Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / How the Maternal Wall Penalizes Women at Work
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a moment in almost every working mother's career where she realizes that having kids changed how people see her professionally. Not her skills, not her hours — just the fact that she's a mom. Luna: Right. And research shows that change happens even before she takes leave. It's called the 'maternal wall' — and it kicks in the moment people know she's a parent. Lucas: Exactly. Cornell sociologist Shelley Correll ran a now-famous experiment where she sent out identical resumes for a marketing job. The only difference: one resume mentioned being a room parent for the PTA. That single line caused evaluators to rate that candidate as less competent, less committed, and less likely to be hired. Luna: And that's with no mention of time off or flexible hours. Just the word 'PTA' triggered a bias penalty. Lucas: Correll's study found that mothers were offered a starting salary about eleven thousand dollars lower than non-mothers with identical qualifications. Fathers, by contrast, faced no penalty — and in some cases even got a small boost. Luna: That's the 'motherhood penalty' versus the 'fatherhood bonus.' And it's been replicated across multiple industries and countries. Lucas: So today we're going to drill into how this wall works — the specific biases, the data behind them, and what both individuals and organizations can actually do about it. Luna: If you're finding these conversations useful for navigating your own career or supporting colleagues, honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, a small gesture that helps us keep the show ad-free and focused on topics like this. And it genuinely makes a difference. Luna: Alright, back to the maternal wall. So Lucas, one of the most insidious parts is that it affects women's access to high-visibility assignments. Lucas: Absolutely. A 2021 study in the Academy of Management Journal followed employees at a large consulting firm. They found that after becoming mothers, women were assigned to lower-revenue projects — the kind that don't lead to partnership. Their billable hours also dropped, but not because they were working less — because they were given less important work. Luna: So it's a classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Managers assume she'll be less available, so they give her less challenging work, and then her performance metrics suffer. Lucas: Right. And the same study showed that women without children actually saw a small increase in challenging assignments after their peers became mothers — almost as if the organization redistributed the high-status work away from moms. Luna: That's brutal. So it's not just a penalty for mothers, it's a redistribution of opportunity. Lucas: Exactly. And this ties into the 'flexibility stigma' — the idea that anyone who uses flexible work arrangements is less committed. Mothers are more likely to request flexibility, so they get hit twice: once for being a mom, once for actually using the policies. Luna: Which is ironic, because those policies are designed to help everyone. But they end up being a liability for the people who need them most. Lucas: There's also compounding over time. The motherhood penalty doesn't just hit at the moment of birth — it accumulates. Each year after having a child, women's earnings grow more slowly than their childless peers. One analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed that over a decade, mothers earn about fifteen percent less than women without children, controlling for education and experience. Luna: And that's before we even get to the 'career break' penalty, which we've touched on before. But the maternal wall is specifically about bias that exists before any break. Lucas: Right. And the bias is often invisible to the person holding it. In Correll's experiment, when managers were asked why they rated the mother lower, they cited things like 'she seems less focused' or 'her priorities might shift.' They didn't say 'I'm biased against mothers' — they rationalized it. Luna: So how do you fight something that people don't even realize they're doing? Lucas: One approach is to structure evaluations around objective metrics rather than subjective judgments of 'commitment.' Another is to make sure mothers are visible in high-stakes roles — representation matters. And some companies have started 'blind' promotion committees where the evaluators don't see the candidate's parental status. Luna: But that's tricky because parental status often comes up naturally in conversation. You can't exactly scrub it from someone's work history. Lucas: No, you can't. So another tactic is to train managers specifically on the maternal wall bias. A 2022 study in the Harvard Business Review found that when managers completed a short online module about unconscious bias related to working parents, their subsequent performance ratings of mothers became more equitable. Luna: So awareness alone can shift behavior, at least in the short term. But I wonder about the long-term cultural change. Lucas: That's the harder part. It requires normalizing fathers taking parental leave too. When both parents use family policies, it reduces the stigma attached to mothers using them. Countries like Sweden, with generous shared parental leave, see smaller motherhood penalties. Luna: And there's an intersectional layer here. The maternal wall is not the same for all women. Black and Latina mothers face even larger penalties — a 2016 study found that Black mothers were offered starting salaries about five thousand dollars lower than white mothers with identical resumes. Lucas: That's a crucial point. The maternal wall is built on assumptions about caregiving, but those assumptions are filtered through race and class stereotypes. A Black mother may be seen as 'strong' and therefore less in need of accommodation, or conversely as less competent. Luna: So the strategies need to be intersectional too. One-size-fits-all policies won't cut it. Lucas: Exactly. And on an individual level, there are some tactics that can help. One is to be explicit about your career ambitions after returning from leave — don't assume your manager knows you still want that promotion. Another is to seek out sponsors, not just mentors, who will advocate for you in rooms you're not in. Luna: But shouldn't the burden be on the organization, not the individual? I mean, we're asking mothers to do extra work just to counteract bias. Lucas: Absolutely the burden should be on the organization. But until that changes, individuals need strategies to navigate the system as it is. The goal is to create structural change while helping people survive the current reality. Luna: Fair. And one structural change I've seen work is 'returnship' programs — paid re-entry programs for parents after a career break. They signal that the company values the skills of returning parents, rather than penalizing the gap. Lucas: Yeah, companies like Amazon and Goldman Sachs have those. They're not perfect, but they create a pathway that didn't exist before. Luna: And the data shows that mothers who return through such programs often outperform their peers because they're highly motivated and have fresh perspective. Lucas: So the maternal wall is real, it's measurable, and it's stubborn. But it's not immovable. The first step is naming it — and that's what we've done today. Luna: And for anyone listening who's a manager, maybe take a moment to check your own assumptions the next time you assign a project or write a performance review. Lucas: That's a good place to leave it. Thanks, Luna. Luna: Thanks, Lucas. See you next time.