ALD Report: How well do interventions designed to increase gender equity work?

Go on. Take a guess.

I spent last week reading four systematic reviews of the scientific literature on interventions designed to increase gender equity to try to get a sense of what is being done and whether it works or not. It would be a kindness to describe results as ‘mixed’.

Tl;dr

Because this is an unusually long post, I’ll give you the main findings now:

There isn’t much research on gender equity interventions
What research has been done is usually of poor quality
Most of the positive conclusions aren’t supported by the data
Most studies focus on changing women, rather than organisations or systems
Doing this kind of research in the real world is hard
The jargon’s a nightmare because everyone uses different frameworks and language
A key missing piece of the jigsaw is how we overcome male hostility to gender equity interventions

As frustrating as that overview is, these reviews do give us some insight into the kinds of gender equity interventions that have been tried and how to analyse and evaluate them, which then gives us a sense of where to go next.

A “paucity of literature”

The first thing to note is that not a lot of research has been done to evaluate the success of gender equity interventions, with fewer than 80 relevant papers found even by the most broadly defined search.

Tricco et al (2024) looked for randomised controlled trials (RTCs) “on interventions examining gender equity in workplace or volunteer settings” that targeted individuals, organisations or systems. After screening 8,855 citations, they found only 24 unique RTCs that fit their criteria.

“There is a paucity of literature on interventions to promote workplace gender equity,” they said in their abstract.

Guthridge et al, (2022) had a much wider remit, looking for any “social justice, cognitive, or behaviour-change interventions that sought to reduce gender inequality, gender bias, or discrimination against women or girls” that were “implemented in any context, with any mode of delivery and duration, if they measured gender equity or discrimination outcomes, and were published in English in peer-reviewed journals”. They sifted 7,832 citations and found 78 papers.

Lydon et al (2022) looked for “Peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and March 2020 that evaluated interventions to improve gender equity, or the experiences of women, in academic or clinical medicine”, finding 34 relevant studies.

And finally, Lau et al (2022) also focused on studies from 2000 to 2020 that had been published in the “management, psychology, and feminist literature”. They screened 2,166 articles and found 77 that were relevant, noting that “this means that less than 5% of the gender and diversity research across three disciplines” addressed gender equity interventions.

I haven’t compared the lists of papers to see how much overlap there is, but if anyone fancies doing that, please share your results!

Quality problems

Not only is there a poverty of research, much of the research that has been done is not high quality.

Guthridge et al pointed out that “Overall research quality was low to moderate, and the key findings created doubt that interventions to date have achieved meaningful change.”

Lydon et al graded the papers they reviewed from 1, no clear conclusions, to 5, unequivocal. They found that the vast majority of papers (64.7%) scored 1 or 2, “indicating that the conclusions presented were not supported by the data collected”, with not one paper scoring 5.

Lau et al discuss why this research is challenging, explaining that lab-based studies might be “theoretically interesting and empirically rigorous”, but they “offer fewer practical implications or relatively little guidance on how the interventions might be successfully applied in the workplace”.

Furthermore, they focus on “brief interventions” that can easily be tested in a lab, but don’t think about the “long-term sustainability of those changes”, ignoring the complexity of most workplaces.

Meanwhile, whilst “management scholars tend to use archival and field data” which are more representative of the real world, their studies provide limited insights into the “mechanisms, boundary conditions, and unintended side-effects of interventions”.

But did these interventions work?

Tricco et al found that most of the studies (87.5%) drew positive conclusions, “meaning that there was an effect of the intervention” but warn that “this does not imply that the gender equity interventions work”.

Guthridge at al were a bit more specific:

Improved gender inclusion was the most frequently reported change (n = 39), particularly for education and media interventions. Fifty percent of interventions measuring social change in gender equality did not achieve beneficial effects. Most gender mainstreaming interventions had only partial beneficial effects on outcomes, calling into question their efficacy in practice. Twenty-eight interventions used education and awareness-raising strategies, which also predominantly had only partial beneficial effects.

Whilst Lydon et all said that, “Outcomes were largely positive (87.3%)”, they then pour cold water on those findings by saying that “measurement typically relied on subjective, self- report data (69.1%)” and that “weak methodological rigour and a low strength of findings was observed”, implying that the claimed outcomes are perhaps not to be trusted.

Furthermore, they point out the very large elephant in the room, that “many of the programmes considered to be more successful in this area are well funded and supported. Similar effects are unlikely in settings that lack these resources.”

When interventions fail because they are underfunded and underresourced, they can be used by sceptics as evidence that such interventions can never work, and that we therefore shouldn’t try.

Intervention frameworks

One of the most useful parts of these papers has been seeing how some of the authors categorise gender equity interventions.

Tricco et al, whose study inclusion criteria were extremely broad, used six categories:

Quantifying gender impacts, eg publishing gender data
Behavioural or systemic changes, eg recognising the need for gender equity, using gender-neutral language during recruitment, quotes, and training on gender bias
Career flexibility interventions, eg flexible scheduling or addressing “work-family conflict”
Increased visibility, recognition and representation interventions, eg promoting manuscript writing in academia, business training, leadership programs, or role models
Creating opportunities for development, mentorship and sponsorship interventions, eg peer mentoring
Financial support interventions, eg microfinance

But I also like the categories put together by Lydon et al:

Equip the woman, eg professional development, leadership training, speaker training, mentorship,
Create equal opportunities, eg pay transparency, financial awards, targeted recruitment of women for senior positions
Value relational skills and increase visibility, eg networking, monthly lunches
Assess and revise the work culture, eg structured dialogues, diversity councils, ombudsmen, implicit bias training

The majority of studies (82.4%) in Lydon et al’s review fell into the Equip The Woman category, with half of them onlyexamining this kind of intervention. They say:

focusing training on women only implies that women are responsible for their stalled career progress, when in fact, it is the inequitable system that pushes women to learn additional skills, navigate labyrinths, and seek to overcome double binds to succeed.

