Working Moms’ Perceptions of Fairness at Home and Work: A Textual Analysis of Sentimental Polarity

Abstract

The current literature depicts highly unfair circumstances for working mothers. However, the theories within this literature carry inherent bias per Hawthorne/secondary observer effects. Using a naturalistic approach, we sampled social media comments to determine if current theory associated with fairness perceptions of working mothers translated into real world settings. With the qualitative turned quantitative variables, we conducted a nonparametric factorial ANOVA to determine if a significant relationship were present between fairness perceptions in the work and home environments. Additionally, we evaluated if Covid-19 augmented fairness perceptions. Our findings suggest that the current theory of negativity translates to real world settings for working mothers for both the work and home environments. Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic in itself presented negatively for comments for working mothers. However, the current theory associated with the pandemic amplifying overall perceptions of fairness in both the work and home environment was not able to be validated per our findings. Additionally, our finding of a shift to more positive tone in fairness perceptions when a working mother discussed both the home and work environment gives further support for the literature associated with the overall positive impact of remote work.