Gender norms present barriers and fences in combining work and family: A process model of threat and self-regulation in non stigmatized identities.

Gender inequalities in the work and family domain persist. So far, most research investigated why women are underrepresented in the work domain and men in the family domain. In the current project, we shift focus to the parallel question: why are women overrepresented in the family domain and men in the work domain? We outline how women’s choices for family and men’s choices for work may not only be a result of their urge to pursue personal values and social rewards, but also by an urge to avoid social penalties when unable to live up to gender norms that prescribe overly demanding expectations for men at work and women as mothers. Bringing in a novel perspective of social identity threat in non-stigmatized identities, we predict that (1) gender norms threaten men’s sense of doing well at work and women’s sense of doing well as a mother; and that (2) in response, they focus on avoiding mistakes and put more effort in this identity, with costs to their other identity. As such, gender norms serve as fences keeping women in the family and men in the work domain. Last, (3) we examine how these fences can be taken down (by altering norms, support from social environment, and showing how work and family facilitate each other). We address these three objectives in four studies with working parents, using a mixedmethod approach that combines correlational, experimental and longitudinal data; and selfreported experiences, physiological, implicit, and non-verbal data.