies. Using the data “Everyday Experiences of Poverty: Self-administered Writings 2019” (Turunen & Isola 2019, N=89) we analyse poverty as relational and lived experience. Particularly the study is interested on how family relations are represented, and how mothers’ and fathers’ describe parenting practices in the context of poverty, and the role of labour markets in creating instability. We use thematic content analysis. The preliminary findings suggest that family relations in the context of poverty are multifaceted. Parenting is shaped by strategies to ensure maintaining family routines and to minimize the detrimental impact of poverty on children, including for example unstable daily life amplified by unstable labour market and economic situation. Parents create strong community ties to maintain family life in the context of poverty, including for example sharing meals with others’.
  • Does Stigma-Based Work-Family Conflict Depend on the Type of Stigma?. .....Katina Sawyer, University of Arizona
  • Over a decade ago, researchers introduced a new form of work-family conflict into the literature - stigma-based work-family conflict - (Sawyer, Thoroughgood, & Ladge, 2012) - to complement the time-based, stress-based, and behavior-based work-family conflict subdimensions explored heavily in prior literature. Yet, since the development of the construct of stigma-based work-family conflict, the concept has only been explored in same-sex couples. In this presentation, I will present in-depth qualitative data gathered from 15 self-identified members of stigmatized families (with the exclusion of same-sex couples given they have already been studied), to expore if and how the concept of stigma-based work-family conflict applies to their working lives. Interviewees were members of mixed race or religious couples, couples in which one member was physically disabled or struggled with serious mental health challenges, couples in which one member was previously incarcarated, or couples in which one partner had a stigmatized illness. While interviewees reported that their stigmatized family identity increased perceptions of conflict with their work role, the data demonstrated that intersectionality also influenced this process. Further, our data also demonstrated that others' perceptions of controllability of the stigma changed how employees in stigmatized families experienced work-family conflict. Overall, this paper sheds light on understudied populations and their families, while highlighting unique mechanisms that explain why some families may face more stigma-based work-family conflict than others. This contributes to the literature by expanding the scope of the types of families that work-family researchers consider when exploring more mainstream themes and constructs to stigmatized working populations.
  • Reducing Barriers to Entry for Women Seeking Board Work. .....Rachael Pettigrew, Mount Royal University; and Chantel Cabaj, DirectHer Network
  • In Canada, since the implementation of board composition disclosure requirements in 2014, there has been an increase of women on boards. However, change in representation has been slow, with year-over-year increases of ~2.2% and almost 20% of disclosing organizations still have zero women on their boards. To better understand the talent pipeline and its potential blockages, we explored the current board experience, board aspirations, and perceived barriers (pipeline blockages) of women interested in board work. The findings from a SSHRC-funded research conducted in partnership with DirectHer Network, a Calgary-based non-profit that offering governance training. The data from a survey completed by 358 participants, followed by 4 focus groups of women and gender-diverse participants revealed distinct board pathways to board work for not-for-profit, government, and for-profit board work. The research highlights diverse viewpoints to capture the broad array of board experiences and illuminates the talent pipeline from the front end, where the board talent is grown and developed, rather than simply analyzing the output of that pipeline (i.e., the individuals currently sitting on corporate boards). The presentation will discuss perceived professional (e.g., lack of sponsorship, networks, and access to opportunities) and personal barriers (e.g., the need to prioritize paid work and care responsibilities). We conclude by making a number of practical recommendations to both individuals and boards to increase representation of women on boards.
56. Life Course Transitions: Aging and Retirement 1 [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.270

Presider: Janet Mantler, Carleton University
  • Post-Retirement Work, Life Satisfaction and Emotional Well-Being Among Older Adults in Israel. .....Alisa Lewin, University of Haifa; and Haya Stier, Tel Aviv University
  • Although retirement is often perceived as withdrawal from employment, retirement, in effect, takes many forms. Some workers depart completely from the work-force while others retain some form of employment, ranging from full-time work to full-time retirement. Moreover, post-retirement work has both financial and intrinsic incentives. People have financial incentives to work post-retirement, especially if they have not accumulated sufficient pension savings, and they respond to non-financial incentives as well because work provides opportunities for social engagement and other psychological benefits. This study examines motivations for post-retirement work and its effects on older adults' life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Using Social Survey data collected by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics for the years 2017-2020, this study selected individuals post retirement age (62 + for women, 67 + for men), and investigated factors associated with post-retirement work and its effects on emotional well-being. The findings reveal gender differences, whereby economic needs motivate men to seek full-time employment, and good prospects in the labor market channel women toward full-time employment. Part-time employment is as good as full-time employment in contributing to men’s satisfaction and emotional well-being, whereas post-retirement work increases women's life satisfaction only if it is full-time, and has no effect on emotional well-being. This study has policy implications: Post-retirement part-time work may help promote healthy ageing and may facilitate the transition out of employment and into retirement. Recruiting older adults may diversify the workplace and perhaps contribute to older workers' life satisfaction and emotional well-being.
  • Grandparent Childcare by Gender and Generation. .....Lyn Craig, University of Melbourne; DongJu Lee, University of Melbourne; Myra Hamilton, University of Sydney; Elizabeth Adamson, University of New South Wales; and Virpi Timonen, University of Helsinki
  • Grandparents are an important source of childcare worldwide. This paper presents results from a mixed methods study, looking firstly at how cross-generational demographic characteristics factor into grandparent care provision considering the cultural assumptions and policy settings families live within, and secondly at the lived experiences of parent-grandparent dyads in negotiating work and care. Using the nationally representative Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, we identify determinants of both the demand for, and supply of, grandparent childcare in Australia (4,266 grandparents, 9,822 parents). Quantitative results suggest that grandmothers and mothers, as much or more than fathers and mothers, balance their reciprocal participation in employment and childcare. Unlike in other countries, university-educated grandmothers are more likely to provide childcare and university-educated mothers are more likely to draw upon it. The qualitative interviews (n=45) reinforce that cross-generational care provision is primarily a negotiation between mothers and grandmothers, with a child’s mother and the mother’s mother tending to be most intensely involved, and that a major motivation for it was supporting mothers’ workforce participation. They provided detailed new insight into the complex organisation and inter-familial and cross-generational co-operation involved in managing and maintaining grandparent care relationships. From a policy perspective, the results suggest the caring labour of grandmothers is currently critical to the workforce participation of mothers. They point to inadequate public policy support for Australian working mothers to capitalize on their historically high educational attainment, and suggest that to compensate, grandmothers are stepping in as both ‘mother savers’ and ‘system savers’.
