Gender Diversity in Organizations: Understanding Barriers and Designing Effective Interventions

Companies collectively spend billions of dollars on diversity initiatives each year, which are designed to improve the workplace experiences and outcomes of women and other groups that face disadvantage in society. Despite these efforts, women remain underrepresented in the upper echelons of organizations and receive lower pay and promotion rates than equivalent men. The four papers in this symposium use a range of methodologies to advance understanding of why women experience worse career outcomes than men do and what can be done to foster gender diversity and equity. Specifically, the first two papers provide new insight into the complicated ways in which gender stereotypes create career barriers for women (Martin & Flynn; Chadha, Leslie, & Manchester) and the second two papers investigate innovative interventions for facilitating women’s career success (Bear, Pinkley, Barsness, Mazei, Bhatia, & Sleesman; Chang, Rai, & Milkman). As a set, the papers provide new insight into how gender stereotypes constrain gender diversity and equity, as well as nuanced interventions for removing the barriers women face in advancing their careers. The symposium will conclude with an integrative discussion among participants and audience members. Behind Closed Doors: The Uncommunal Feminine Stereotype Presenter: Ashley E. Martin; Stanford Graduate School of Business Presenter: Frank Flynn; Stanford U. Preventing Backlash: Does Ingratiation Help or Hurt Women? Presenter: Aastha Chadha; NYU Stern School of Business Presenter: Lisa Michelle Leslie; New York U. Presenter: Colleen Flaherty Manchester; - Does Transparency Eliminate Gender Gaps in Pay? Not Always Presenter: Julia Bear; Stony Brook U.-State U. of New York Presenter: Robin L. Pinkley; Southern Methodist U. Presenter: Zoe Barsness; U. of Washington, Tacoma Presenter: Jens Mazei; TU Dortmund U. Presenter: Nazli M. Bhatia; U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Dustin J. Sleesman; U. of Delaware Evaluating the Efficacy of the Rooney Rule in Promoting Diversity Presenter: Linda Chang; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Aneesh Rai; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Katherine Milkman; U. of Pennsylvania