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Parental leave policies in Canada are designed for both parents, but fathers use them at roughly half the rate of mothers. From 2012 to 2017, Statistics Canada found 88 per cent of mothers took maternity leave, parental leave or a combination of the two, compared with 46 per cent of fathers.
When fathers do take leave, it is typically for shorter periods than mothers. One reason for this is a fear that doing so will harm their careers. But recent research, including our own, suggests this fear is often unfounded and that, under certain conditions, men may actually benefit from taking a longer leave.
Men's use of parental leaves has long been seen as a tool for advancing gender equity in the workplace by normalizing its use by people of all genders, and in the home, by giving men more opportunities to take on a meaningful role in child care.
But it can undermine it in the short term if it benefits men and not women. In fact, past research has shown that women are often penalized for taking parental leaves.
Our findings point to a less visible source of workplace gender inequity: advantages men experience that women do not. When engaging in the same behaviours, men accrue incremental advantages that help propel them into leadership roles, while women do not. Over time, these small differences can compound.
To understand why men benefit from taking a parental leave but women do not, we examined what taking parental leave signals in the workplace. We focused on the role of communality - a set of traits like warmth and sensitivity that are traditionally associated with women's gender stereotypes.
Leadership has historically been linked with agentic traits, like competence and assertiveness, which are associated with men's gender stereotypes. However, expectations of leaders have changed in recent years to include communal traits as well.
We conducted two experimental studies using a hypothetical hiring situation in the context of Canadian parental leave policies and an internal promotion for a leadership position.
In the first study, 298 full-time employees in Canada evaluated a male applicant for a marketing manager role. Participants were presented with job application materials for a man who had taken one of four parental leave lengths: 15-month, six-month, one-month or no parental leave. Participants then rated the applicant's communality and career outcomes.
Men who took six or 15 months were rated as significantly more communal than men who took no leave. In turn, these communality perceptions were associated with higher ratings of hireability, reward recommendations and leadership effectiveness. Men who took only one month saw no such benefit on career outcomes.
In the second study, we recruited 274 full-time employees in Canada. Using a similar design as in the first study, participants evaluated either a man or woman applicant who had taken either a 12-month, six-month or no parental leave.
Both the man and woman applicants who took parental leave were rated as more communal compared to applicants who did not take parental leave. But those communality perceptions led to better career ratings only for the men. For women, the same leave and communality signals produced no advantage.
We drew on expectancy violation theory to explain why the same behaviour is perceived differently in men and women. This theory holds that people are evaluated more positively when they violate stereotypes in a positive way.
Since men are not stereotypically expected to possess communal traits, taking extended parental leave represents a positive violation of that expectation. It now carries even more weight as leadership norms have evolved to value communality in those positions.
Women, by contrast, are already expected to be communal. When they take parental leave, they confirm rather than violate a stereotype and may not receive the same career benefits as a result.
Our prior research has found that women who take longer parental leaves in men-dominated industries can face penalties, such as lower pay and reduced promotion prospects.
Organizations play a key role in normalizing the use of parental leave by both men and women to make it a routine practice, encouraging men to take on a greater role in child care, and promoting gender equity in the long term.
Organizations can encourage men to take parental leave by spreading awareness about how it can positively impact men's careers. Senior male leaders who take leave can help make it more acceptable for other men to do so.
Critically, organizations need to promote longer parental leave for men. Our findings show that shorter parental leave, such as one month, may not have any effects. This will help normalize caregiving for all employees.
Uptake alone, however, is not enough. Men are more likely to use parental leave for professional development or even to continue working off-the-clock, while women are more likely to actually use it for child care. This means parental leave can widen career disparities rather than close them.
To counter this, organizations and managers should not only encourage the uptake of parental leave, but promote its use for caregiving, developing parenting skills and fostering early bonding with children.
Organizations must also mitigate the biases that may be contributing to how men and women are perceived for taking parental leave. Hiring and evaluation criteria for leadership roles should be made explicit to prevent making decisions based on implicit biases. Managers and decision-makers need to be trained to recognize when traditionally dominant groups are experiencing advantages over other groups for the same behaviours.
Equal policies do not necessarily produce equal outcomes. Without careful attention, well-intentioned policies can yield uneven effects, advancing men's careers while leaving women's unchanged. True progress requires not only removing barriers for women but also addressing the subtle advantages that continue to shape men's success.
