Bring Back Mothers in Management: First-time Mothers’ Identity Integration and Managerial Career

Abstract

The influx of women into professional careers in the last four decades represents a move toward a more egalitarian society. However, the underrepresentation of women at senior management levels indicates the next frontier in achieving a more egalitarian workplace. Although previous research has suggested that women’s dual-identity concerns as mothers and professionals may contribute to them ‘opting out’ of management roles, it offers little explanation for how the relationship between these two identities influences women’s career advancement in management. In this paper, we provide an identity perspective on how first-time mothers’ identity integration following motherhood influences their continuous pursue of managerial career and their leader emergence in top management positions. Our conceptual development is grounded on assorted research and theoretical descriptions to ultimately illustrate how first-time mothers’ maternal-professional identity integration affects their career attitudes and promotion via their self-perceptional and interactional identity enhancement and identity conflict. Whereas existing research focuses on work-family interference and gendered career preference, we describe how women’s intrapersonal identity integration leads their opting out decision and promotion to the top management positions.