Chapter 1: <div> <div> <div> <p>Maternity leave includes the time that mothers take off from work to care for their baby and heal after childbirth. Despite the growth of mothers in the U.S. workforce, the U.S. lags behind other countries in offering paid maternity leave, resulting in poor quality leave for working mothers. Scholars have continually examined maternity leave as an objective construct and this method of measurement, while important, may be inadequate in capturing mothers’ experiences. Quality maternity leave (QML) is a novel construct that captures mothers’ subjective leave experiences and includes time off, benefits, coworker support, flexibility, and an absence of workplace discrimination and microaggressions. However, little is known regarding individual predictors and outcomes of QML. Therefore, I will discuss prevalent societal-level, work-level, and individual- level predictors of QML and well-being and work-related outcomes of QML. I will also integrate these into a conceptual framework that researchers can use understand what may affect and result from QML. This review has important practical implications for US policymakers and organizations regarding their support of mothers in society and the workplace. Future research should continue to build on this framework to ensure that mothers are provided the QML they need to thrive. </p><p><br></p><p>Chapter 2:</p><p> </p><div> <div> <div> <p>Maternity leave is a critical part of decent work when mothers are able to heal from childbirth, care for their newborn, attend medical appointments, and integrate their identities. However, the United States is one of few countries that does not offer paid maternity leave and instead offers job-protected unpaid time off from work, despite the importance of maternity leave for important maternal work and well-being outcomes. Scholars have typically examined maternity leave with objective indicators (e.g., days off from work) instead of investigating mothers’ subjective experiences of the quality of their maternity leave (QML), contributing to a lack of understanding regarding what leads to and results from QML attainment. Therefore, in the present study, I drew upon a framework that I created through a thorough review of the literature to examine privilege and access to power and resources, workplace culture and support, and work characteristics as predictors of QML. Additionally, this study primarily explored work-related outcomes including organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and job satisfaction. I hypothesized that the former variables would indirectly predict the latter variables through QML. The findings of this study inform inclusive, equitable, and adequate organizational and U.S. maternity leave policies. </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>

Reviewing literature on the histories of and the attitude studies about transgender people, the use of ‘they’ as a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, prescriptive grammar ideology, and aversive prejudice theory provides insight into how these topics are interrelated and relevant to current issues surrounding nonbinary transgender people. This review inspired my research study. My participants (n = 722) completed an online survey in which they reported demographic variables and answered scales that measured ‘they’ attitudes in generic and queer contexts, attitudes toward trans people, and prescriptive grammar ideology. I found that the majority of participants approved of using the singular ‘they’. Regression analyses revealed that in a queer context, negative attitudes toward 'they' were best predicted by trans prejudice, while in a generic context, both valuing prescriptive grammar and anti-trans prejudice similarly predicted 'they' attitudes. This indicates that negative attitudes toward the singular 'they' are not merely an issue of taking a principled stance against "improper grammar". Additionally, both sexual orientation and gender (trans vs. cisgender) moderate the relationship between prescriptive grammar ideology and 'they' attitudes. Age, sexual orientation, and education level also influenced my pattern of results such that older participants, queer people, and more highly educated individuals were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the singular ‘they’. These findings have implications for LGBTQ+ individuals’ relationships with cisgender and heterosexual people as well as for theories of prejudice, particularly with regard to the increasingly important area of attitudes toward people with diverse gender identities.

<p>  </p> <p>At the highest level, this dissertation is a case study on how bias can become encoded into the tools used to measure a construct and into the very definition of the construct itself. In this case, the construct is spatial ability. This dissertation focuses on the validity and accuracy of spatial tests and illuminates gender bias that is interwoven with the history of spatial testing. </p> <p><br></p> <p>First, I present a critical analysis of the graphical imagery used in spatial tests and explain why the imagery may be unclear and lead the tests to be inaccurate. I analyzed a collection of research in which researchers modified the stimuli used in spatial tests and found that the tests became easier when the imagery was made clearer. Thus, I conclude that imagery presentation impacts test difficulty, a likely example of construct-irrelevant variance which may reduce the validity of some spatial skills assessments and introduce bias in favor of individuals with past experience in engineering graphics, who historically are more likely to be men. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Second, I make a critical review of gender differential research in spatial skills. I argue that the construct of “spatial ability” has been co-constructed with gender, in that it has been devised in a manner influenced by gender beliefs. Because of a preexisting belief that men had better spatial skills than women, some test creators “selectively bred” spatial instruments to produce the expected gender differences. Such instruments, including the very popular Mental Rotation Test (MRT), cannot validly assess between-group differences. Biological or evolutionary explanations for sex differences in spatial ability lack empirical evidence. Instead, the differences are rooted in the shaping of the construct of “spatial ability” to create the expected gender patterns. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Finally, I describe an experiment designed to investigate the hypothesis that using a spatial test with content from a feminized discipline will show different patterns in gender differences. Female engineering students outperformed males on the Digital Apparel Spatial Visualization Test (DASVT), while the male engineering students scored higher than the female students on the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test (PSVT:R). Students with relevant background experience scored better than students without experience on both assessments. The results demonstrate the shortcomings of using a single instrument to assess a concept as heterogeneous as spatial skills. I conclude this dissertation with a discussion of the implications of my work and recommendations for researchers and educators. </p>