Motherhood: an impediment to workplace progression? The case of Cyprus

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify potential explanations on why motherhood affects the non-progression of women, in Cyprus, to the top of the organisational ladder. Design/methodology/approach For the purposes of the study a qualitative approach was taken and semi-structured interviews were used. The interviews were conducted with specific, preselected employment groups. These were chartered accountants from the Big Four (PWC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG) companies in Cyprus and academics working at the University of Cyprus. Findings It has been identified through the interviews that women in Cyprus are faced with impediments on their way to the upper levels of the organisational ladder. The reasons for this vary and one of the most important is the motherhood effect. In particular, the research suggests that cultural norms and perceptions that women should be the primary caregiver are a barrier to advancement for women and there is a lack of family friendly policies and childcare facilities at least in the organisations included in this study. Originality/value This paper sheds light into a previously under-researched area; gender equality in Cyprus. The author also denotes the problems a mother is faced with on her way to the top of the organisational ladder and that culture is of utmost importance with regards to the role of women in the society and the workplace in Cyprus and elsewhere.

“Joguei a toalha!”: a realidade de executivas que decidiram retornar ao lar: uma discussão sobre o fenômeno opt-out

“…Além disso, há a dificuldade de ascensão profissional das mulheres, fenômeno chamado de teto de vidro (glass ceiling), que surgiu por volta de 1980 nos Estados Unidos (DAVIES-NETZLEY, 1998; SOCRA-TOUS; GALLOWAY; KAMENOU-AIGBEKAEN, 2016;ANSARI, 2016). Uma das explicações do teto de vidro enfatiza a diferença comportamental entre mulheres e homens (BELKIN, 2007).…”

“…Percebe-se que à medida que as atividades profissionais de Antônia passam a sofrer certa limitação por causa da gravidez e mais tarde por causa da amamentação, sua diretora passa a encarar seu desempenho com uma limitação ao exercício de sua função como líder. Para o mundo corporativo, tal limitação não combina com a imagem de líder (CARVALHO et al, 2010;GROUT;SONDEREGGER, 2007) e deixa evidente como a maternidade ainda é considerada negativa para as mulheres pelas organizações (SOCRATOUS; GALLOWAY; KAMENOU--AIGBEKAEN, 2016;ALMEIDA;SANTOS, 2018).…”

Liberal gender equality and social difference: an institutional ethnography

“…They often ignore the needs of women employees with child care and other domestic responsibilities, as well as men who may be active participants in family responsibilities (Burnett et al, 2013;Hari, 2017;Heikkinen and Lämsä, 2017;Walsh, 2013), which could lead to individualizing responsibility (Fernando and Cohen, 2014) or creating self-doubt among women employees (Toffoletti and Starr, 2016), regardless of their coping strategies (Haas et al, 2016;Herman et al, 2013). The gender ideologies that view women as responsible for child care and household work (Seierstad and Kirton, 2015) aid in making work-life balance predominantly a woman's problem (Epple et al, 2015;Rafnsdóttir and Heijstra, 2013;Romero-Balsas et al, 2013;Socratous et al, 2016) and consider career disruptions as normal for women (Maher, 2013), which need to be managed by themselves (Ezzedeen et al, 2018).…”

“…The diversity among women employees based on class and hierarchical position (Pringle et al, 2017) or membership in occupational groups (Wright, 2016) prevents the formation of solidarity to eliminate gender-based inequalities; however, the intersectional identities sometimes enable negotiation of the power asymmetries (Atewologun et al, 2016) or opportunity structures (Hatmaker, 2013;Herman et al, 2013;Ruiz Castro and Holvino, 2016), or they discriminate (Halrynjo and Jonker, 2016) at an individual level. Such situations point to the need to base any attempt to women's solidarity in organizations on some shared experience (Atewologun et al, 2016), within and outside organizations, since intersectional identity construction is shaped both by workplace contexts as well as the social contexts (Carrim and Nkomo, 2016;Socratous et al, 2016). Maternity is one such shared experience of women employees in many organizations.…”

“…However, maternity is an underresearched intersectional category in research on gender in organizations (O'Hagan, 2018). Maternity is often a key determinant of women's career continuity (Cahusac and Kanji, 2014;Socratous et al, 2016) that calls for alternate career models for women employees, based on a woman's life stage (Santos, 2015). Hence, revealing the institutional orders that do not accommodate the maternity and child care life stage of women employees (Byron and Roscigno, 2014;Gatrell, 2013;Oyoung, 2013) could help identify the change targets for the gender diversity initiatives of organizations while making such shared experience of maternity and childcare a basis of solidarity of women employees.…”