Diversity Sells: Why Mixed-Gender Coalitions Are Most Effective at Advocating Workplace Gender Equity Issues

Abstract

Employees often come together in coalitions to voice concerns and suggestions. However, such coalitions have achieved limited success thus far in advocating gender equity issues within organizations. I argue that the homophily that women demonstrate when forming coalitions on gender equity can explain their lack of effectiveness. I theorize that successful coalitions, via their composition, signal to endorsers that the issue they are advocating is organizationally relevant. Although female-only, compared to male-only, coalitions are seen as having the legitimacy to speak up about gender equity, they struggle to convince stakeholders that the issue is broadly relevant. I posit that mixed-gender coalitions, via the joint participation of women and men, can both signal sufficient legitimacy to voice about a gender equity issue while also conveying that the issue is not niche and holds relevance for everyone in the organization. As a consequence, such gender-diverse coalitions are uniquely positioned to earn higher support for gender equity issues relative to alternative, gender-heterogeneous configurations. In Study 1, a quasi-field experiment, 714 participants responded to their coworkers putatively advocating a gender equity issue in the workplace. Mixed-gender coalitions outperformed both female-only and male-only coalitions on issue support, as explained by advantages in both perceived legitimacy to speak up and perceived organizational relevance. The same pattern was found in Study 2, a fully randomized experiment involving 891 United States-based workers participating in an immersive managerial simulation. With this dissertation, I demonstrate that coalition diversity holds signaling value to potential endorsers, irrespective of any internal, functional value such diversity may bring to the coalition itself through a pooling of skills and resources. I additionally highlight that advocating for gender equity is a political process and women should enlist men as allies to better sell the issue within organizations.