  • Care Provision Among Older Adults in Mexico: An Examination of Time Use Patterns and Subjective Wellbeing. .....Lia Acosta Rueda, University of Toronto
  • How much time do Mexican older adults spend looking after their grandchildren and how does it matter for their quality of life? In this paper, I focus on examining the role of unpaid care provided by older adults in Mexico, where little research has been conducted on a potentially vulnerable population. Using the most recent (2019) Mexican National Time Use Survey (ENUT), this research investigates the relationship between grandparent's provision of care and their subjective wellbeing (happiness and life satisfaction). Additionally, it explores how unpaid care provision is allocated based on three social locations – by gender and socioeconomic status – and two social contexts (rural versus urban). My results point to the importance of childcare care provision that goes beyond the nuclear family and formal institutional provision. The study’s findings contribute to the literature by promoting a better understanding of childcare arrangements within contexts characterized by limited institutional childcare support and strong normative preferences for family-based care.
  • Intergenerational Tensions of Gender, Work and Care in the Labour Market: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Grandparent Childcare in Australian Policy Dialogue. .....Elizabeth Adamson, University of New South Wales; Virpi Timonen, University of Helsinki; Myra Hamilton, University of Sydney; Alison Williams, University of Sydney - Business School; and Lyn Craig, University of Melbourne
  • Mothers and mature age workers are regularly identified in policy debate as important targets of boosting labour market participation. Two groups of women – mothers and older women – are being encouraged to participate in paid work. In Australia, this has been evidenced through election platforms, government strategies and new policies. Research shows that grandparents (especially grandmothers) play a central role in supporting the employment of their daughters and daughters-in-law, yet it is unclear how grandparents’ care and work responsibilities are represented in policy discourses. Drawing on submissions to four government-initiated public inquiries we analyse stakeholder discourses encouraging women to increase their labour market participation within a context of known barriers and challenges in the Australian childcare system. The texts offer an ideal corpus for examining the kinds of ‘model’ grandparents that feature in official discourses, and reactions to them by a range of actors in the Australian work and care policy environment. We interrogate the tensions and contradictions that arise when mothers and grandmothers become the targets for labour market policies, with a particular focus on the discursive portrayals of older women as both (potential) workers and childcare providers. The article contributes to knowledge about how different forms of work are construed across gender, age, and other sociodemographic characteristics. The findings point to opportunities for policy makers to more explicitly and consciously recognise and address the social and economic contributions made by grandparents.
  • Menopause at Work: Let's Talk. .....Janet Mantler, Carleton University; Anne Bowker, Carleton University; Emma Bider, Carleton University; and Sandra Ogbuagu, Carleton University
  • Overarching concerns: Perimenopausal women (aged 45 to 55) are the fastest growing demographic for labour force participation (Brewis et al., 2017), yet menopause remains a taboo topic in the workplace. How does the menopausal transition affect women at work? Are they able to talk about menopause and menopausal symptoms at work? If so, who do they talk to? Method: As part of a larger study, we interviewed 60 Canadian women about their menopausal transition. For this talk, we focus on their menopause experience in the context of work, including who they talked to about menopause and whether they had asked for or received menopause-related accommodations. We used reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2022) to analyze the data. Important findings: - Key menopausal symptoms that affected the way women worked included disrupted sleep, loss of energy, heavy periods, intrusive vasomotor conditions, and brain fog. - Menopausal symptoms had varying and often unpredictable degrees of severity, affected women’s ability to concentrate, and resulted in taking sick days for pain or heavy periods. - Simple accommodations such as having desk fans or flexible work arrangements would have aided their ability to work successfully, yet almost none of our participants asked for accommodations. - Participants did not discuss menopause with supervisors, particularly men, because they felt it would make them uncomfortable, because menopause is still viewed as a “women’s issue.” - Perimenopause often occurs at the time that women move into senior leadership roles. Women in leadership were even more reluctant to say anything about menopause because they did not want to be perceived as weak and subsequently overlooked for opportunities. Implications for policy and practice: Menopause needs to be normalized; 50% of the workforce will experience this physical transition at some point during their working years. Women need only a few straightforward accommodations to ease symptom discomfort to be successful at work rather than thinking about whether to quit their jobs. Managers need to be trained to have direct conversations about how to accommodate women at work.
57. Parenting and Family Dynamics [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.285

Presider: David Rothwell, Oregon State University
  • Testing the indirect effects of work-family strain on parenting stress and child wellbeing. .....Ines de Pierola, Oregon State University; Beth Phelps, Oregon State University; and David Rothwell, Oregon State University
  • Contextual factors influence family relationships and children's well-being. For instance, excessive workplace demands can make caregiving challenging, which in turn increases parenting stress (Hwang & Jung, 2020). According to the Family Stress Model, personal distress places strain on family relationships and disrupts parenting, eventually threatening child wellbeing (Masarik & Conger, 2017). We extend the FSM by asking: to what extent does parenting stress mediate the relationship between work-family strain and child wellbeing? Method We used data from waves 3, 4, and 5 of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), which correspond to when children are approximately ages 3, 5, and 9. Parenting stress (PS) was measured on a scale from 0 to 4, based on role strain. Work-family strain was assessed through three items: stress related to work schedules and family, difficulty managing childcare at work, and inflexible work schedules for family needs. Child well-being was evaluated using the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI). Formal mediation analyses tested how much of the relationship between work-family strain and child well-being was accounted for by parenting stress. Results and Discussion We found that work-family strain has a direct effect on decreasing child well-being (b=-.06, p < .001). Additionally, work-family strain indirectly reduces children’s wellbeing with 18% (p < .001) of the total effect mediated through parenting stress. We found a stronger mediation effect around child age 5 in transition from care to education settings. Findings highlight the need for institutional support by employers and schools during this period, such as flexible time, predictable schedules, and paid family and sick leave. Policies and interventions to counter work-family strain are needed, particularly for low-income families.
