Gender Ideologies and Workplace Diversity Policies: Are Voluntary Women’s Quotas and Mentoring Programmes Associated with Employees’ Gender Ideologies?

Eileen Peters and Anja-Kristin Abendroth
Additional contact information
Eileen Peters: Hans-Böckler Foundation, Germany
Anja-Kristin Abendroth: Bielefeld University, Germany

Work, Employment & Society, 2025, vol. 39, issue 5, 1201-1224

Abstract: Following policy feedback theory, this article argues that normative policy feedback mechanisms also operate at the workplace level, where employees are expected to adapt their beliefs to the specific policy context in which they are embedded. Specifically, it considers employees’ gender ideologies and their association with two prominent workplace-level diversity policies: voluntary women’s quotas and mentoring programmes. Partial proportional odds models are estimated employing a unique German linked employer–employee dataset (2018/19) incorporating 2445 employees and 82 workplaces. Findings indicate that voluntary women’s quotas implemented in workplaces are associated with more egalitarian gender ideologies among employees. This clear pattern was not detected for mentoring programmes. No gender differences were discovered, suggesting that normative policy feedback effects in the workplace are present equally among women and men. In conclusion, the findings indicate that policy feedback mechanisms operate not only at the national but also at the workplace level.

Keywords: gender ideologies; gender inequalities; normative policy feedback; workplace diversity policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170251336989 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:5:p:1201-1224

DOI: 10.1177/09500170251336989

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().