Moderated mediation effect of social networking and family-work conflict on the relationship between stereotypes and sticky floor: A survey on working women in Turkey and Jordan

Despite the gradual increase in their workforce participation rate, the number of women in senior managerial positions is still inadequate. One cause that women are mostly concentrated in lower and middle-level positions of the organization is gender roles; one of the gender-based stereotypes women are subjected to from early childhood and internalize over time. Many cultures still believe that women's role is to fulfill family responsibilities. Due to these cultural values, women joining the work-life are obliged to find a balance between their home and family-related responsibilities and what is expected from them at work. However, the internalized gender-related stereotypes force women to prioritize family-related responsibilities and lead them to experience family-work conflicts. Gender-related stereotypes can also prevent women from establishing social networks that have a significant impact on their professional success. These networks enable women to detect the opportunities necessary for advancement and development and for those in top positions to evaluate them properly. Since women are incapable of devoting enough time due to the family responsibilities they feel obliged to undertake, they cannot show enough interest in social networking activities. Ultimately, women will have to work for a long time in routine, dead-end, low wage jobs that mostly involve supporting and assisting roles at their organizations. The study aims to investigate the social, cultural, and organizational causes behind women being stalled in low and middle-level positions. It examined the mediating moderating effect of social networking and family-work conflict on the relationship between gender-related intrinsic stereotypes and sticky floor. Furthermore, it aimed to evaluate the extent to which women perceive working in low-level positions for an extended period as a sticky floor. As a result of this study that was conducted among 332 women working in low to middle-level positions in Turkey and Jordan, it was found that internalized stereotypes influence women's social networking behaviors in both countries; however, they showed low sticky floor perceptions. Moreover, whereas the moderating and mediating effects of social networking and family-work conflicts were found to be significant in Turkey, a similar effect was not observed in Jordan.