Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women’s political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women’s (rather than men’s) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men’s higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men’s leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed.Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 CountriespublishedVersio

Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women’s political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women’s (rather than men’s) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men’s higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men’s leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed

In the Mindset of Opportunity: Proactive Mindset, Perceived Opportunities, and Role Attitudes

Perceiving roles as fulfilling goals offers motivational benefits to students, and yet the features of individuals or contexts that align with seeing such role opportunities have not been studied systematically. The current research investigated how these goal affordances are related to proactive mindset, or a person’s belief that they can shape their contexts. Three studies examined how variation in proactivity aligns with perceiving more communal and agentic goal opportunities in roles. Study 1 found that highly proactive college students (vs. less proactive students) tended to perceive their future careers as fulfilling communal and agentic goals, which predicted positive career attitudes. Study 2 replicated this association, while ruling out behavioral flexibility as accounting for the proactivity-positivity relationship. Study 3 experimentally tested whether growth-oriented contexts foster proactivity. Proactive mindset aligns with more expansive views of roles as fulfilling fundamental motives. These views, in turn, carry positive implications for one’s future career attitudes

Gender Representation Cues Labels of Hard and Soft Sciences

While women's representation in STEM fields has increased over the past several decades, some fields have seen a greater increase women's participation than others. In the present research, we explore how women's participation in STEM disciplines influences labeling of those disciplines as hard vs. soft sciences. Study 1 found that increasing perceived participation of women in a STEM discipline increased the likelihood that participants would label it a soft science. Study 2 found that among people who did not work in science, this tendency to associate women's participation with soft science was correlated with endorsement of stereotypes about women's STEM competency. And Studies 3A and 3B showed that labeling disciplines as soft sciences led to the fields being devalued, deemed less rigorous, and less worthy of federal funding. These studies show that stereotypes about women's STEM competency can impact perceptions of fields in which women participate, with consequences for how scientific disciplines are perceived

Dreaming to Belong: Navigating the American Dream and Belonging

Societal institutions can communicate how people should navigate the culture and structure around them. Drawing from the culture-selves framework (Markus & Kitayama, 2010) and social structural views of the interplay between the structure and individual cognitions (e.g., Diekman et al., 2020), we examined the impact of cultural mobility narratives on the individual endorsement of the American Dream. We also investigated the relationship between American Dream beliefs and belonging in the U.S. In Study 1 (n = 157), the American Dream was positively related to belonging in the U.S. Study 2 (n = 910) explored how people think about their belonging within the broader cultural context as a function of their structural advantages: First-generation students believed less in the American Dream than continuing-generation students, which was associated with lower belonging. Study 3 (n = 249) used experimental methods to demonstrate that cultural narratives about upward mobility in the U.S. influenced American Dream beliefs, which were associated with belonging. These studies demonstrate cultural narratives are crucial for understanding people’s psychological experiences in context

Scaling Up Ostracism: A Theory of Institutional Ostracism

Historically, social psychologists have focused on defining and exploring the effects of interpersonal ostracism, occurring when individuals feel excluded, rejected, or ignored by an individual or specific group of people. Here, we define what we have called institutional ostracism wherein people feel ignored, excluded, or rejected by an institution through cues in the environment, such as policies and structures. We start by considering the existing literature on ostracism, synthesizing and integrating respected and well-supported theoretical frameworks (i.e., temporal need-threat model). We propose a distinction between interpersonal and institutional ostracism along a new taxonomic dimension of interaction type, with subcomponents of interpersonal ostracism and the addition of institutional ostracism. Finally, we discuss how this theoretical perspective can expand understanding of ostracism and articulate convergence and divergence with institutional discrimination. We conclude with a call to action for research to study institutional ostracism, in the hopes of understanding a frequently-experienced phenomenon