Lessons Etched, Voices Raised: How Maternal Career Success Shapes Employees’ Responses to Workplace Sexism

Abstract: Workplace sexism remains pervasive, yet many employees hesitate to confront it. While existing research emphasizes immediate psychological and personal antecedents of confrontation, we theorize that early socialization experiences also play a critical role. Drawing on social learning theory as well as justice research, we propose that maternal career success instills beliefs that women are deserving of desirable outcomes at work. The beliefs, in turn, motivate individuals to confront sexism. We further propose that this indirect effect is stronger when supervisors demonstrate higher levels of equality-valuing behavior. In a time-separated field survey with full-time employees, we find support for our theory. Our research advances prejudice confrontation and upbringing literatures by offering a life history perspective on confronting sexism at work. It also identifies a key organizational condition under which early socialization effects translate into tangible workplace action, with implications for workplace inclusion and equity outcomes.

Keywords: confrontation, sexism, parental influence