Research: Mothers in leadership roles face prejudice

Women in leadership roles who are mothers are still struggling to be recognised as “legitimate leaders”, a university researcher says.

It is has long been documented that motherhood is the biggest dropping off point for women on the path to leadership roles, but what has not is the stigma faced by mothers who go on to work at the top of an organisation.

New research from the University of Auckland paints a bleak picture of the realities mothers in leadership roles deal with when choosing to work and raise a family.

A qualitative study of 48 women in, or on a trajectory to, leadership roles, some of who worked for some of New Zealand’s largest corporations and most innovative start-ups, found women who happened to be mothers often were judged or seen as less of a leader for having a top job and raising young children.

The research, which is being called a worldfirst, delved into whether women can have it all in their quest for gender and pay equity.

Dr Amanda Sterling, a business consultant who works with organisations to increase the representation of women in senior roles, conducted eight focus groups with women between August and December 2020 to learn about their experiences working in leadership, navigating pregnancy, birth and the care of young children.

She said her research highlighted that mothers in leadership roles experienced greater scrutiny than non-parents in leadership roles.

“Motherhood remains one of the significant reasons that women continue to drop out of what they call the pipeline to leadership,” said Sterling. “What I found is when women’s experiences of motherhood are explicitly recognised and supported they’re actually engaging in more connected and purposeful forms of leadership, and so they are able to show up and show their vulnerable human experiences and that’s when powerful forms of leadership are emerging.”

Sterling said the mothers she spoke to had similar stories and felt they needed to prove their value or worth as leaders. Some of their comments made during the research, included:

“There is this culture out there, particularly in male-dominated fields, that you can’t actually be highly competent and negotiating children,” one participant said. “We still have this sense that when we become a mother we’re going to be less of the leader.”

Another said: “Colleagues who do advance are generally women who either don’t have children or their children have left home.”

Sterling believes “greater recognition of motherhood experiences” is needed to achieve true gender balance at leadership levels.

She said chief executives and organisations should “look at the norms and behaviours of your existing leaders and have some hard conversations around how that is excluding or including experiences” that are unique to women.

She said her research found these women were trying to conform to leadership norms they were being held to, they felt they needed to hide their experiences as a mother and they described a need to prove their value or demonstrate they would work incredibly hard.