  • Couples’ Experiences of Grandparenthood: Grandchild-Related Bliss and Psychological Well-Being. .....Jasmin Dorry, RWTH Aachen University; and Bettina S. Wiese, RWTH Aachen University
  • Overarching questions/concerns: Becoming a grandparent and feeling a sense of generativity are beneficial for an individual’s psychological well-being (e.g., Lodi-Smith et al., 2021; Tanskanen et al., 2019). Yet, a dyadic perspective on grandparenthood and its effects on both grandparents’ psychological well-being is largely missing. Reciprocal effects within grandparental couples regarding the joys of grandparenthood are plausible from a family systemic perspective (e.g., Cox & Paley, 1997; Minuchin, 1985). The present study puts grandparental couples’ experiences to the fore and distinguishes within-person spillover effects (actor effects) and between-person crossover effects (partner effects) using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Cook & Kenny, 2005). Thereby, we examine transfer effects from the grandmother/grandfather-grandchild subsystem to the couple subsystem. In terms of grandparental experiences that could affect the partnership-related and general well-being of both partners, we introduce the concept of “grandchild-related bliss,” which summarizes the fulfillment and joy of having a grandchild. Statement on methods: We employed the APIM to test whether grandchild-related bliss at T1 predicted partnership-related well-being (i.e., relationship satisfaction, positive and negative relationship quality) and general well-being (i.e., life satisfaction, meaning in life) at T2 in N = 139 first-time grandparental couples (inclusion criteria: heterosexual first-time grandparental couples who cohabit and have a grandchild up to eight years old). We decided to include several indicators of psychological well-being as criteria to strengthen our results through their generalizability across different facets of well-being, but also to have the possibility to identify differential effects, if any. Important findings (bulleted list): - Actor effects grandmothers: There was no empirical support for actor effects of grandchild-related bliss on psychological well-being in grandmothers. - Actor effects grandfathers: Grandfathers’ grandchild-related bliss positively predicted their psychological well-being, both in terms of partnership-related well-being and meaning in life. - Partner effects from grandmothers on grandfathers: There were no positive partner effects on grandfathers’ well-being stemming from grandmothers’ grandchild-related bliss. But, for grandfathers, witnessing their partner being fulfilled by the grandchild increased the negative qualities they attribute to their romantic relationship. - Partner effects from grandfathers on grandmothers: For grandmothers, witnessing their partner being happy with the grandchild positively predicted their partnership-related well-being and meaning in life. - In contrast to meaning in life, neither actor nor partner effects were found for life satisfaction as our second facet of general well-being. Implications for research, policy, and/or practice: The results show that grandfathers’ grandchild-related bliss is a source of psychological well-being in grandparental couples. Parallel to the compartmentalization hypothesis in mothers (Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000), the results suggest that grandmothers keep their grandchild-related feelings within the boundaries of the grandmother-grandchild subsystem and that feelings and experiences in this subsystem are less permeable to other life domains and family members. The observed actor and partner effects underline that it is worthwhile considering data from both grandparents to obtain more differentiated results on the gendered effects of grandparenthood on psychological well-being (e.g., Hoppmann & Gerstorf, 2009). References Cook, W. L., & Kenny, D. A. (2005). The Actor–Partner Interdependence Model: A model of bidirectional effects in developmental studies. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29(2), 101–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/01650250444000405 Cox, M. J., & Paley, B. (1997). Families as systems. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 243–267. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.243 Hoppmann, C. A., & Gerstorf, D. (2009). Spousal interrelations in old age: A mini-review. Gerontology, 55(4), 449–459. https://doi.org/10.1159/000211948 Krishnakumar, A., & Buehler, C. (2000). Interparental conflict and parenting behaviors: A meta‐analytic review. Family Relations, 49(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2000.00025.x Lodi-Smith, J., Ponterio, E. J., Newton, N. J., Poulin, M. J., Baranski, E., & Whitbourne, S. K. (2021). The co-development of generativity and well-being into early late life. Psychology and Aging, 36(3), 299–308. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000446 Minuchin, P. (1985). Families and individual development: Provocations from the field of family therapy. Child Development, 56(2), 289–302. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129720 Tanskanen, A. O., Danielsbacka, M., Coall, D. A., & Jokela, M. (2019). Transition to grandparenthood and subjective well-being in older Europeans: A within-person investigation using longitudinal data. Evolutionary Psychology, 17(3), 1474704919875948. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704919875948
  • The Influence of Domestic Service Intervention on Parenting in Chinese Urban Families. .....Jiahui Hou, Kobe University
  • In recent years, there has been a noticeable surge in utilization of domestic services in China’s urban areas, challenging the traditional role of grandparents as primary caregivers. This study aims to investigate the implications of market-oriented domestic service interventions on parenting within Chinese urban households. The research employs a semi-structured interview as the research method. Participants included four mothers who employ domestic helpers. The interview is about if they used to ask grandparents caring for grandchildren, why they use domestic service, and how it changes the sharing of housework and childcare within the family before and after employment. Results revealed that (1) although the influence of gender role consciousness continues, women now prioritize motherhood over the role of a wife. The introduction of domestic services has notably shifted the caregiving focus from general housework to a more concentrated emphasis on childcare. (2) The use of domestic services has, to some extent, replaced grandparents’ support for nuclear families and avoided grandparents’ intervention in parenting.
  • Examining the Role of Modernization and Urbanization in Family Changes in India: Evidence from Panel Data Analyses. .....Tapas Dey, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai
  • Despite a dramatic change in family structures, the existing literature in the Indian context does not provide sufficient knowledge on mechanisms of family changes in the context of demographic transition coupled with modernization and urbanization. In the present study, we shed light on the question of whether the process of modernization and urbanization influences the breaking of Indian traditional family systems. The study uses the panel data (30 cross-sections*5 time points) generated using multiple data sources, mainly from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), India Human Development Survey (IHDS), Economic Survey and Census of India for 1991-2021. Using the Panel data fixed-effects estimates, we find a positive and significant association between ‘nucleation of family structure’ and ‘modernization and urbanization’ in India. Societal modernization, such as a rise in literacy rate and structural changes in the economy, are positively associated with the nucleation of families. Along with the societal changes, urbanization insists the family nucleation as well. A unit increase in urbanization and modernization increases the proportion of nuclear families by 1.5 units and 0.15 units, respectively. India has been experiencing a slow but steady rise in rural-to-urban transition for decades. The country will continue to urbanize and modernize, thus eventually hinting at more nucleation of families in the forthcoming years.
