Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Don’t Mind the Gap: Reframing Résumés Facilitates Mothers’ Work Re-Entry
    (Academy of Management, 2021-08)
    Kristal, Ariella
    ;
    Nicks, Leonie
    ;
    ;
    Hauser, Oliver
    Becoming a mother and taking care-related leaves from work contribute to economic gender inequality: Employers’ gender role stereotypes ascribe mothers less qualification and ambition (i.e., agency), which are reinforced by employment gaps in their résumé. We integrate the judgment and decision-making literature to redesign mothers’ résumés in a way that reduces mothers’ barriers to work re-entry. More specifically, integrating signal detection theory, we theorize that by replacing employment dates with the number of years the applicant worked in each job, applicants can better convey their relevant professional abilities and ambition to employers (i.e., signals) without disclosing these distracting employment gaps (i.e., noise). In a large- scale randomized field experiment (N = 9,022), results showed that mothers with this redesigned resume´ received more callbacks than those whose résumés showed employment dates. In an online experiment (N = 667), we replicated and extended these findings to show explicit evidence of our theorized mechanism: applicant agency. By integrating these literatures, we proposed and tested a cost-free, low-effort intervention to reduce inequality by reducing mothers’ résumé gap- related agency penalties and facilitating their return to work.
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  • Publication
    Maternal optimism: Forging positive paths through work and motherhood
    (Academy of Management, 2021-04-19)
    In Maternal Optimism, Ladge and Greenberg expertly explore how women can survive and thrive in the work and family domains. Spanning the gamut of potential work-life events, the authors tackle the topics of pre-pregnancy, maternity, return to work, empty nesting, and retirement. Designed as a resource for working women to “provide...stories and research that support the notion of owning and feeling confident in the choices you make as future or current working mothers” (x), this review relays the book’s key themes, focusing on those with particular relevance for management scholars and practitioners, leaders and organizations. Because of its American-centric focus and pre-COVID-19 publication, special care is taken to integrate a more global focus and consider some COVID-19-related reflections. However, diverse groups of readers in management education, academia, and practice may find this resource interesting and relevant.
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