Article: Tuesday 23 June
Do employees know whether your organisation has a policy of increasing the number of women in leadership positions? New research from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) found that over 42 per cent of employees don’t know about women’s quotas when they do exist in an organisation, and 30 per cent think their organisation has one when it doesn’t. Even when employees know such a policy exists, interpretations can vary. For example, senior managers may understand the policy differently than workers. This presents a huge missed opportunity, because Dr. Madleen Meier - Barthold found that women’s quotas can boost engagement among the entire workforce – but only if employees correctly perceive the policy and recognise it as a genuine reflection of the organisation’s values.
Her co-authored research Signaling Effects of Women's Quotas: An Analysis of Workforce Perceptions and Reactions has been published in the academic journal Human Resource Management.
Women’s quotas are widely used to promote gender equality in organisations. The EU's Gender Balance on Corporate Boards Directive sets a target for large listed companies to have women make up 40 per cent of non-executive directors and 33 per cent of all directors by 30 June 2026. Organisations that aren't legally required to set quotas often adopt them to help build a gender-diverse workforce.
A lot of research has focused on quotas’ effects at the organisational level, such as board composition, candidate qualifications, and firm performance. But not much research has been done into how they affect the general workforce, even though one of the goals of such quotas is to promote gender equality more broadly.
Dr Meier-Barthold worked with Prof. Torsten Biemann of the University of Mannheim to analyse data from the Linked Personnel Panel, a representative German dataset linking 2,270 employer and employee reports. The sample included organisations with and without legal obligations, so they could examine whether those shape how employees view quotas.
They looked at how many employees were aware of the policies, and how employees interpreted them, to assess how employees respond to women’s quotas. Do people know whether these quotas exist in their organisation? If so, how do they interpret them? Most importantly, how do those quotas affect employees’ engagement? And how can human resource managers improve employees’ understanding, interpretation and engagement?
They discovered that women are more likely to know whether their organisation has a quota, but the researchers found no gender differences in how quotas affect work engagement. In fact, they found higher work engagement among the general workforce – not just women – when employees believe a women's quota exists as part of the organisation's values and priorities, such as its commitment to gender equality. This suggests that women's quotas can have positive indirect consequences across organisations, beyond their intended direct effects for specific groups (for example, changes in promotion probabilities).
However, when women’s quotas are legally mandated, their positive effects are weaker, because the legal obligation weakens the message that employees receive about their organisation’s values.
Strong, deliberate and consistent communication strategies can help employees understand quotas and policies, leading to higher engagement. These communications strategies should show that quotas are aligned to a company’s valuing gender equality, rather than being implemented just because they are legally mandated.
Read Dr Madleen Meier-Barthold’s full paper: Signaling Effects of Women's Quotas: An Analysis of Workforce Perceptions and Reactions.
Science Communication and Media Officer
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers.