58. Fatherhood in Transition: Adapting Paternal Roles and Responsibilities in a Changing World [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.430

Presider: Richard Petts, Ball State University
  • ‘I Am Different’: A Qualitative Analysis of Part-Time Working Fathers’ Constructions of Their Experiences. .....Eric Mercier, University of Adelaide; Amanda LeCouteur, University of Adelaide; and Paul Delfabbro, University of Adelaide
  • Although there has been an increasing interest in the notion of involved fatherhood, few studies have examined how fathers who work part-time and engage in child-rearing make sense of this experience. The present study explores how part-time working fathers positioned themselves in terms of their ‘at home’ and ‘at work’ identities. Thematic analysis was used to examine 30 interviewees’ accounts of their experiences. Three central themes were identified: (1) choosing to work part-time, (2) benefits of working part-time, and (3) contrasts with fathers as ‘breadwinners’. A common feature in all of these themes was interviewees’ flexible transition between traditional and non-traditional types of masculinity. The ways in which part-time working fathers positioned themselves as caring for children while maintaining attachment to more traditional types of masculinity are considered in terms of implications for theory and for fathers’ personal development. At a time where expectations of fathers engaged in child-rearing are increasing, the results of this study could be drawn on in the area of personal development to support men in forming new strategies around fathering practices.
  • Family Supportive Supervisor Behavior and Father Involvement in Parenting: The Role of Work Family Conflict as a Mediator.. .....Kartika Widiningtyas, Surabaya University; and Artiawati Artiawati, Surabaya University
  • The role of father in parenting is as important as the role of father as a breadwinner.The effort to meet the demands of both work and family life simultaneously can lead to work-family conflict among working fathers, which can reduce father involvement in parenting. It is important to study about resource in the work environment that can minimize work family conflict. Family supportive supervisor behavior has the potential to reduce the work family conflict and thus increase father involvement in parenting. This study was aimed at examining the relationship between family supportive supervisor behavior and father involvement as mediated by work family conflict. The total number of 188 working fathers in the state-owned banks in Indonesia participated in this study. The purposive sampling method applied in collecting data. The results showed that work family conflict partially mediated the relationship between family supportive supervisor behavior and father involvement (indirect effect =2.034, p=0.042; total effect =10.265, p=0.001; direct effect=9.504, p=0.001). Some important findings from the research include: • Supervisor support for family life is needed by working fathers in order to reduce work family conflict so that the fathers can better involve in parenting. • Long working hour and stress due to work is one of the obstacle for working fathers to involve in parenting • Gender role orientation has an association with father involvement in parenting. Supervisor as the role model and creative work family management are the most significant aspects in influencing work family conflict and father involvement in parenting. Reducing excessive working hours is also important in reducing work family conflict of working fathers. It is suggested for further research to consider gender role orientation in predicting father involvement in parenting.
  • Paternity Leave-Taking and U.S. Fathers’ Participation in Housework. .....Richard Petts, Ball State University; Daniel Carlson, University of Utah; and Chris Knoester, Ohio State University
  • Overarching Questions/Concerns: Paternity leave may promote greater gender equality in domestic labor. Though numerous studies show that paternity leave promotes greater father involvement in childcare, less is known about whether paternity leave-taking may facilitate father involvement in other forms of domestic labor such as housework. This study examines the extent to which paternity leave-taking and length of paternity leave are associated with U.S. fathers’ shares of, and time spent in, housework. Statement on Methods: We use repeated cross-sectional data on 1,654 different-gender partnered U.S. parents from the Study on Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC), and consider both fathers’ relative shares of housework as well as how many hours per week fathers spend in housework. Important Findings: • Paternity leave-taking is positively associated with fathers’ shares of, and time spent in, housework tasks. • Longer paternity leaves are also associated with fathers performing greater shares of housework. • The associations between paternity leave-taking and fathers’ housework persist for all housework tasks other than grocery shopping. Implications for Research, Policy, and/or Practice: Overall, this study indicates that the benefits of paternity leave likely extend to fathers’ greater participation in housework, providing additional support for the belief that increased use of paternity leave may help to promote gender equality in domestic labor. As such, these findings provide additional evidence that expanding paid parental leave policies in the U.S. would be beneficial for families.
  • Caregiving Fathers Experiences Post Covid- “It’s a Little Bit of a Kick in the Face”. .....Jasmine Kelland, University of Plymouth; and Daniel Deahan, University of Plymouth
  • The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted traditional patterns of the management of work and caregiving (Andrew et al., 2020) and at that time UK fathers expressed intention to have greater involvement in caregiving after the pandemic (Fatherhood Institute,2022). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the post-covid work context is typified by changes in work patterns (Shirmohammadi et al., 2023) and increases in staff turnover (Cosgrove et al., 2023), however, little qualitative research has been undertaken to explore the experiences of caregiving fathers in this context. Thus, we undertook 27 in-depth semi-structured interviews with UK caregiving fathers in Summer 2023 to explore how they are managing work and care post-covid. We find caregiving fathers report an increase in flexible working and workplace visibility which has positively impacted upon their family life. However, they continue to experience less workplace support than mothers with levels of conditionality existing and support being dependent on line-managers' parental status and the organisational context. Our findings provide evidence for the continuation of elements of ‘fatherhood forfeits’ (Kelland,2022) and expand knowledge on ‘paternal supervisory gatekeeping’ (Hennekam et al, 2022). The provision of workplace flexibility was emphasised as a central retention factor, with many fathers leaving their employment if they did not receive the flexibility they needed, offering a potential explanation for ‘the great resignation’ (Cosgrove et al., 2023). We argue that despite a climate of increased support post-covid, parental gendered differentials remain, which impact upon labour retention, highlighting the ongoing need for organisational and policy action to support caregiving fathers in the workplace.
