Despite growing concerns that parental leave policies may reinforce the marginalization of mothers in the labor market and reproduce the gendered division of household labor, few studies examine how women themselves approach and use parental leave. Through 64 in-depth interviews with college-educated Korean mothers, we find that although women’s involvement in family responsibilities increases during leave, they do not reduce their work devotion but reinvent it throughout the leave-taking process. Embedded in the culture of overwork in Korean workplaces, women find it justifiable to use leave only when they are highly committed to work and adjust the length of leave to accommodate workplace demands. Upon returning to work, they try to compensate for their absence by working harder than before, thereby showing that they are more committed than their colleagues. Given this “compensatory” work devotion, women question their own entitlement in the workplace, and some quit when they cannot meet their goal of compensating by doing more than others. This study highlights how the workplace culture shapes women’s work devotion during and after leave.

尽管人们越来越担心育儿假政策可能会加剧母亲在劳动力市场上的边缘化并再现家庭劳动的性别分工，但很少有研究调查女性自己如何处理和使用育儿假。通过对受过大学教育的韩国母亲进行的 64 次深度访谈，我们发现，虽然女性在休假期间对家庭责任的参与度有所增加，但她们并没有减少对工作的投入，而是在休假过程中对其进行了改造。在韩国工作场所过度劳累的文化中，女性发现只有在高度致力于工作并调整休假时间以适应工作场所需求时才使用休假是合理的。回到工作岗位后，他们试图通过比以前更努力的工作来弥补自己的缺席，从而表明他们比同事更投入。鉴于这种“补偿性”的工作投入，女性质疑自己在工作场所的权利，有些人在无法通过比其他人做得更多来实现补偿的目标时辞职。这项研究强调了职场文化如何塑造女性在休假期间和休假后的工作投入。