Public maternalism goes to market: Recruitment, hiring, and promotion in postsocialist Hungary

Christy Glass*, Éva Fodor

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Under what conditions do motherhood penalties emerge in countries undergoing transition from state socialism to capitalism?This analysis identifies the ways managers in global financial firms employ gendered assumptions in constructing and implementing labor practices among highly skilled professional workers in Hungary. Relying on 33 in-depth interviews with employers as well as interviews with headhunting firms, labor and employment lawyers, and analysis of antidiscrimination cases brought before Hungary's Equal Treatment Authority between 2004 and 2008, we identify several strategies global employers use to shed, demote, and marginalize professional mothers. By demonstrating the salience of motherhood as a status characteristic in the postsocialist labor market, our work contributes to existing scholarship on motherhood penalties. Our work also extends this scholarship by showing how the salience of motherhood is strongly conditioned by state-level arrangements that shape the opportunity context in which employers design and carry out employment practices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5-26
Number of pages22
JournalGender and Society
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2011

Keywords

  • economy
  • organizations
  • work/family
  • work/occupations

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