Framing women as the problem implies that changing women is the solution. I’ve said before that women are hampered by the way we are socialised as children – to not take up too much space, keep our heads down, take on more pastoral care, try hard to be likeable and to sacrifice our own needs in order to support others. We are also punished for exhibiting masculine-coded behaviours such as having clear opinions, drawing boundaries and having ambitions.

Putting the onus on women to change these often deeply internalised behaviours, many of which we might not realise we are doing but all of which are enforced by society, is both the easy option and the least likely to succeed.

These interventions are easy – professional development programs are widespread and simple to set up and administer. They can be very valuable for participants in general, so I’m definitely not knocking them. But they are less likely to succeed because it doesn’t matter how well trained a woman is if she is stuck in a misogynist system.

Intervention levels

Reviewers also looked at how interventions were targeted. Tricco et al had the simplest set of categories:

Individuals, eg diversity training, unconscious bias, mentoring, coaching
Organisations, eg policy, codes of conduct, action plans
Systems, eg legislation

Guthridge et al also outlined a three-part system for the contextual levels which they then used to categorise interventions:

Microlevel: “individual characteristics, including biology, beliefs, behaviours, values, and emotions, such as empathy and resentment”
Mesolevel: “interpersonal interactions in family, work, and school etc. (e.g. gender segregation)”
Macrolevel: “broader social and cultural norms, including religion and politics”

They emphasise that these levels all affect one another, that strategies which work across levels are more likely to succeed. That said, interventions which work at the microlevel may not work at the macrolevel. It is, in short, complicated.

Lau et al created a five level system:

Ontogenic microsystem: behaviours, dispositions, identities
Interpersonal microsystem: mentors, supervisors
Organisational microsystem: practices, technology, organisational culture, social groups, training and development, policies
Macrosystem: culture, nation, political climate, laws and legislation, economy
Chronosystem: cohort effect, historical events

In all cases, at differing levels of detail, researchers begin with the individual, expanding out to larger and larger systems. Although none of them explicitly say it, we could also map the difficulty and complexity of interventions on to these categories, and we would see that both increase the further away from the individual we gets.

It is harder to change national culture, political climates, laws and legislations, and economies than it is to give someone some training. It’s no wonder that the majority of interventions focus on individuals.

How do men respond?

One aspect of a couple of reviews that I was surprised to see was an examination of hostile responses by men to gender equity interventions.

Guthridge et al found that some interventions resulted in hostile or even harmful responses from men, and discussed “The Problem of Hostile Affect”.

No study accounted for men’s and boys’ emotions (microlevel change) as part of the aim and design of the intervention, but their significance became apparent in the results of several studies. Men and boys reported feeling hostility, resentment, fear and jealousy when social norms were challenged. Attempts at addressing gender inequality were found to threaten men’s sense of entitlement, and it was theorised that boys expected to be the centre of attention.

Although many of these studies took place outside of the workplace, and it might thus be tempting to dismiss them as not relevant, men’s hostility to women’s equity is a problem we absolutely have to solve if we are to make progress.

Guthridge et all go on to say (references omitted):

It was found in one study that resistance and backlash can be ameliorated by including men and boys in the development and delivery of interventions. Behaviour change in men required an increase in empathy to achieve the aim of gender equality. [It was also] found that empathy was a viable alternative feminist strategy.

And they suggest that the results of one qualitative study provide insights into possible strategies:

Activists in this intervention used four strategies: (1) Giving praise and encouragement instead of criticism and blame; (2) Engaging civil servants on a personal level to create bonding; (3) Appeasing fears about being blamed by offering assistance; (4) Attempting to invoke their identification with the values of gender mainstreaming through informal educational efforts, all of which are mesolevel strategies.

Lau et al’s review provides some insights into how we might tackle male hostility (references omitted):

Some explanations for nonresponses or hostile responses include lack of psychological ownership (i.e., questioning if it is their place to act), threats to self-image arising from the implication that men’s achievements are due to their privilege rather than merit, and the sense that preferential treatment provided to minorities violates procedural fairness principles. Men are more likely to demonstrate support for these policies when they are provided a sense of ownership over them, are guided by a senior male champion, or are reminded of their global values (e.g., with a self-affirmation task where they describe their most important value and why it is important to them).

It seems obvious to me that overcoming male hostility is an essential first step that many interventions in the workplace have simply omitted.

One potential way in is suggested by Lau et al, who say, “the ability to recognize structural inequity is linked to greater support for gender equality policies at work”.

Which gives me another avenue to explore: Just how do we get more people to recognise structural inequity? Can we develop a reliable way to increase empathy and, thus, support for gender equity interventions?

References

Tricco, A. C., Parker, A., Khan, P. A., Nincic, V., Robson, R., MacDonald, H., … & Straus, S. E. (2024). Interventions on gender equity in the workplace: a scoping review. BMC medicine, 22(1), 149. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-024-03346-7

Guthridge, M., Kirkman, M., Penovic, T., & Giummarra, M. J. (2022). Promoting gender equality: A systematic review of interventions. Social Justice Research, 35(3), 318-343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-022-00398-z

Lydon, S., O’Dowd, E., Walsh, C., O’Dea, A., Byrne, D., Murphy, A. W., & O’Connor, P. (2022). Systematic review of interventions to improve gender equity in graduate medicine. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 98(1158), 300-307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2020-138864

Lau, V. W., Scott, V. L., Warren, M. A., & Bligh, M. C. (2023). Moving from problems to solutions: A review of gender equality interventions at work using an ecological systems approach. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 44(2), 399-419. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2654