  • How Do We Measure Father Involvement? Methodological and Epistemological Issues in a Canadian Mixed Methods Study on Household Tasks and Responsibilities. .....Kim de Laat, University of Waterloo; and Andrea Doucet, Brock University
  • This paper compares fathers’ survey responses to questions about their involvement in childcare and housework, and couple interviews in which the same fathers reflect on their involvement at home. It is based on data from a Canadian qualitative study with diverse Canadian families (the Care/Work Portrait project) and the Canadian Familydemic survey, which is part of a six-country Familydemic comparative project. We highlight two key findings from a sample of twenty fathers from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds who participated in a national survey and a follow-up up interview with their partners. First, we find evidence of higher levels of agreement between fathers’ individual survey responses and couples’ interview responses on fathers’ involvement in care tasks: discrete interventions into childcare or housework that have a clear beginning, middle, and end, (for example, cooking a meal). Second, there is less agreement between our quantitative and qualitative data about fathers’ involvement in care responsibilities, which is the type of cognitive labour that involves noticing needs and managing, organizing, and planning different spheres of family life (for example, meal planning). We draw on two in-depth case studies to illustrate how and why, in surveys, fathers may overestimate their involvement in forms of care and household work that involve cognitive labour and varied temporal and spatial dimensions. Our mixed methods data provides methodological and epistemological insights into the importance of attending not only to what we measure, but also how, when we make assessments about gender equality in household divisions of labour.
59. Childbearing, Fertility, and Paid Leave [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.435

Presider: Senhu Wang, National University of Singapore
  • Kids, Books & Consumption: A Developing Economy Model. .....Indrajit Thakurata, Indian Institute of Management
  • This study estimates the implicit child-birth related expenditures that parents across income groups may be facing based on their empirically observed fertility rates. Employing a two-generation, multi-period model with endogenous fertility, income risk, borrowing as well as human capital investment constraints, the study numerically simulates intergenerational poverty traps as part of low income households’ optimizing behaviour. It explores the relative strengths of parental incomes, child-bearing related parental expenditures, and its transmission into cognitive ability of the child, in enhancing intergenerational mobility of human capital. Cognitively developed children increase parental human capital investments through reduction of fertility, assets and consumption. A policy like subsidised education improves children’s human capital through lowering of births while greater educational access is seen to improve both quality & quantity of children. Policies that subsidise cognitive ability related investments are extremely powerful in boosting average human capital. The study finds that policy induced trade-offs are substantial when family sizes are small.
  • Negotiating Work and Family Spheres: The Dyadic Effects of Flexible Work Arrangements on Fertility Among Dual-Earner Heterosexual Couples. .....Senhu Wang, National University of Singapore; and Jolene Tan, Australian National University
  • Abstract Making flexible work arrangements (FWAs) the default in workplaces has been suggested by academics and policymakers to promote a family-friendly workplace culture that is conducive for having and raising children. However, there is limited systematic research investigating how FWAs, as a long-term approach to negotiate work–family spheres, are related to fertility among dual-earner heterosexual couples. Drawing on the linked-lives perspective, this study aims to theorize the relationship between FWAs and fertility among couples and how it may vary depending on the interplay of both spouses’ work and family characteristics. We test our hypotheses using longitudinal couple-level dyadic data in the UK (2010–2022). The results show that while the availability of FWAs alone is not related to fertility, wives’ (rather than husbands’) actual use of FWAs is significantly associated with a higher probability of experiencing a first birth. Moreover, the effect of wives’ use of FWAs is particularly pronounced when both spouses work in professional and managerial occupations, and when husbands contribute a larger proportion of income and equal or more housework. This study reveals a gendered effect of FWAs on fertility across different work–family arrangements, which deepens our understanding of couple-level dynamics in the fertility process.
  • The Return to Work Crossroads: An Examination of New York State Mothers' Decision Making and the Impact of Paid Family Leave. .....Jillian Morley, Cornell University; and Elizabeth Day, University of Oregon
  • This paper explores the influence of New York State's Paid Family Leave (PFL) policy on mothers' decisions regarding their return to work after childbirth. This research builds on the established relationship between female labor market outcomes and Paid Family Leave policies by interrogating the nuances in mothers' decision-making processes surrounding the return to work across industries. The study utilized open-ended interviews with 15 participants, including 10 PFL users and 5 mothers that were unable to utilize the state’s PFL benefits. Respondents were recruited through purposive snowball sampling and inquiries to maternal online networks. Qualitative content analysis of interview transcripts reveal the interplay between maternal aspirations, workplace conditions, and policy provisions to bridge the gap between mothers' desire to work and their employment decisions. The findings call for holistic policy solutions that address diverse challenges, such as childcare issues and breastfeeding support, while elevating opportunities presented by hybrid work arrangements.
60. Artificial Intelligence and Intersectional Inequalities in the Labor Market [Thematic session of multiple paper presentations]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 2.445

Organizers: Nicole Denier, University of Alberta; Yang Hu, Lancaster University;
Presiders: Yang Hu, Lancaster University; Nicole Denier, University of Alberta;
  • Labor Market Trends Over Two Decades in Canada: An Intersectional Perspective. .....Alla Konnikov, Concordia University of Edmonton; and Karen D. Hughes, University of Alberta
  • Following a shift in migration policy that prioritizes skills and human capital, Canadian society has become increasingly diverse, with a growing proportion of first- and second-generation immigrants, many of whom are visible as ethnic and racial minorities. These transformations are shaping the labor market composition, with increased complexity, where some occupations and industries remain fairly homogeneous in terms of ethnicity, race, immigration status, and gender, while others are becoming far more heterogeneous. This uneven transformation results in more complex forms of inequality that converge along the lines of immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender. In the context of this growing complexity, studying labor market segregation using discrete approaches to sex and racial segregation can no longer fully capture the complexity of the labor market landscape, thus necessitating an intersectional approach. This paper employs the intersectionality framework to illuminate the growing heterogeneity of labor market segregation, considering multiple factors including gender, immigration, and visible minority status. Analyzing data from the Canadian Census (2001 and 2021), we map the changing demographic composition of the Canadian labor force and occupations over the past two decades, documenting the growing intersectional complexity of the labor force. This intersectional analysis offers a timely framework and evidence for understanding how growing digitalization and automation may converge with complex labor market inequalities to generate new, intersectional, and algorithmic forms of inequalities.
