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Mirage News: Recruiting Male Allies Boosts Women at Work

13 Sep 2022
When women and men raise their voices together in the workplace, managers are more likely to support gender equity issues, such as equal pay for equal work.

Originally found at Mirage News

In a recent study, Insiya Hussain, an assistant professor of management at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, surveyed 3,234 participants during three separate studies.

With colleagues Subra Tangirala of the University of Maryland and Elad Sherf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she asked each group a different set of questions about a range of gender equity proposals, from training women in how to negotiate for higher pay to ensuring that women formed at least 50% of the candidates for leadership positions.

In each of the three studies, participants – including those in managerial roles – reacted more favorably overall to mixed-gender coalitions than to women-only or men-only advocates. This is because:

Mixed-gender coalitions (owing to the participation of men) were able to signal that gender equity is an important issue for the organization.

Additionally, mixed-gender coalitions (owing to the participation of women) were able to signal that they had the right to speak up about gender equity issues.

“This research addresses how best to form an advocacy group to raise these issues, if you want to get results,” Hussain said.

The research is online in the Academy of Management Journal.

Continue reading the original article at Mirage News.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Journal.

Read the Academy of Management Insights summary.

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