ABSTRACT
When we examine management practice toward women in the workplace, we find it adapts to circumstances. For example, despite the popularity of unpaid maternity leave during World War II, by 1964, 40 percent of employers had reverted to the Depression-era tactic of simply terminating pregnant women (Kohl and Greenlaw 1983). Today, by contrast, some large companies are starting to see the development of women employees as "a business imperative" (Trost 1989). A 1992 survey reveals that 50 percent of responding companies' senior management regard work and family-benefit issues as more important today than two years ago (Christine 1992). As women become integral parts of the workforce, a transition is underway that brings work and family issues together in order to deal with problems and opportunities from a perspective of interdependent subsystems of society as a whole. A changing workplace is aided by legislative support. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court (Guerra v. California Federal Savings and Loan, 55 U.S.L.W. 4077, 1987) upheld a California law requiring leave for new mothers (Nowlin and Sullivan 1988). Justice Thurgood Marshall writing for the 6-3 majority said that such legislation "promotes equal employment opportunity" because "it allows women, as well as men, to have families without losing their jobs" (Press and Wright 1987).