  • Between the Supply and Demand Sides: How Employers and Job Seekers Navigate Intersectional Inequalities In AI-Automated Hiring. .....Rujun (Ruth) Zhang, University of Alberta; Rebecca Deustch, University of Alberta; and Karen D. Hughes, University of Alberta
  • How do key actors on both sides of the hiring process – human resource (HR) professionals and job seekers – navigate intersectional inequality and artificial intelligence (AI) automated hiring processes? In this exploratory pilot study, we bring together supply- and demand-side perspectives to aid our understanding of algorithmic hiring and intersectional inequality, drawing on empirical data from interviews with HR professionals and potential job applicants. Our goal is to begin to identify key factors and conceptual dimensions that shape demand- and supply-side understandings of intersectional algorithmic bias. In the interviews with job seekers, we look at the intentional impression-management techniques that participants use in order to present themselves as an “ideal fit” for the desired job post in algorithmic hiring. Previous research has demonstrated that a variety of techniques have been employed by prospective job candidates to mitigate the negative perceived effects of their identity in job-seeking processes. Such techniques may take on new forms as the technological landscape continues to shift. Our methods involve semi-structured interviews with potential job applicants (n=8), complemented by a small number of exploratory interviews with HR professionals. In our interviews with job seekers, we examine job-seeking strategies and job application processes, how participants perceive the use of AI in hiring, and their corresponding adjustments. In our interviews with HR professionals, we examine hiring practices, EDI strategies, and how participants conceptualize the “ideal fit” of prospective candidates. Insights from our in-depth qualitative exploration provide new understandings of the knowledge and practices of people from both sides of the hiring process in “doing” and “undoing” intersectional inequalities in AI-automated hiring processes.
  • Algorithmic and Intersectional?: Evaluating Intersectional Inequalities in the Context of Digitalized Hiring. .....Nicole Denier, University of Alberta; and Yang Hu, Lancaster University
  • Digital platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) based tools increasingly facilitate both the demand (employer) and supply (worker) sides of hiring, raising concerns about algorithmic biases and changing affordances for employers and job seekers alike. Digital and automated systems have the potential to reproduce, amplify, or mitigate human biases evident within the organizational contexts in which they are implemented. Similarly, job seekers may use novel generative artificial intelligence tools to formulate applications and assist with impression management strategies in ways that may exacerbate or lessen the potential for discrimination. We draw on two studies focusing on different sides of the hiring process to pinpoint ways that gender and racial inequalities may be shaped and reproduced at critical points of hiring and applying. The first study uses an instrumental variable approach to causally identify the relationship between the wording of online job advertisements and aggregate gender and racial labor market inequalities. The second study uses a novel experimental method to identify biases and patterns in language generated by large language models when prompted to produce job applications based on real-life job postings. Taken together, the studies highlight the profound impact of biased language in AI-mediated hiring and job application.
  • From a word to the world: Towards a holistic ecology of Intersectional AI. .....Yang Hu, Lancaster University; and Nicole Denier, University of Alberta
  • Labor market inequalities are often characterized by intersectional configurations involving mutually constituent and mutually shaping relationships among multiple social categories such as gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and class. Theories of intersectionality have long influenced research on work and employment. However, the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in labor market processes such as hiring, performance assessment, and promotion have not been sufficiently examined through an intersectional lens. This paper addresses this gap by providing a systematic conceptualization of how and why intersectional inequalities may emerge in the design and deployment of AI in labor markets, and what it takes for AI to account for intersectional constellations. The analysis draws primarily on a meta-synthesis of interdisciplinary theories and evidence, supplemented by insights from interviews with human resource practitioners and staff at a globally leading firm developing AI algorithms for hiring, as well as interviews with individual job seekers on their experiences with AI-mediated job applications. In doing so, it problematizes mainstream approaches to intersectionality in AI within the labor market context that focus predominantly on distributive parity across social groups characterized by intersectional identities. This paper conceptualizes "intersectional AI" as a socio-technical ecology comprising multiple actors that occupy distinct positions and engage in interlocking interactions, whose interplays are embedded in unequal power matrices across various levels of society and (often contesting) global contexts. By offering fresh insights into the challenges of tackling intersectional inequalities in AI-mediated labor market processes, this paper develops a multilevel multi-stakeholder and relational framework to guide the development of effective strategies to address intersectional algorithmic inequalities.

Panelists:
  • Alla Konnikov, Concordia University of Edmonton;
  • Karen D. Hughes, University of Alberta;
  • Rujun (Ruth) Zhang, University of Alberta;
  • Rebecca Deustch, University of Alberta;
  • Nicole Denier, University of Alberta;
  • Yang Hu, Lancaster University;
61. Work Hour Preferences and Problems [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 3.210

Presider: Sunjin Pak, California State University, Bakersfield
  • The Impact of Paid Time Off On Job Satisfaction and Resignations. .....Candice Vander Weerdt, Cleveland State University; LeaAnne DeRigne, Florida Atlantic University; and Patricia Stoddard-Dare, Cleveland State University
  • A representative sample of US adults born between 1980 and 1984 surveyed via the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 was used to examine the relationship between paid time off (combined sick days, vacation, and personal leave) and job satisfaction and resignations. While controlling for 17 demographic and employment-related variables, logistic regression and fixed effects modeling reveal over a 17-year period access to 6 to 10 paid time off days is related to significantly increased job satisfaction for male workers, while 11 or more paid time off days is needed to observe a statistically significant increase in job satisfaction for all workers and female employees. There is no relationship between paid time off and resignations for employees afforded a low (1-5) number of days off per year; however, there is a significant reduction in turnover for employees who are provided a moderate (6-10) number of days or a generous ( 11 or more) number of paid days off. When analyzed in separate logistic models for males and females, a similar pattern was revealed with both males and females experiencing a statistically significant reduction in turnover when given a moderate or generous number of paid time off days. This research suggests one factor that led to the Great Resignation, paid time off, is an enduring rather than fleeting business concern. Implications for family policy and business will be discussed.
