A new study finds that caregiving men and childless women are treated disrespectfully at work by their co-workers.
Traditionally men are the bread earners of the family while women are associated with staying at home and taking care of the kids. A new study finds that when both genders tend to reverse their roles, the society is not too accepting. A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management found that middle class men who take up non-traditional caregiving roles and women who have no children or fail to take up traditional caregiving roles are treated disrespectfully at work by their co-workers.
Professor Jennifer Berdahl of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management who co-authored the study with Sue Moon from the Long Island University Post reveals that though they work the same hours as any other employee, they are treated with disrespect because of the non traditional roles they undertake.
The findings of the study are a result of two separate mail-in surveys. The first one was conducted on unionized workers in female-dominated occupations and the other on public service workers in a male-dominated workforce. The findings revealed that in both cases, men and women who stayed away from traditional gender family roles were treated badly at work. Similarly, men who took up less caregiving roles and did less domestic work were more favored. The same applied for women who took up more domestic caretaking roles.
"Both male and female employees suffer lower pay and fewer promotions after taking time off work to care for family, to extents that cannot be explained by possible skill loss, hours, performance, or ambition. What we really need is a more flexible workplace and policies that protect employees who choose to use that flexibility or not, regardless of their gender," Prof. Berdahl, said in a statement.
This led authors of the study to conclude that how people fulfill their domestic roles has more influence on how they are treated at work than how they perform their professional duties.
The study will appear in the Journal of Social Issues.