Manager gender and changing attitudes toward schedule control: evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Study

ABSTRACT

This study explores gender differences in managers’ responses to a workplace initiative designed to reduce managers’ concerns about schedule control in a large IT company. Drawing on a manager-level dataset collected from a group-randomized trial, results show that the workplace initiative significantly reduced concerns managers had about schedule control. In models stratified by gender, the initiative’s effect was statistically significant among male managers, but not among female managers. Male managers tended to have greater concerns about schedule control than female managers, but male managers who received the intervention reduced their level of concern to the level of female managers who did not receive the intervention. These findings improve our understanding of the role of organizational initiatives in changing gendered attitudes toward family-supportive workplace policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Manager gender
• organizational demography
• schedule control
• workplace intervention
• family-friendly supportiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the USC Korean Studies Institute Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Eunjeong Paek

Eunjeong Paek is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include stratification, gender, work, and family-friendly policies. Her dissertation investigates how the diffusion of family-friendly policies is conditioned by workplace computerization, labor unions, and demographic characteristics.