“Pregnancy is a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband, and it’s certainly an inconvenience for a business.”

These are not my words — they come from a 2004 television interview with Donald J Trump, the current United States President.

Given his record of being outspoken, some might not find the statement surprising. Yet in many workplaces, childless, early career professional women find that such attitudes are far from Mr Trump’s alone.

Singapore businesses are no exception. According to the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), 70 per cent of  workplace discrimination cases reported to its Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory hotline set up last September relate to pregnancy.

Often, women also experience pre-judgment by colleagues and supervisors who see them as potential future mothers and therefore a possible burden to the team if they were to become pregnant and take maternity leave.

Taken a step further, these “maybe baby” perceptions can have a significant impact on workplace relations, leading to early career women being ostracised, resented and disrespected by their colleagues.

In turn, this can cause some women to consider quitting their jobs or even abandoning their chosen career paths altogether and switching industries.

In a recent study at the National University of Singapore Business School, we sought to explore this phenomenon beyond simple anecdotal evidence, to measure and understand the treatment young women receive and suggest possible solutions.

Working with colleagues at the University of Zurich, we used survey data taken one year apart from 474 employees working in a range of disciplines at academic institutions in Switzerland.

Several previous studies have shown the many employment disadvantages facing women who become mothers. 

For example, they are viewed as less competent and are less likely to be hired than their male or childless counterparts, despite having equal qualifications.

However, our research found that actual motherhood is not necessarily a requirement for women to experience motherhood penalties.

Indeed, the mere perception that childless women may at some point become pregnant — and therefore an “inconvenience” to their supervisors and colleagues — can lead them to experience mistreatment.

In our research we focused on a subtle form of mistreatment known as workplace incivility. Unlike overt bullying or blatant discrimination, incivility is inherently subtle and ambiguous. It includes being interrupted or joked at or ignored and spoken over.  

From the surveys we conducted, we found that overall, women experienced more incivility than men.

Notably, childless younger women reported experiencing 40 per cent more incivility than childless men and 70 per cent more incivility than women who had already become mothers. Furthermore, childless women were especially likely to experience incivility when they worked in organisations that offered more maternal leave than paternal leave.

We found that there was little gender differentiation in the source of the incivility, with both male and female colleagues directing incivility towards younger women.

Perhaps most surprisingly, we found that different organisational policies on maternal leave were a major influence on levels of incivility.

Specifically we found that childless women in organisations where the difference between maternity and paternity leave entitlement was greatest (a gap of between 28 and 34 weeks), experienced much higher levels of incivility than those in organisations where the difference was smaller.

This implies that whilst these policies were ostensibly intended to benefit professional women, they could also expose them to resentment and potential mistreatment from their co-workers.

Our findings suggest some possible solutions for both workers and employers.

First, supervisors and organisations can tackle resentment towards potential parents by fostering more inclusive workplace climates and clearly defined family-supportive policies such as working from home or flexible working. In a post-Covid-19 world, such ways of working are no longer a privilege, but a necessity. 

Singapore’s experience in recent months has shown that employees who telecommute can still be productive, as long as employers and colleagues show one another some understanding, flexibility and kindness.

Such family-friendly signals reduce employees' worries and hesitations about disclosing pregnancy and/or plans for children.

This benefits individual health but also helps organisational planning to cover work absences by new mothers, which could reduce perceptions of inconvenience and feelings of resentment.

However, to truly foster more inclusive, family-supportive climates, a key step is to provide more equitable benefits for both men and women.

Several organisations have already taken steps in this direction, creating benefits for new fathers, often in the form of broader policies that are available to either parent.

For example, Citi Singapore recently announced that it is offering four weeks of paid paternity leave for its employees.

In 2019, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that new parents, both fathers and mothers, will get 26 weeks of paid leave. This was an increase of 10 weeks of parental leave for mothers and 24 weeks for fathers.

Fathers in Singapore now get two weeks of government-paid paternity leave and an option to share up to four weeks of their wife’s 16 weeks’ paid leave.

However, only 53 per cent of eligible fathers took paternity leave, with a higher number of 84 per cent in Singapore’s public sector, as mentioned by Manpower Minister Josephine Teo in Parliament this year.

In theory, this shared leave approach would make it less clear to supervisors and employees exactly how long a young female or a male employee might be away from work in the case of a pregnancy. This would help reduce the lop-sided “inconvenience” and “maybe baby” expectations for women.

In practice however it would be important to support this policy by actively encouraging men to take it up.

This could include senior management explicitly supporting fathers who exercise parental leave options and with male leaders in organisations doing their part and setting an example as role models.

Finally, whilst the onus should not be on women to correct others' biases, early career women can proactively highlight — and ideally, extinguish — inaccurate expectations about their plans for children and/or preferences regarding their career.

This early intervention, being clear and open about family plans rather than leaving it until the last minute, can help mitigate incivility by targeting unfair and often inaccurate “maybe baby” expectations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sandy Lim in an associate professor in the Department of Management and Organisation at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School. These are her own views.