How are working mothers faring during the COVID-19 crisis? College of Business HRM professors Dana Sumpter and Mona Zanhour have been conducting a qualitative study to gather the experiences of women who face increasingly difficult choices in their work and family roles.  Their work was recently quoted in The Atlantic, in an article by Joe Pinsker about the unsustainable nature of this experience for working parents.

"Workers who can’t manage both their job and child care are left with some unpleasant choices".  Dana Sumpter and Mona Zanhour, both business professors at California State University at Long Beach, have been interviewing working mothers about their experiences during the pandemic.  Their research is in its early stages, but Sumpter told me that so far they’ve heard more women talk about the possibility of reducing their hours than leaving their job entirely.

 

That’s at least better than the alternative. “It is difficult to reenter the workplace once someone has left it,”  Sumpter said. “A career hiatus can impact one’s career trajectory, not to mention lifetime earnings, [and] it also affects women’s identity, self-esteem, and well-being.”  Reducing one’s schedule to part-time, though, can also come at a high cost, because many white-collar employers disproportionately compensate those who can work longer hours."