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- Title
The mother of violations: Motherhood as the primary expectation of women.
- Authors
Szekeres, Hanna; Halperin, Eran; Saguy, Tamar
- Abstract
Recent conservative political rhetoric support women having careers but emphasize that this should not be an obstacle to having children. We propose that this sentiment reflects the hierarchy of gender norms in today's society whereby motherhood is the ultimate role that women are expected to fulfil and denying such role evokes social penalties, above and beyond other prescribed gender norms. Across five experiments (N = 738), we predicted and found that voluntarily childless women elicit more negative reactions than mothers, and importantly, also more than women violating other gender norms in the realm of occupation (Study 1), power (Study 2) or sexual orientation (Study 3). We demonstrate that these patterns cannot be explained merely by a perceived lack of communal qualities of the non‐mothers (Study 4) and also show that involuntary childless women do not receive the same negativity (Study 5). We discuss this, often neglected, gender bias and its resistance to social change.
- Subjects
GENDER role; SEXUAL orientation; PREJUDICES; STEREOTYPES; SOCIAL norms; DECISION making; SEX discrimination; SOCIAL change; META-analysis; SOCIAL attitudes; PUNISHMENT; WOMEN employees; MOTHERHOOD; SENTIMENT analysis; CHILDLESSNESS
- Publication
British Journal of Social Psychology, 2023, Vol 62, Issue 4, p1875
- ISSN
0144-6665
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/bjso.12661