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responses to request for measure of gender equity in organizations

  • 1.  responses to request for measure of gender equity in organizations

    Posted 11-30-2011 04:26

    Hello,

    In response to my request last week for advice regarding measures of gender equity, I received several e-mails from people saying they were looking for the same thing, indicating that there is clearly a research opportunity here.

    Diana Bilimoria sent the following helpful information:

    A couple of gender equity scales are:

    (1) The academic work environment for women (short form) scale developed by Riger, Stokes, Raja & Sullivan (1997) measures perceptions of the work environment for women faculty. The 13-item measure has a response scale from 1=do not agree to 5=strongly agree. The authors report a coefficient alpha of .94 for the short form. Sample item: In meetings, people pay just as much attention when female faculty speak as when male faculty speak.

    Riger, S., et al., Measuring Perceptions of the Work Environment for Female Faculty. The Review of Higher Education, 1997. 21(1): p. 70-71.

    (2) Jandeska & Kraimer’s (2005) masculine organizational culture dimension reflects a traditional work culture created, maintained, and controlled by males. The scale captures the extent to which the culture values men more than women, and “is associated with more stereotypical male traits such as independence, internal

    competition, self-promotion, overt ambitiousness, decisiveness, aggressiveness, and the establishment of status and authority”(Jandeska & Kraimer, 2005). The scale consists of six items using a rating scale from 1=Does Not Describe At All to 5=Describes Completely, to indicate how well each statement describes the current culture. The authors report a coefficient alpha of .89 for the scale. Sample item: There are many more males than females in leadership roles in this organization.

    Jandeska, K.E. and M.L. Kraimer, Women’s Perceptions of Organizational Culture, Work Attitudes, and Role-Modeling Behaviors. Journal of Managerial Issues, 2005. 17(4): p. 461-478.


    Camilla Quental sent the following information:

    Last year I worked as consultant/researcher on a project called "Gender Equality Project", in association with the World Economic Forum.
    The co-founders elaborated a framework with 5 main areas of assessment (qualitative and quantitative methods were used). I think it's worth taking a look at their website. I worked doing qualitative interviews in 2 companies in France and I found their framework quite pertinent and well-developed.
    They presented the results of 10 pilot companies in the Davos Forum in January 2011.
    Their website is: www.genderequalityproject.org.
    If you'd like to contact them about the methodology, the co-founders Nicole Schwab and Aniela Unguresan are quite accessible.


    If any other members of the list have pertinent information about measuring gender equality in organizations, many people would appreciate your sharing this information.

    Thanks and best regards to all,

    Monique

    Monique Valcour, PhD
    Professor of Management
    EDHEC Business School
    393 Promenade des Anglais, BP 3116
    06202 Nice cedex 3
    FRANCE
    Mobile: +33 (0)6 48 79 85 56
    E-mail: Monique.VALCOUR@edhec.edu