Class Year
2019
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2019
Department 1
Management
Abstract
The United States is the only industrialized country in the world to not have a federally mandated paid maternity leave. While there is an obvious lack of maternity leave policy in the United States, there is not adequate explanation of this lack. There are some current theories used to explain this problem, such as Hofstede’s theory of individualism, and historical influence, but they are not able to fully explain why there is not maternity policy in the United States. A new proposed theory, the Gender Role-Perception Theory combines gender roles in the United States and attitudes/perceptions towards working mothers to explain how society’s negative views of working mothers who abandon their traditional gender roles leads to the unavailability of maternity policy. Results indicated that while the Gender Role-Perception Theory did not predict attitudes towards a federally mandated maternity leave in general, it did predict attitudes towards paid federally mandated maternity leave. Additional findings included males being more supportive of maternity leave than females, and a liberal political affiliation being significantly correlated with attitudes towards a federally mandated maternity leave.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Boucher, Erica R., "Testing the Gender Role-Perception Theory: A Proposed Explanation for the Lack of Maternity Leave Policy in the United States" (2019). Student Publications. 726.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/726
Included in
Benefits and Compensation Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Comments
Written for OMS 367: Work, Family, and Life Balance and as a senior capstone in Organization and Management Studies,