Organizations have started more progressively using and offering family benefits including parental leaves to address the issues of balancing work and family life. Although such leaves are fundamental for supporting, attracting, and retaining women, we examine whether such leaves may also inadvertently affect women’s careers in occupations that overly value masculine traits, unless managed carefully. Drawing on the literature on gender stereotypes (micro factors) and occupation gender type (macro factors), we argue that longer (vs. shorter) parental leaves negatively affect women’s work outcomes (i.e., annual income, salary recommendation, hireability, and leadership effectiveness) in men-dominated but not in women-dominated occupations because it lowers perceptions of women’s agency. We find support for our hypotheses across three studies in the Australian context with an archival data set and two experiments. Our work shows that men-dominated organizational structures reinforce traditional gender stereotypes, whereas such reinforcement does not happen in women-dominated organizational structures. Our research equips leaders and organizations with insights into the unintended negative consequences of parental leave for women. This understanding serves as a crucial first step in developing strategies and programs to mitigate these effects, thereby supporting women in men-dominated occupations and fostering more inclusive and healthy workplaces.

组织已经开始更逐步地使用和提供包括育儿假在内的家庭福利，以解决平衡工作和家庭生活的问题。尽管这些休假对于支持、吸引和留住女性至关重要，但我们研究了除非谨慎管理，否则此类休假是否也会无意中影响女性在过度重视男性特征的职业中的职业生涯。借鉴关于性别刻板印象（微观因素）和职业性别类型（宏因素）的文献，我们认为较长（相对于较短）的育儿假对女性的工作结果（即年收入、工资推荐、招聘能力和领导效率）产生负面影响，在男性主导的职业中，而不是在女性主导的职业中，因为它降低了对女性能动性的看法。我们在澳大利亚背景下的三项研究中通过一个档案数据集和两个实验找到了对我们假设的支持。我们的研究表明，男性主导的组织结构强化了传统的性别刻板印象，而这种强化不会发生在女性主导的组织结构中。我们的研究使领导者和组织能够深入了解育儿假对女性的意外负面影响。这种理解是制定减轻这些影响的战略和计划的关键第一步，从而支持女性从事男性主导的职业，并营造更具包容性和健康的工作场所。