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ABSTRACT
To examine maternity leave as a gendered conflict management process, we analyzed a sample of interviews (from a larger data set of 102 interviews) with 26 women who reported feeling discouraged (n = 15) or encouraged (n = 11) about their employment status and career opportunities at the times of their leaves. Whereas these two groups of women converged on perceptions of a) incompatible (individual and organizational) goals and b) increased stress, they diverged on perceptions of a) interdependence, and b) use of negotiation strategies. Although this study is exploratory, findings indicate the need for additional research on perspective taking and influence tactics as ways of handling potential gendered conflict interactions for female workers and their bosses.
KEYWORDS bosses and supervisors * conflict * family leave * family policies * negotiation
Conflict is 'the interaction of interdependent people who perceive incompatible goals and interference from one another in achieving those goals' (Putnam & Poole, 1987: 552). In the workplace, conflicts center on resource allocations and/or interpersonal misunderstandings with desirable outcomes often focusing on conflict management rather than on conflict elimination. Workplace conflicts can occur over any number of issues with a main conflict management process being negotiation (i.e. the means by which two parties agree to interact in a give-and-take fashion to achieve agreement; Lewicki et al., 2006).
One such workplace issue that is positioned as inherently conflictual in both academic and popular materials is maternity leave. Although studies on maternity leave practices discuss problems with workplace policies, research has neither fully conceptualized nor empirically investigated maternity leave as a conflict management process. By conceptualizing maternity leave in this fashion, researchers can develop greater understanding of the complex interactions and tensions among conflicts with micro-practices (e.g. specific influence and bargaining strategies, everyday workplace practices, features of leaves perceived by individuals as conflictual) to problems with macroprocesses (e.g. company policies, gendered organizing processes, and laws). In this study, we utilize research on gendered conflict to describe women's perceptions of workplace interactions and outcomes regarding maternity leaves. By contrasting the perceptions of two groups of women, we describe similarities and differences in conflict features and suggest opportunities for research and practical applications.
Literature review
Maternity leave as gendered conflict
Maternity leave is defined as time...