Abstract

Women have to face a plethora of factors which directly or indirectly affect their career trajectory and one such factor is motherhood. The purpose of the study is to analyse how motherhood limits the career progression of women even in modern. The paper studies the fear of this motherhood penalty and its impact on the career decision of women. This paper provides a preliminary understanding of the fear of motherhood penalty negatively impacting career trajectory of women and uses references of existing infrastructure to address the issue of pregnancy penalty, to understand the same. There are countless factors that affect women in the career path but some of these factors are purely based on stereotypes that woman are the primary caregivers of the family. Female employees are an integral part of any company and managers need to formulate policies that actually fulfil the needs of the female employees and are inclusive of pregnant women and mothers. The following research paper attempts to make a contribution to the existing literature which deals with the motherhood penalty levied and the negative impact it has on the career trajectory of women. Various aspects of the subject are studied to comprehend in detail, the reasons for this penalty and if there has been effort in making workplaces inclusive for mothers.

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