  • What Part of Well Being Are We Not Getting? Associations of Underemployment and Involuntary vs. Voluntary Part Time With Health, Happiness and Work-Family Outcomes. .....Lonnie Golden, Penn State University - Abington College; and Jaeseung Kim, Sungkyungkwan University
  • Underemployment remains under-researched, not only as an indicator of labor underutilization, but as a threat to workers’ well-being and health. Our study explores how underemployment -- workers constrained by the labor market or their job to work part time (PT) but wishing to work more hours or to have a full-time (FT) job -- is associated with general health, emotional well-being, current happiness at work and job satisfaction. We use primary data collected in a two-wave panel in 2023 (N=1200, US) to establish both cross sectional and dynamic relationships between indicators of worker well being and three alternative measures of underemployment--working part time for involuntary reasons (IVPT); working PT and indicating a desire to work more weekly hours; and working PT but preferring a full time job. Wave I data find that, compared to full-time workers, IVPT workers showed lower self-rated health and higher frequency of emotional difficulties. PT workers who want more hours have more frequent emotional problems but not reduced health. PT workers who prefer a full-time job reported lower happiness at work, more emotional difficulty and more sick days, but not poorer health. In contrast, working PT for voluntary (VPT) reasons show consistently positive outcomes. Demographic and job characteristics amplify the reduced health status and job happiness: nonwhite and hourly-paid underemployed workers reported particularly lower life satisfaction and job happiness. Finally, fixed effects tests focus on the workers experiencing transitions into and out of the state of underemployment after 6 months, to cope with potential worker heterogeneity or endogeneity.
  • Here to Stay? Alternating Weekly Work Schedules and the Future of Work in Organisational Settings in Ghana. .....Kwaku Abrefa Busia, Lingnan University
  • Following the realities of public restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic on one hand and inadequate workplace resources to accommodate all workers on the other hand, some Ghanaian organisations began to experiment an alternating weekly work schedule (AWWS). This novel flexible work arrangement allows employees to work for a particular weekday and then take a break from work for their personal life in the following weekday as their colleagues take charge of work responsibilities in a rotational manner. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 25 employees in public and private organizations, this qualitative study investigated the origins of this flexible work practice, individual and organisational benefits of the practice, as well as the challenges that comes with this alternating weekly work schedule. Preliminary research findings demonstrate that workers viewed the practice as beneficial in terms of greater work-life balance, reduced transportation cost to and from work, enhanced occupational commitment and improved work performance. For the organisations, this new work schedule arrangement was found to reduce organisational costs, enhance workplace well-being and facilitate organisational teambuilding.
  • No More Go-Getters? Empirical Evidence From Germany on Job Preferences. .....Lena Hipp, WZB - Social Science Research Center Berli; and Erin Kelly, MIT - Sloan School of Management
  • The work-life field has long included research on work orientations and job preferences, which have been tied to the gender wage gap and generational dynamics more recently. The idea of “compensating differentials”—where women and especially mothers trade off higher wages for more family-supportive conditions—is thought to explain gender wage gaps. However, the empirical evidence on job preferences is not clear and is arguably out of date. Millenials and GenZers are now commonly stereotyped as prioritizing work-life balance, as lazy quiet-quitters. The media has proclaimed the “end of ambition” (Time Magazine, October 2022) among cohorts born after the mid-1990s, but research on cohort differences is also inconclusive. In a survey of 4,203 respondents in Germany, respondents were asked to choose from two hypothetical jobs that varied in income (10% more than current or 5% less), opportunities for professional advancement (good or few), and working hours (“long hours are common and availability outside of regular work is expected” or “working hours are flexible and [other employees say] they do not work longer than contracted”). Most women and men would prefer jobs with flexible and predictable working hours, even with lower salaries and less advancement. Women express preferences for these types of jobs at even higher rates than men (p<0.05), with no significant differences between parents and nonparents within gender. The interest in the no-advancement, steady job was lowest for those in their 20s, suggesting that it is actually workers aged 30+ who are more interested in less intensive work.
  • Tipping the Scales: Identifying the Working Hour Thresholds Impacting Health and Gender Wage Disparities. .....Sunjin Pak, California State University, Bakersfield; Amit Kramer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaig; and Yun-Kyoung “Gail” Kim, Salisbury University
  • In this study, we delve into the intricate interplay of working hours and perceived health, and its subsequent influence on gender wage disparity, within South Korean context. Drawing from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) spanning 2013 to 2021, a causal link between working hours and perceived health is established. Employing cross-lagged and instrumental variable approaches, this study highlights the distinct health impacts of working hours on men and women, resulting in gender-specific wage differences. The 2018 policy amendment in South Korea, which lowered the maximum weekly working hours, served as an instrumental variable. Key findings reveal an inverted U-curve relationship between working hours and health, with discerned inflection points at 41.36 hours per week for men and 28.95 hours for women. Additionally, our analysis uncovers a bidirectional relationship between self-perceived health and earnings. Consequently, prolonged work durations have a more pronounced negative impact on women's health, which might contribute to wage discrepancies. In summary, South Korea's 2018 initiative to curtail weekly working hours might play a pivotal role in narrowing both the health and wage disparities between genders. As the workforce transitions towards schedules that prioritize individual health boundaries, it is plausible to anticipate a progression towards more balanced health and wage outcomes across genders in the South Korean professional environment.
