Purpose This paper aims to examine gender gaps in work-related outcomes in the context of Covid-19. The authors hypothesized that the Covid-19 pandemic would create a gender gap in perceived work productivity and job satisfaction. This is because when couples are working from home the whole day and when schools are closed, women are expected to devote more time to housework and childcare. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a sample of employed women and men from dual-career families who were working from home since Covid-19 lockdowns started. In total, 286 US-resident full-time employees participated in this study. Participants were asked to report their work productivity and job satisfaction before and since Covid-19 lockdowns. Findings It is found that before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were no gender differences in self-rated work productivity and job satisfaction. However, during the lockdown, women reported lower work productivity and job satisfaction than men. Research limitations/implications Participants retrospectively reported their work productivity and job satisfaction before Covid-19. However, there are unlikely to be systematic gender differences in retrospective reports of these measures. Further, the authors only sampled opposite-sex dual career parents. Future research needs to examine the effects of lockdowns on women and men in other types of households. Practical implications Given the nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, many regions might experience multiple periods of lockdown, and many workplaces have already adopted or are likely to adopt long-term work-from-home policies. The findings indicate that these long-term changes in the workplace might have long-term negative effects on women’s perceived productivity and job-satisfaction in dual-career families. Social implications The findings suggest that society needs provide additional support to women working from home and taking care of children or other dependents, particularly during lockdowns or during times when schools and daycare centers are closed. Originality/value The current research is one of the first to claim that despite the greater amount of time that women spend in housework and childcare than men, during normal times, they are as productive and as satisfied with their job as men. However, the Covid-19 pandemic increased women’s housework and childcare beyond a threshold, thereby creating a gender gap in work productivity and job satisfaction.
Using experimental paradigms from economics and social psychology, the authors examined the cross-cultural applicability of 3 widely held assumptions about preference and choice: People (a) recruit or construct preferences to make choices; (b) choose according to their preferences; and (c) are motivated to express their preferences in their choices. In 6 studies, they compared how middle-class North American and Indian participants choose among consumer products. Participants in both contexts construct nonrandom preferences at similar speeds. Those in Indian contexts, however, are slower to make choices, less likely to choose according to their personal preferences, and less motivated to express their preferences in their choices. The authors infer that the strong link between preferences and choices observed among North Americans is not a universal feature of human nature. Instead, this link reflects the disjoint model of agency, which prescribes that people should choose freely on the basis of their preferences. In contrast, Indian contexts reflect and promote a conjoint model of agency, according to which agency is responsive to the desires and expectations of important others and may require restraining one's preferences.
The United States must improve its students' educational achievement. Race, gender, and social class gaps persist, and, overall, U.S. students rank poorly among peers globally. Scientific research shows that students' psychology-their "academic mindsets"-have a critical role in educational achievement. Yet policymakers have not taken full advantage of cost-effective and well-validated mindset interventions. In this article, we present two key academic mindsets. The first, a growth mindset, refers to the belief that intelligence can be developed over time. The second, a belonging mindset, refers to the belief that people like you belong in your school or in a given academic field. Extensive research shows that fostering these mindsets can improve students' motivation; raise grades; and reduce racial, gender, and social class gaps. Of course, mindsets are not a panacea, but with proper implementation they can be an excellent point of entry. We show how policy at all levels (federal, state, and local) can leverage mindsets to lift the nation's educational outcomes.
This study proposes a dynamic reparatory model of voluntary work behavior. We test the hypothesis that when people are made aware of their high level of negative behavior at work (i.e., counterproductive work behavior) and are informed that their behavior is counternormative and undesirable, the knowledge that they violated social norms induces guilt. This guilt, in turn, results in compensatory behavior that is positive in nature (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior). We report results from a field experiment involving normative feedback about employees' counterproductive work behavior to support this model. The findings indicate that undesirable behaviors in the workplace can be redressed by making employees aware of the negative consequences of these behaviors.
The current research investigates people's perceptions of others' lay theories (or mindsets), an understudied construct that we call meta-lay theories. Six studies examine whether underrepresented students' meta-lay theories influence their sense of belonging to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The studies tested whether underrepresented students who perceive their faculty as believing most students have high scientific aptitude (a universal metatheory) would report a stronger sense of belonging to STEM than those who think their faculty believe that not everyone has high scientific aptitude (a nonuniversal metatheory). Women PhD candidates in STEM fields who held universal rather than nonuniversal metatheories felt greater sense of belonging to their field, both when metatheories were measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2). Undergraduates who held more universal metatheories reported a higher sense of belonging to STEM (Studies 3 and 4) and earned higher final course grades (Study 3). Experimental manipulations depicting a professor communicating the universal lay theory eliminated the difference between African American and European American students' attraction to a STEM course (Study 5) and between women and men's sense of belonging to STEM (Study 6). Mini meta-analyses indicated that the universal metatheory increases underrepresented students' sense of belonging to STEM, reduces the extent of social identity threat they experience, and reduces their perception of faculty as endorsing stereotypes. Across different underrepresented groups, types of institutions, areas of STEM, and points in the STEM pipeline, students' metaperceptions of faculty's lay theories about scientific aptitude influence their sense of belonging to STEM. (PsycINFO Database Record
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