Does Employer-Paid, Job-Protected Maternity Leave Help or Hurt Female IT Workers? Evidence from Millions of Job Applications
Management Science · 2025 · Sofia Bapna、Russell J. Funk
中文摘要
带薪产假被视为提高女性在信息技术（IT）领域参与度的重要途径，因为它有助于缓解工作与家庭平衡方面的顾虑，而由于工作时间长、需要出差以及需要跟上技术发展，这类顾虑在该领域尤为突出。许多政府要求雇主承担产假费用。本研究利用某在线招聘门户网站上数百万份求职申请的微观层面数据，考察印度一项政策变化——将雇员10人及以上公司的雇主付费、就业保护型产假从短期（12周）延长至中期（26周）——是否改变了企业考虑女性IT岗位申请者的可能性。具体而言，我们预期在立法之后，盈利能力较低的企业可能会在招聘过程中惩罚女性，因为雇主必须承担提供产假福利的相关成本；我们发现，在立法之后，在盈利能力较低的企业中，女性获得面试邀请的可能性约低22%。此外，在此类企业中，我们未观察到立法之后女性申请数量的变化。这些结果识别出了女性IT从业者人才管道中的一个重要流失来源。此外，我们的研究表明，强制要求雇主支付产假的立法（在保障14周或以上产假的经济体中，有50%要求雇主全额或部分支付产假）应伴随相关法律和保障措施的出台与执行——例如育儿假和反歧视法律——以确保产假立法的精神得到维护。
Abstract
Paid maternity leave is considered an important pathway to increasing women’s participation in information technology (IT), as it helps address work-family balance concerns, which are pronounced in the field due to long hours, travel, and the need to keep up with technology. Many governments require that employers pay for maternity leave. Using microlevel data on millions of applications from an online job portal, our study examines whether a policy change in India that expanded employer-paid, job-protected maternity leave for companies with 10 or more employees from short-term (12 weeks) to medium-term (26 weeks) changes companies’ likelihood of considering female applicants for IT jobs. Specifically, postlegislation, we expect that less profitable companies may penalize women in the hiring process because employers must bear the costs associated with providing maternity benefits; we find that women were ∼22% less likely to be invited for an interview, postlegislation, at companies with low profitability. Moreover, at such companies, we do not observe a postlegislation change in applications by women. These results identify an important source of leakage in the pipeline for female IT workers. Additionally, our study suggests that legislation which mandates that maternity leave be paid for by employers (50% of economies that guarantee maternity leave of 14 weeks or longer require that employers fully or partially pay for maternity leave) should be accompanied by the introduction and enforcement of associated laws and guardrails—for example, parental leave and antidiscriminatory laws—to ensure that the spirit of the maternity leave legislation is upheld.