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Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
Case 15.3: Pregnancy as a Barrier to Job
Status
Case Synopsis and Analysis
Marina Soslow is a successful senior managing director at a manufacturing company. She
has been there for 10 years and hopes to thrive at the company and become executive.
She recently learned that she was pregnant and was reluctant to tell her boss, Roy Bond. In
the past, several women had been eased out of their positions upon sharing pregnancy news.
When Marina does share the information with Roy, he seems very frustrated and says that
“he knew this was going to happen sooner or later.” Marina tried to share plans for work
distribution during her leave, but Roy did not want to talk about it. Marina worries about the
implications for her career.
Students are able to explore obvious gender bias related to pregnancy and motherhood. In
reality, such overt prejudice would be punished and likely not even occur. However, it does
challenge students to consider covert bias and helps them see how it might influence a
woman’s path to success.
Learning objectives:
• Students will recognize gender prejudice and understand how it influences a woman’s
ability to excel.
• Students will learn methods to help resolve gender prejudice related to pregnancy.
Answers to questions in the text:
1. What advancement barriers is Marina encountering?
Marina encountered gender bias, stereotyping, and prejudice. Stereotypes are
cognitive shortcuts that influence the way people process information regarding
2. What should Roy have said when Marina told him she was pregnant?
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
3. What could Roy do to ensure that Marina’s work will be covered during her absence
and to reassure her that taking this time off will not hurt her advancement?
Roy could work with Marina to develop a plan for distribution of her work during the
absence. In doing so, he should make clear that the redistribution is temporary.
4. What type of organizational changes can be made to benefit Marina and other
pregnant women in this organization?
The organization should adopt policies and procedures that support work-life balance
and flexibility. People need to take leaves for any number of reasons, and a strong
Potential teaching approaches:
Below is a way to structure a class based on Gender and Leadership and Case Study 15.3:
• Hold a lecture on gender and leadership.
• Ask students to read Case 15.3 and answer the questions.
• Discuss questions in the case study as a class.
• Finally, the professor may choose to conduct in-class exercises listed below.
Exercises for this case study:
1) Students should assume that Roy realizes the error of his ways, after being scolded by
others at the company. Students will draft a written apology on behalf of Roy to
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
2) Thankfully, overt discrimination like Roy’s is becoming less frequent. However,
covert discrimination of women, particularly mothers, is still a threat to women in the
3) Using this case study as a model, ask students to find three to four news feed stories
