Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic interviews with mothers in Zagreb corporations, the study shows how maternity leave exposes unspoken mistrust, sensed through exclusion and diminished recognition, shaping women’s perceptions of security and strategies of coping.

Paper long abstract

This research centers on mothers employed in Zagreb-based corporations in Croatia. Specifically, it focuses on maternity leave (typically lasting one year, with exceptions), which is an understudied topic in domestic cultural anthropology. Drawing on in-depth qualitative ethnographic interviews, it presents findings on varied experiences of returning to work following the leave. In this research mistrust emerged as an immediate by-product of maternity leave due to the woman’s workplace absence. Beyond enabling polarizing gender stereotypes, the prism of mistrust and distrust (Mühlfried 2018) illuminates relations between women employees and corporate employers. Results show that mistrust toward female employees does not simply arise during maternity leave. Instead, trust and mistrust often coexist throughout women’s careers before maternity, stemming from the latent belief that loyalty to the employer will eventually be divided with or replaced by motherhood. The active weakening of trust in relations begins with implicit, unarticulated employer re/actions and strategies at the pregnancy announcement. Women sense it through withheld information, “being spared” of or excluded from projects or meetings etc. It is much more emphatically sensed upon workplace return, as quiet annulment of prior years of "proving" one’s competence and loyalty to the employer, degradation, removal from rewards and merit systems while at leave etc. The findings show that mothers’ mistrust of the corporation also manifests in eroded senses of security, noticing unexpected changes, perceiving "blind spots" in maternal realities beyond the mother-child relationship, and open expressions of distrust toward the employer, leading to diverse actions, strategies and ways of coping.