Hitting the Maternal Wall
While many women face a broken rung on the ladder to leadership, mothers may face what researcher Joan C. Williams terms a “maternal wall.” She writes, “Women who have been very successful may suddenly find their proficiency questioned once they become pregnant, take maternity leave, or adopt flexible work schedules. Their performance evaluations may plummet and their political support evaporate. The ‘family gap’ yawns: An increasing percentage of the wage gap between men and women is attributable to motherhood.”
Motherhood can impact the type of projects assigned and opportunities to advance in a firm, according to a 2021 AIA/ The Center for WorkLife Law investigation into bias in the architecture profession. “Mothers leave the architecture profession not only in search of work-life balance, but also because they feel their careers stalled out due to discrimination against mothers in the form of pay inequity, lack of opportunities, and assumptions about their priorities,” the same report found.
To retain workers and mitigate bias against mothers, Leslie Evans Ogden suggests in her Harvard Business Review article that employees and firm leaders take the following steps:
Instead of assuming mothers returning from parental leave have a reduced commitment, supervisors should meet with them and review their short and long-term career goals. Mothers can request such a meeting if their supervisor doesn’t take the initiative.
When leaving the office on firm-related business, mothers may benefit from telling colleagues where they’re going and leaving a note on their work stations with the same information. This practice can correct the assumption that the absence is owing to a lack of commitment.
To help promote family-friendly policies, people holding leadership positions should make it known when they are leaving the office for family-related reasons. It isn’t enough to have the policies on the books; the AIA/ The Center for WorkLife Law study found that “over a third of women, and approximately a quarter of men, thought that asking for flexible arrangements would hurt their careers.”
Photo by Harris & Ewing, 1934.
Leaders should be mindful that child-free employees also have lives and commitments outside of work. Accommodating parental responsibilities should not come at the expense of these employees’ work/ life balance. Flexible schedules and good family leave policies can help retain all workers, not just parents.
The AIA/ The Center for WorkLife Law study includes tools for interrupting biases like the maternal wall, family leave, and workplace flexibility. The AIA’s Guides for Equitable Practice offers additional tools for creating a more equitable workplace.
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