What is fair about gender-fair hiring policies? Policy justifications do not make gender quotas fairer

• DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/aeh5y
• Publication Date: 2025-01-07T19:35:31Z
• Authors: Hualin Xiao; Muhammad Malik; Brent Strickland
• Keywords: Gender Discrimination

Corporate gender quotas have been widely introduced across Western countries to address women’s underrepresentation in economic leadership roles. The adoption of quota policies rests upon the belief that these are desirable since goal is instill equality society. current research investigated UK participants’ evaluations three hiring policies: merit-based candidate selection, shortlist quota, and outcome on perceived fairness efficiency selecting most qualified candidate. In Experiment 1, we compared when no policy justification was given; 2, tested for effects justifications (gender disparity vs. discrimination) attitudes toward policies. Results both experiments showed more positive than quotas, had effect preference over appraisal hiring, relative found men women. also revealed people’s were moderated by their moral equality. Specifically, greater commitment associated with appraisals quotas. However, even amongst strongly morally committed participants, they still surprisingly demonstrated a competency-based measures. Taken together, this mismatch between presumed public opinion actual which should be considered design future interventions