South Korea’s ultra-low fertility rate has continued to worsen and is widely recognized as a serious social issue. Within a structural context in which childbirth and childcare threaten women’s career continuity, decisions about having children are closely intertwined with women’s perceptions of their work environments and career opportunities. Drawing on the Work-Home Resources model, this study examined how workplace gender discrimination, a contextual constraint in the work domain, transfers to fertility intentions in the family domain. In particular, this study investigated whether work volition, as an individual’s psychological resource, mediates this relationship. An online survey was conducted with 600 married working women without children in South Korea. Results showed that greater experience of workplace gender discrimination reduced work volition, and lower work volition in turn decreased fertility intentions. Workplace gender discrimination indirectly influenced fertility intentions through work volition, whereas its direct effect on fertility intentions was nonsignificant. These findings suggest that fertility intentions are more closely linked to weakened perceptions of career choice resulting from discrimination than to the experience of discrimination itself. Overall, this study demonstrates that structural barriers rooted in the gender-discriminatory work environment can undermine perceptions of career choice and, in turn, constrain women’s fertility intentions. The findings highlight the need for psychological interventions to strengthen work volition alongside efforts to promote gender-equitable workplaces.
