Office Housework, Burnout, and Promotion: Does Gender Matter?

• Published in: Journal of business and psychology Vol. 36; no. 5; pp. 793 - 805
• Main Authors: Jang, Seulki, Allen, Tammy D., Regina, Joseph
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.10.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Burnout; Business and Management; Community and Environmental Psychology; Correlation analysis; Employee promotions; Gender; Housework; Industrial and Organizational Psychology; Original Paper; Personality and Social Psychology; Psychology; Social Sciences; Burnout; Gender role theory; Career success; Health; Office housework; Gender; Promotion; Organizational citizenship behavior; Conservation of resources theory
• ISSN: 0889-3268; 1573-353X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10869-020-09703-6

In The New York Times , Grant and Sandberg ( 2015 ) made the case that women perform more office housework and experience more burnout, yet receive fewer career benefits, from performing office housework than do men. However, this claim has not been formally tested. Based on gender role theory, conservation of resources theory, and shifting standards, we test the relationships between gender, office housework, burnout, and promotion. Results revealed that women performed more office housework overall than did men. More specifically, women engaged in more social maintenance OHW, while men engaged in more object maintenance OHW. Contrary to the popular press claim, results showed no significant relationship between office housework and burnout. Moreover, office housework did not mediate the relationship between gender and burnout. In addition, gender moderated the relationship between office housework and promotion such that the relationship was statistically significant for men, but not statistically significant for women. This study contributes to the literature by introducing office housework as a specific form of organizational citizenship behavior and empirically investigating the popular press claim related to office housework.