Researchers at the Purdue University (USA) and University of Otago (New Zealand) reviewed six years of Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency data (2014 – 2019) to examine the relationship between women’s board representation and non-managerial gender segregation.
Authors Pallab Kumar Biswas, Helen Roberts and Kevin Stainback, found that the relationship between women’s board representation and gender segregation is less obvious immediately, but increases in significance with 1, 2, and 3-year lags. In other words, the impact builds over time.
Their critical mass analysis suggests that having one woman on a board may not be enough to promote change but that two or more women directors appears to be more effective in reducing gender segregation. These findings demonstrate that the appointment of more women to corporate boards has broader effects on workplace gender equity beyond the top leadership teams where the effect is most often measured.
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REF: Biswas, Pallab Kumar, Roberts, Helen and Stainback, Kevin. (2021) Does women’s board representation affect non-managerial gender inequality? Human Resource Management pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22066