Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
PLoS One. 2018 Aug 28;13(8):e0202728. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202728. eCollection 2018.
Do lifestyle preferences contribute to the remaining gender gap in higher positions in academia with highly qualified women-especially those with children-deliberately working fewer hours than men do? We tested the "mothers work less" hypothesis in two samples of early career researchers employed at universities in Germany (N = 202) and in the US (N = 197). Early career researchers in the US worked on average 6.3 hours more per week than researchers in Germany. In Germany, female early career researchers with children had drastically reduced work hours (around 8 hours per week) compared to male researchers with children and compared to female researchers without children, whereas we found no such effect for U.S. researchers. In addition, we asked how long respondents would ideally want to work (ideal work hours), and results revealed similar effects for ideal work hours. Results support the "mothers work less" hypothesis for German but not for U.S. early career researchers.
生活方式偏好是否导致拥有高资质的女性（尤其是有孩子的女性）在学术领域的高层职位中仍存在性别差距——她们是否故意比男性工作时间更短？我们在德国（N=202）和美国（N=197）的两所大学中对早期职业研究人员进行了两项样本测试，以检验“母亲工作时间更短”的假设。美国的早期职业研究人员平均每周比德国的研究人员多工作 6.3 小时。在德国，有孩子的女性早期职业研究人员的工作时间大幅减少（每周约 8 小时），与有孩子的男性研究人员以及没有孩子的女性研究人员相比，而我们没有发现美国研究人员有这种影响。此外，我们询问了受访者理想的工作时间（理想工作时间），结果表明理想工作时间也存在类似的影响。结果支持德国早期职业研究人员的“母亲工作时间更短”假设，但不支持美国早期职业研究人员的这一假设。
