Month: February 2016

Integrated Threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000) states that a dominant group (men in this instance) will oppose policies such as gender quotas that cause them to feel threatened. Women who are quota beneficiaries pose realistic threats because they are seen as competition for jobs, promotions, and potential income, and quota policies themselves pose a […]

Another issue is the effect of quotas on collective action. According to Social Identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) people have a sense of belonging to distinct social groups. The ability for individuals to move between different groups depends on the permeability of the group boundaries (is it easy to move into the higher status […]

Institutional changes via quotas may also hasten the narrowing of the workplace gender gap due to system justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994) whereby people are motivated to defend the status quo regardless of whether it is unfair or illegitimate. Therefore, it follows that if the status quo becomes inclusive of females in high-status roles, people […]

Although the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) made it unlawful to purposefully discriminate against women, imbalances may arise from hiring and promotion decisions unconsciously based on stereotypes about inherent differences between men and women’s traits and abilities. These stereotypes create gender roles which prescribe types of work that men and women are suitable for. Role Incongruity […]

Gender quotas are the requirement that women should form a particular percentage of the sample of individuals under consideration: organisations or businesses must employ a certain percentage of female employees, or appoint a certain number of women on their board of directors; political parties must ensure that a proportion of their candidates are women, and […]