Ending sex and race discrimination in the workplace: Legal interventions that push the envelope

Are Diversity Programs Merely Ceremonial? Evidence-Free Institutionalization

“…Thus one study shows that women in corporate management champion diversity practices that research has shown to be ineffective, such as diversity training, and neglect practices that typically work, such as mentoring (Dobbin et al, 2011;. Others find that in negotiating discrimination suit settlements, liberal federal litigators ask for ineffective diversity practices but not for effective practices (Hegewisch et al, 2011;Schlanger and Kim, 2014). If women managers and federal litigators advocating for change do not know which innovations work and which don't, neither, we suggest, do corporate policy-makers.…”

“…In fact, none of the organizational initiatives found with any regularity in these settlements shows a positive effect on workforce diversity. A study of major consent decrees in discrimination cases concluded that settlements specify programmatic changes that have been shown to have little or no effect (Hegewisch et al, 2011). Do career civil rights litigators working for plaintiffs deliberately sabotage agreements?…”

The View at the Top or Signing at the Bottom? Workplace Diversity Responsibility and Women’s Representation in Management

“…Our findings underscore the importance of enforcement officials considering empirical evidence, or the lack thereof, on the efficacy of workforce diversity practices and responsibility structures in their screening and enforcement activities (Dobbin 2009). It appears that structural and other workforce diversity solutions are being used as injunctive relief in employment discrimination cases (Hegewisch, Deitch, and Murphy 2011), without much research on whether the interventions do in fact help underrepresented groups. Our results suggest that structural mandates, such as an HR executive on the TMT, may be a relatively weak symbolic step to take, as compared to compelling an organization to assign responsibility for the firm’s EEO-1 report to a higher-ranking individual.…”

Gender and sex inequalities: Implications and resistance

“…Research has pointed to a number of factors to explain the gap, including the "motherhood penalty" (Budig & Hodges, 2010;Hartmann, et al, 2016), occupational segregation (Hegewisch, Phil, Liepmann, Hayes, & Hartmann, 2010), compensation negotiation (Mazei et al, 2015), entitlement (O'Brien, Major, & Gilbert, 2012), the "glass ceiling" (Catalyst, 2018), the "glass cliff" (Mulcahy & Linehan, 2014), bias or discrimination in job advertisements/hiring (Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay, 2011), performance evaluations (Koch, D'Mello, & Sackett, 2015), workplace climate/harassment (Hegewisch, Phil, Deitch, & Murphy, 2011), and leadership stereotyping and role congruity (Catalyst, 2005;Eagly & Karau, 2002). Although improvements in women's educational attainment, employment experience, and unions were important in closing the gender wage gap in earlier years, industry segregation remains responsible for 50% of the wage gap seen today (Blau & Kahn, 2016).…”