The Dual-Edged Impact of Fertility-Friendly Policies from a Societal Role Perspective: A Study Based on 13 Samples from China

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_71How to use a DOI?

Keywords

fertility-friendly policies; working women; work-family conflict; policy implementation

Abstract

Objective: From a policy implementation perspective, this study explores the pathways and effects of fertility-friendly policies on women’s career development. Methods: Using purposive and snowball sampling, a total of 13 participants were selected for semi-structured interviews. The interview transcripts were analyzed through coding using grounded theory. Results: Professional women encounter a triple conflict between work and family roles due to time constraints, energy limitations, and stress. The implementation effectiveness of fertility-friendly policies exhibits a dual regulatory effect. When policies are effectively implemented at the organizational level, they can provide temporal flexibility, financial support, and organizational culture safeguards, thereby alleviating conflict and promoting a stable career transition and capacity attribution. Conversely, policy implementation blockages fail to resolve conflicts, potentially exacerbating stress, leading to reduced performance and compensation, fewer promotion opportunities, and perceived career stigmatization, ultimately inhibiting career progression. Conclusion: The effectiveness of fertility-friendly policies is highly dependent on the organizational implementation process. Through two pathways, namely “implementation and landing - conflict mitigation - development promotion” or “implementation blockage - conflict exacerbation - development inhibition,” these policies substantively shape professional women’s role experiences and career trajectories.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Wanning Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - The Dual-Edged Impact of Fertility-Friendly Policies from a Societal Role Perspective: A Study Based on 13 Samples from China
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 687
EP  - 695
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_71
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_71
ID  - Li2026
ER  -