62. Gender, Identity, and Career Progression [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 3.265

Presider: Jennifer Augustine, University of South Carolina
  • Parents' Experiences of Remote Work: A Photo-Documentary Study. .....Jennifer Augustine, University of South Carolina; Nicholas Hollis, University of South Carolina; Paola Tamayo, University of South Carolina; and Morgan Koziol, University of South Carolina
  • Overall Issue. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly upended norms of work. One of the most profound changes was a shift toward remote work. Today, nearly 16 percent of the U.S. workforce is fully remote. Over 28 percent of workers have a hybrid schedule. This recent rise in remote work has been heralded as providing greater opportunities for parents to balance work and family demands. Yet social scientific research suggests that remote work may carry distinct downsides. For example, studies based on time-diary data reveal that mothers who work from home perform more childcare and domestic work, exacerbating gender disparities in unpaid labor. For fathers, remote work often leads to greater time working, making it more difficult for them to meet their family responsibilities. Several studies have also found that parents who work from home do not experience the promised benefit of remote work—greater work family balance—but rather greater work family conflict. The reasons that parents who work at home experience greater work-family conflict, however, have largely eluded scholars, as prior research has typically employed quantitative methods based on surveys. These surveys provide representative estimates of how parents allocate their time, or how they feel about their remote work schedules. But they do not provide a window into the everyday lived experiences of remote working parents or a textured understanding of the challenges of remote work. Statement on Methods. In this project, we will provide this window by capturing photographic images of the remote workspaces of 28 parents. Our use of photography as a data collection method is rare amongst social scientists, who tend to capture the social world through numbers and words. Yet photography is a valuable method that captures the spaces where remote work is performed. Such spaces contain rich details about the lives of families who are navigating new working norms, and parents’ remote workspaces reflect an increasingly important social place within the home. To date, we have taken over sixty photographs of the remote workspaces of twenty mothers and eight fathers with children aged 13 or younger who work from home two or more days per week, although our data collection is ongoing. We have recruited parents through school PTOs, local gyms, coffee shops, community centers, and libraries, and across urban and suburban neighborhoods in our community. Our data collection also includes a small interview component, in which we ask parents (a) what they like and (b) what they dislike about their remote workspaces, as well as a brief demographic survey. The quotes from the interview provide additional insight into the significance of the pictures. The information from the survey allow us to describe the parents whose spaces are pictured. Important Findings. Key findings of our analysis are as follows. • We identified two key themes in our analysis of the photographs. The first theme we observed is that most spaces were characterized by “blurred physical boundaries.” • Specifically, parents’ workspaces contained materials that not only were used in the performance of their work activities. They were also used to perform other activities, such as caregiving, domestic work, and hobbies. Workspaces also shared functions with other key activities—for example, working and eating—or with other people; for example, parents’ workspaces were also children’s sleeping spaces. • Parents reported that this issue of blurred spaces made remote work challenging, as they presented regular distractions, limited privacy, and made it difficult to cognitively distinguish between working and other activities. • The second theme we identified was that most spaces were “improvised” in various ways. Spaces borrowed materials from other spaces in the home; for example, to create a makeshift desk or serve as a desk chair. They also borrowed space; for example, by occupying a small corner of a room used primarily for another purpose. As a consequence, parents’ workspaces were often disorganized, cramped, and lacking in necessary storage or space for key work materials. Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice. These findings provide a unique window into understanding the challenges of parents who work from home; specifically, because parents lack the space and materials to create an ideal work environment. Employers should thus consider ways to help workers create appropriate work set-ups, beyond providing access to computing and platforms, which tends to be their focus. The results also highlight one way in which remote work—which has been hailed as a potentially democratizing force in the post-COVID era, in which remote work access has widened—may further inequality; specifically, because less advantaged workers may experience blurred physical boundaries and improvised spaces more so that more advantaged workers. At the same time, these results highlight a key set of challenges for remote work that are less amenable to intervention. Many parents refused to designate more space in their home for work, even when such space was available. As such, they reveal how parents are still adapting to their new working norms and unsure how much of they want work to become integrated into their homes.
  • The Impact of Partners’ Identity Comprehension on Workers’ Outcomes: The Role of Felt Understanding and Gender. .....Xing Liu, Wayne State University; Christina Hymer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Sherry Thatcher, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Research examining the work-family interface indicates that work-family conflict contributes to negative individual outcomes, including reduced well-being and job performance. While valuable, this research has traditionally only accounted for the perspective of the worker. In this study, we examine the impact of a partner’s perceptions of a worker’s work-family interface on a focal worker’s work outcomes. Drawing upon identity theory, we anticipate that a partner’s identity comprehension (i.e., the extent to which a partner understands the importance of a focal worker’s work- and family-related identities) positively relates to a worker’s levels of job satisfaction, job engagement, and work-family balance satisfaction. That is, as a partner more correctly assesses the importance of a focal worker’s identities, they are better capable of providing resources to help a focal worker navigate work and family demands. We anticipate that these positive relationships are mediated by a focal worker's perception that their partner understands their work-family conflict. Drawing upon gender role theory, we anticipate that these relationships are strengthened when the focal worker is female given gender differences in role demands that may contribute to greater levels of work-family conflict among women. We test our model using a multi-source, multi-wave cross-lagged design on a sample of 158 couples from Prolific. We find that partners’ identity comprehension enhances focal workers’ job satisfaction, job engagement, and work-family balance satisfaction. However, felt understanding only mediates the relationship between identity comprehension and work-family balance satisfaction for female workers. Our paper carries implications for the identity and work-family literatures.
  • A New Dimension of the Motherhood Penalty: Perceptions of Future Childbearing Risk. .....Tania Hutt, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
  • While there is widespread evidence of the motherhood penalty in the U.S. labor market, it remains unclear whether future childbearing risk activates employers’ forward-looking concerns about job applicants. I draw from existing social-psychological research to theorize that future childbearing risk will be associated with forward-looking characteristics, such as future cost, risk, and growth potential. Using an original conjoint survey experiment that disentangles current motherhood status from future childbearing risk, I find that among childless women, future motherhood is penalized in perceptions of cost and risk while among current mothers, future additional childbearing is also penalized in perceptions of growth potential and competency. In addition, by examining how the penalty associated with current motherhood varies across low and high future childbearing risk, I find that when motherhood is signaled in isolation from future childbearing risk (i.e., mothers who are “done” with childbearing), mothers are penalized exclusively in perceptions associated with having current childcare responsibilities. In contrast, when current motherhood is combined with high future childbearing risk, the penalty is larger and impacts nearly all measures of cost, risk, growth potential, and reliability—being more closely aligned with the conventionally studied motherhood penalty. I also find some interesting variations of these penalties across racial and social class groups. I propose a theoretical framework that enables a deeper understanding of the motherhood penalty, showing how perceptions of future cost and risk of childbearing can affect childless women as well as exacerbate and expand the penalties already experienced by mothers of young children.
63. Perceptions and Measures of Work-Life Balance [Paper Session]
Friday | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | MB 3.270

Presider: Sara Bayes, Edith Cowan University
  • Methods, Measures, and Money: Re-Examining Parental Leave Policy Effects on Earnings. .....Brigid Cotter, University of Southern California
  • Parental leave schemes, along with other family policies, are intended to aid new parents in navigating care responsibilities and the increasingly difficult balance between work and family. However, the extent to which these policies help women and new parents is highly contentious. Work-family policy scholars have engaged in years-long, theoretically and empirically rich discourse that seeks to answer paradoxes in relationships between publicly funded family-friendly policies and indicators of women’s labor market outcomes, such as earnings. Scholars tend to disagree on the magnitude and extent to which parental leave policies affect labor market outcomes and career trajectories for parents. Often, this contention is oriented on what "good leave" is for parents, though scholars measure indicators in a variety of ways, creating an unstable benchmark for appropriate comparison across policy frameworks. This paper seeks to address these incons