Gender, transition to parenthood, and workplace authority in urban China


Manlin Cai, University of British Columbia

Despite the rise of women’s educational attainment and labour force participation, women lag far behind men in reaching positions of authority and leadership at work worldwide. Even when men and women possess comparable human capital, a consistent gender gap exists that favours men in workplace authority. The gendered disadvantages in the labour market are further distributed unevenly among women, with mothers often bearing the brunt. Research has revealed that motherhood typically leads to lower earnings for women. However, fewer studies have investigated how parenthood shapes gender disparities in access to authority at work. In light of this research gap, my study examines how transition to parenthood affects women’s and men’s workplace authority in urban China. Cultural understandings of fatherhood and motherhood differ: Paid work is treated as an integral part of fatherhood, whereas unpaid childcare work remains at the core of motherhood. The norms of motherhood are thus more at odds with authority positions that usually require individuals to devote to work above all other life commitments. Mothers and fathers may internalize these gendered understandings and respond at work accordingly by adjusting their work effort. Meanwhile, regardless of work performance, such gender norms can lead employers to deem mothers unfit for authority and leadership positions. These parenthood effects are likely to be particularly salient in China, where patriarchal values surrounding work and family remain entrenched. My research draws on nationally representative, longitudinal survey data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). I use all the six biennial waves of the CFPS from 2010 to 2020 that are currently available to obtain person-year observations. Given my interest in the effects of transition to parenthood, my analytic sample only includes respondents who transitioned to parenthood for the first time during the observation period. The sample is further restricted to respondents aged 18–49 in each wave who were employed in urban areas and tracked at least twice. I use fixed-effects linear probability models to estimate the effects of transition to parenthood on men’s and women’s likelihood of holding supervisory authority at work. The fixed-effects method estimates within-person effects and thus better addresses selectivity issues through accounting for person-specific invariant unobserved characteristics that may affect both transition to parenthood and workplace authority. I find that net of controls for human capital, family status, and job characteristics, transition to parenthood is associated with a decrease of 5.2% in women’s probability of holding supervisory authority. Results by work sectors further show that this penalty of motherhood in authority is insignificant for women working in the state sector but more salient for those working in the non-state sector (a decrease of 8.1%). By contrast, transition to fatherhood does not affect men’s probability of holding supervisory authority at work, regardless of the sector they work in. Overall, the findings reveal that parenthood widens the gender gap in workplace authority. Because access to authority positions is associated with more job benefits and greater control over organizational decisions, the differential effects of parenthood on workplace authority between men and women may well produce and perpetuate gender inequalities in other realms of work and family lives. Furthermore, transition to parenthood exacerbates the glass ceiling that prevents capable women from reaching leadership at work, which could, in turn, incur a tremendous loss to organizations and society.

This paper will be presented at the following session: