Profession Comm. 8

GU E S T ED I TO R S ' I N T RODUC T I ON

Women's career equality and leadership in organizations: Creating an evidence-based positive change

Ellen Ernst Kossek1 | Patrice M. Buzzanell2

1Department of Management, Purdue

University, West Lafayette, Indiana

2Department of Communications, University

of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

Correspondence

Ellen Ernst Kossek, Krannert School of

Management & the Susan Bulkeley Butler

Center for Leadership Excellence, Purdue

University, Rawls Hall-office 4005,

100 S. Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN

47907-2076.

Email: [email protected]

Funding information

Purdue University

Research on women's career equality and leadership is growing in importance for advancing

social justice, equal employment opportunity, and global and national economic goals. Despite

the increased attention being paid to gender equality for decades, progression has slowed or

stalled around the globe, in many countries, such as United States. The goal of this special issue

is to address the persistent research-to-practice gap in developing and implementing practical

solutions for a positive change to advance women's career equality. In this introduction, we pro-

vide a brief overview of the approaches used to study women's careers and discuss how

research and practices that are more inclusive of women's needs, values, and career experiences

should be broadened to include more expansive and less-gendered notions of careers. Then, we

introduce the articles in the special issue that inform current directions in (a) career and leader-

ship theory, research, and methodologies for gender equality and (b) the application of scholar-

ship to organizations. We conclude with a summary of some lessons for future research and

practice on closing the women's career-equality gap.

KEYWORDS

gender diversity, gender equality, women and leadership, women and work, women's careers

1 | INTRODUCTION TO THE HRM SPECIAL ISSUE ON WOMEN'S CAREER EQUALITY

Scholarly and practitioner interest in human resource and organiza-

tional initiatives to enhance women's career equality has exploded in

recent decades (c.f., Joshi, Son, & Roh, 2015; McKinsey and Company

and Lean In, 2015). The reasons for this growing attention are com-

plex and varied across organizations, industries, and nations, often

including societal justice, equal employment opportunity, and eco-

nomic objectives. Although women are seen as equally qualified to be

corporate and political leaders, about half of the U.S. public believes

the gender leadership gap persists due to gender bias (PEW Research

Center, 2015). Indeed, women remain underleveraged as a source of

talent and leadership in nearly all occupations around the globe—from

CEO positions to corporate board members, (Catalyst, 2017) from col-

lege presidents to Silicon Valley executives (Fenwick & West, 2013)

and software developers in rapidly growing well-paid STEM (Science,

Technology, and Engineering Math) jobs (Lubinski, Benbow, & Kell,

2014). This gap endures even though women are about half the world

population.

A recent World Economic Forum (2016) report cites persistent

gender inequality as a top global economic risk, noting the inability of

nations and employers to fully use women's paid labor talents is slow-

ing world economic growth. Analysis by a nonpartisan economic think

tank of nearly 22,000 companies in 91 countries reported that half

were lacking senior women in key leadership positions, and a 30%

increase in representation could generate a 15% increase in profits

(Nolan, Moran, & Kotschwar, 2016).

Yet, progress in women's career equality has stalled in many

nations, most notably in the United States, which used to be a

leader—but now at 45th in the world ranks far from the top (World

Economic Forum, 2016). While women's labor force participation has

grown over the last few decades and continues to grow in many parts

of the world, it also has peaked in some nations (e.g., United States in

1999) and has declined globally between 1995 and 2015 (from 52.4

to 49.6%) (Catalyst, 2017). Furthermore, equality in women's career

paths, rewards, advancement, and retention remains uneven, at best,

and discouraging, at worst. Globally, women earn 77% of what men

do, and pay and advancement vary depending on the career stage,

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21936

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:813–822. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 813

marital status, birth and number of children, nation, racio-ethnicity,

and other factors (Catalyst, 2017).

1.1 | Need for HRM special issue on Women's Career Equality: Addressing the research-to-practice gap

In light of these statistics, this special issue was designed to address

the need for current evidence-based research to underpin practical

solutions for a positive change to advance women's career equality.

Our chief goal is to address persistent research-to-practice gaps in the

women's career-equality literature. Most of the research on gender

equality does a better job at describing problems in human resources

practices and organizational structures and climates than in coming up

with evidence-based solutions to address women's underutilization at

the top of organizations and across professions. As a case in point,

Eriksson-Zetterquist and Styhre (2008) found that highly committed

and competent scholars involved in large-scale gender equality pro-

grams often emphasize reflection to a greater extent than practical

action. Such an emphasis is well intentioned and consistent with

scholarly aims but can impede attempts to develop and deploy pro-

ductive practices that might be transferrable. Even so, such emphases

need to continue side-by-side as empirical findings substantiate

and/or counter assertions about well-publicized advantages of differ-

ence in organizations (Eagly, 2016).

Similarly, leaders in organizational practice can also contribute to

the lack of progress by often limiting initiatives to those emphasizing

awareness and consciousness-raising training in leadership develop-

ment more than other more ambitious structural and policy changes.

Also, rather than partnering with leading gender and diversity scholars

to rigorously develop and evaluate the state-of-the art initiatives,

corporate-diversity experts sometimes feel more comfortable with

hiring consulting firms that will keep issues confidential and ‘not rock

the boat’ by challenging prevailing organizational cultures and struc-

tures. Thus, the charge of this special issue of Human Resource Man-

agement is to showcase articles that bridge interdisciplinary multilevel

and evidence-based research and practice for a positive change in

women's career equality. In the first section, we define women's

career equality and briefly review competing and complimentary cur-

rent research perspectives. Then, we review the articles in the special

issue, organizing them into themes. We conclude with lessons learned

for future research and practice.

2 | WOMEN'S CAREERS AND CAREER EQUALITY: DEFINITIONS AND OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

In a recent review, Kossek, Su, & Wu (2017, p. 229) define

women's career equality as “a multilevel, multidisciplinary dynamic

phenomenon that reflects the degree to which women, compared

to men, (a) have equal access to and participation in career oppor-

tunities and (b) experience equal work and nonwork outcomes:

intrinsic (job, life, family satisfaction) and extrinsic (pay, promo-

tions).” The authors note these outcomes can be measured at indi-

vidual, group organizational, occupational, and societal levels and

that individual-level effects are often nested or related in a higher-

level social context. For example, when women are better sup-

ported demographically and culturally in the collective, individual

women are also more likely to experience better outcomes (Kossek

et al., 2017). Furthermore, the authors noted whether women “opt

out” or are “pushed out” is interconnected as are competing narra-

tives such as work-family, discrimination, and career-values expla-

nations for the gender gap.

2.1 | Women's career and leadership approaches: Expanding conceptualizations

Women's career equality and leadership in organizations can be

studied from a variety of career and leadership perspectives provid-

ing insights into the complicated nature of women's advancement,

spanning decades with numerous definitions and interdisciplinary

theories of career. These conceptualizations range from traditional

advancement throughout career as narrative, scripts, contracts, rela-

tionships, competitions, and callings over the course of lifespans

(e.g., Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989; Arthur, Inkson, & Pringle, 1999;

Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015; Buzzanell &

Lucas, 2006, 2013; Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014; Hall, 1996; Hall &

Chandler, 2005; Inkson, Dries, & Arnold, 2015; Lee, Kossek, Hall, &

Litrico, 2011; Rosenbaum, 1979; and Valette & Culié, 2015). This

expansion is notable because it highlights the point that singular

career models, especially those originally designed for men in corpo-

rations with the assumption that one has limited to no caregiving

responsibilities—gave rise to the ideal worker, ideal leader, and ideal

career conceptualizations (Acker, 1990; Eagly & Karau, 2002). Such

models are increasingly inadequate to explain many women's (and

men's) lives.

2.1.1 | Extending career as advancement and extrinsic success models

Historically, career as advancement models has been popular to guide

individuals and organizations in predicting and cultivating talent for

leadership, hierarchical advancement, and organizational influence.

Advantages often accrue for employees in these traditional models as

career-development phases and expertise and influence acquisition

are accompanied by the increased objective (e.g., pay and promotions)

and often subjective symbols of success (e.g., recognition, status, ref-

erent leadership power). Considerable attention has also been paid to

how these career and leadership theories assist in and reflect individ-

uals' lives and organizational goals. For instance, Schein's (1971; 1985)

classic model of five career anchors of self-motives and intraorganiza-

tional advancement along a career path included autonomy, general

management, technical competence, security, and entrepreneurial cre-

ativity, which was validated largely on males attending MIT. It was

only later in the 1980s that Schein added some additional values that

might be viewed as more feminine in roots such as service and dedica-

tion to a cause, and lifestyle (Schein, 1985). Similarly, Hall and Good-

ale's (1986) time and mobility graphs and orderly depiction of career

in four discrete phases of exploration, mastery, maintenance, and dis-

engagement with embedded value preferences have given way to

career and leadership theories that inform women's entrepreneurial,

814 KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL

sequential, or entangled strands of personal life-career pathways

(Buzzanell & Goldzwig, 1991; Lee et al., 2011). These gender-inclusive

models incorporate relational, material, and embodied experiences

over the course of diverse women's lifespans, including dependents,

race and ethnicity, class, and occupation (Alfred, 2001; Buzzanell,

Long, Kokini, Anderson, & Batra, 2015; Gatrell, Cooper, & Kossek,

2017; Huopalainen & Satama, in press).

2.1.2 | Broadening career and leadership experiences and structures

Attention has also been paid to how career visioning metaphorically

highlights or backgrounds certain aspects of career and—with atten-

dant developmental experiences and structures—bridging individual,

collectives, and societies (Carli & Eagly, 2016; Inkson et al., 2015).

Imageries of careers now are increasingly varied: linear and nonlinear,

shape shifting/protean and deterministic, bounded and boundaryless,

arrow and kaleidoscopic, and journeyed (with actual and/or aspira-

tional) end points (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Buzzanell & Goldzwig,

1991; Hall, 2002; Inkson et al., 2015; Mainero & Sullivan, 2006). This

imagery both focuses activity, such as the linear career as advance-

ment notions regarding career opportunity structures and leadership

development, and expands priorities, meanings, and borderlines and

content, such as protean and boundaryless careers. As a whole, the

field of careers, offers multifaceted frameworks for understanding,

explaining, predicting, and critiquing individual, organizational, and

societal interests in career and leadership. How careers and leadership

are conceptualized and visualized have profound consequences for

who presumably has a career and leadership potential and who does

not. Such frameworks affect how individuals, organizations, and socie-

ties think about, and do not think about, leadership qualities and activ-

ities, thus determining who and what is included in preferred career

and leadership maps.

2.1.3 | Recognizing the gendered nature of career and leadership conceptualizations and imagery

Overall, the concept of “career” is inherently gendered. The term

“career” is infused with prominent (and hidden) power dynamics with

complex and nuanced resistance-control and desire dynamics bely-

ing the seemingly straightforward criteria and trajectories for ideal-

ized career forms (advancement) and most valued identities

(e.g., work over nonwork) (e.g., Driver, 2018). In terms of perceived

differences between men and women in career processes and attain-

ment or leadership, the sex (biological) and gender (psychological)

difference literature typically views perceived patterns of difference

through theoretical bases as socialization, identity, and psychody-

namics. These differences are presumably stable—aligned with mas-

culine and feminine differences, although queer leadership theory

usurps the fixed nature of difference aligned with biology and nor-

mative assumptions of gender (e.g., Muhr & Sullivan, 2013; Muhr,

Sullivan, & Rich, 2016). Despite evidence from theories such as role-

incongruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002), relatively consistent rela-

tionships among sex, gender, perceptions, and actual behaviors sur-

face in our popular media, research, HR and management practices,

and everyday conversation. In this tradition, what women and men

career actors and leaders actually do in terms of how they enact

career and leadership may differ from what others' expect, perceive,

and evaluate (e.g., Eagly & Carli, 2007). With regard to gender and

career equality, the consequences are that women and men are val-

ued differently with the meanings and trajectories of their careers

constituted by hierarchical valuing of stereotypical masculine rather

than feminine characteristics. In short, the focus on career actor or

leader identity has been relatively fixed and focused on the domi-

nant prescribed sex and gender roles. New HR and organizational

practices are needed to disrupt individuals' alignment of men-mascu-

line-career-leadership ideals, and prevailing organizational career

pathways and leadership hierarchies, affording space for difference

and norm-challenging ways of supporting and enacting career

systems.

Besides sex/gender differences, the doing of “gender” (West &

Zimmerman, 1987) focuses on the gendered performance of career

and leadership and related gendered discourse and social interactions.

The notion of “career” is gendered insofar as this performative lens

questions how, when, why, and in what space career aspirations and

attributions are ascribed, thwarted, developed, embodied, resisted,

and rendered as dignified (Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006, 2013). For

instance, work–family conflict is manifest in different patterns but

heteronormative assumptions and ‘doing’ of family as LGBQ raise

questions about stigmatized interactions, identities, and networks for

career development that often go unaddressed in the career and lead-

ership literature (see Sawyer, Thoroughgood, & Ladge, 2017). Simi-

larly, prescriptions for judging merit and meritocracy are rarely

challenged or broadened to consider linkages to more sustainable

career paths with new work forms and workloads that support work-

life well-being (Kossek, Valcour, & Lirio, 2014) jointly with career

advancement. Rather than often conceptualized in the HR literature

as a rational taken-for-granted human resource procedure, using HR

policies to support caregiving is a new “contested terrain” (Edwards,

1979). The configurations of workplace pregnancies, maternity

and paternity leaves, flexible work arrangements and/or

“accommodations,” and motherhood/fatherhood career penalties or

bonuses, and parental- and elder-caregiving stigma are often fraught

with mixed messages, in sometimes ambivalent and passively unsup-

portive and other times actively sacrifice-seeking climates, with nonin-

clusive policy implementation, sites of contestation and struggle for

women and men within and across organizations and nations and pol-

icy agendas (e.g., Buzzanell & Liu, 2006; Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007;

Gatrell et al., 2017; Hodges & Budig, 2010; Kossek, Hammer & Lewis,

2010; Kossek, Noe, & Colquitt, 2001; Kossek, Ollier-Malaterre, Lee,

Pichler, & Hall, 2016; Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011;

Ryan & Kossek, 2008). Cross-country comparisons of work-family pol-

icies, career advancement, and wage inequities point to contradictory

findings insofar as extended leaves relieve parents of childcare bur-

dens but also result in lower advancement and workforce participation

for women and are often associated with wage and career penalties

(e.g., Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2017).

Moreover, career and leadership systems are organized through

seemingly gender neutral but inherently masculine-gendered materi-

alities and discourses found in organizing aspects such as vertical

and horizontal industry, occupational, and organizational or institu-

tional structures. Acker (1990, 2006) documented the gendered

KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL 815

hierarchies of organizing and career, then displayed how inequality

regimes are constructed from interlocking difference. Career is ideo-

logically aligned with status, money, and meaningfulness in popular

and academic works—although scholars proclaim everyone has equal

career prospects (c.f. Arthur et al., 1989) women and men continue

to differentiate gendered dynamics, expectations, and decision-

making criteria in their work-life considerations and in their organi-

zational work (e.g., Kossek et al., 2017). Within this big picture of

career research and practice, women managers and professionals

operate within socio-cultural spaces of accomplishment and margin-

alization despite their credentials and ambitions. These spaces are

dialectic (either-or) and dialogic (both-and) insofar as women have

achieved and/or become plateaued prior to reaching the pinnacle of

their careers. These spaces operate in and may reproduce

(or challenge) national cultural formations and policies about gender

and other forms of difference in sustained employability, leadership,

and career attainment (e.g., Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2017; Miller,

Eagly, & Linn, 2015).

3 | THEMATIC CLUSTERS OF ARTICLES IN THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

Given the scholarly legacy reviewed above, it is not surprising that

the articles we received still largely focused on the notion of a career

as being associated with upward movement and objective or extrin-

sic success, namely, leadership advancement. Taken together, the

articles included in this special issue suggest that women have come

a long way toward, but still lack, gender equality in many career pro-

cesses, outcomes and experiences. Some questions raised for this

special issue were: “What are examples of career equality that can

be analyzed and potentially translated for different situations?

Where has progress in career equality been made? When and how

might fresh insights into career equality offer different ways

of approaching this issue? For whom, or what segment of women

and men, is career equality still contested and with what

consequences?”

This special issue had begun to answer these questions, showing

“the who and why” most often studied in the HR and business litera-

ture are professional and managerial women leaders who are seeking

opportunities to advance to top functions in their organizations and

industries. The articles demonstrate that the arguments for women's

career equality and leadership require complicated and nuanced sup-

port that challenges normative patterns and structures and derives a

positive change in the form of experiments evaluating the feasibility

and outcomes from new policy and practice. We define a positive

change as that which is generative, admitting that a singular interven-

tion for the “wicked problem” of gender inequality is likely inadequate,

and acknowledging the need for ongoing inquiry and organizational

learning with new career design to challenge embedded gendered

structures and cultures. In short, our goal has been the publication of

scholarship that meets the need for current and positive change-

producing discussion and intervention.

Toward this end, this special issue is generative and helped us

identify research issues in six main themes. One main cluster of

articles examines issues of theory, research, and methodologies that

(a) focus on core career processes; (b) contrast different theories and

expectations so that the contradictions within gendered career equal-

ity can be foregrounded; and (c) is multilevel, bridging individual and

organizational perspectives on the employment relationship. The sec-

ond cluster moves this scholarship into practice. It does so to

(d) affirm a needed employer and field-testing organizational view;

(e) derive research-to-practice implementations that can be translated

to different contexts and under certain conditions; and (f ) generate a

positive change for both women and men.

Across these themes, extant scholarship and that published in this

special issue are combined to display how the articles selected both

extend knowledge and at the same time generate new more complex

research agendas and practices. We selected at least one article that

was salient to highlight each theme.

3.1 | Cluster I: Career and leadership theory, research, and methodologies for gender equality

One cluster of articles in this special issue provided fresh insights on

core career processes, contradictions, and multilevel bridging of

micro-meso-macro levels.

Research on core career processes typically focuses on identity,

time, space, and dignity (e.g., Arthur et al., 1989, 1999; Buzzanell &

Lucas, 2006, 2013; Hall, 2002; Inkson et al., 2015) in managerial and

professional occupations as diverse as the C-Suite in Fortune

500 companies and workplaces in which employees were trained and

work in STEM. These processes bring together diverse knowledge

streams for different disciplines. Integrating the breadth and depth of

such knowledge is challenging for anyone wanting to write about HR

research across organizations and subfields, and particularly about

gender discrimination, occupational and career preference, and work

and family fields (Kossek et al., 2017). It is also difficult to derive prac-

tices for gender equality when similar constructs and aims delve into

quite dissimilar theories, samples, and practices. These challenges are

exacerbated when researchers present career developmental and flex-

ibility policies and accommodations designed to create greater gender

and career equality in particular locales as generalizable exemplars (for

examples of diverse national gender equality initiatives and policy

goals, see Kossek & Ollier-Malaterre, 2013; Pauly & Buzzanell, 2016;

and Örtenblad, Marling, & Vasiljević, 2017).

Despite these challenges in generalizing career processes and

goals across contexts, a first theme we identified is that the authors of

nearly all of the articles in this special issue explore women's career

issues related to issues in accessing or maintaining organizational

membership and selection for leadership roles, and positive career-

development experiences across life phases, noting occupational and

organizational differences. They do so using a wide array of theoretical

perspectives and with attention to hiring riskiness for leader roles (Van

Esch, Hopkins, O'Neil, & Bilimoria, 2018), retention (Ladge, Humberd, &

Eddleston, 2018), turnover (Singh, Zhang, Wan, & Fouad, 2018), and

use of quotas to lessen the impact of gender stereotypes on evaluation

of women (Mölders, Brosi, Bekk, Spörrle, & Welp, 2018) and aspiration

and advancement in top positions and spheres of influence (Fritz & van

Knippenberg, 2018; Glass & Cook, 2018; Gould, Kulik, & Sardeshmukh;

816 KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL

Guillén, Mayo, & Karelaia, 2018). The research is quantitative and qual-

itative, offering generalizable outcomes for policy considerations as

well as depth and breadth. Admittedly, the global representation is

largely limited to Western countries (i.e., Australia, United Kingdom,

Germany, and the United States).

For instance, in “Retaining Professionally Employed New

Mothers: The Importance of Maternal Confidence and Workplace

Support to their Intent to Stay,” Ladge et al. (2018) work with the

assumption, if organizations want to recruit, retain, and promote

women professionals then they need to actively address the implica-

tions of motherhood on women's personal lives and careers. From

their multimethodological study, they discuss how women struggle in

efforts to continue their careers and construct viable work-related

identities after childbirth. A unique contribution is that women's confi-

dence in their maternal roles, called maternal confidence, predicted

women's work–family conflict and intent to remain in their organiza-

tions. Furthermore, perceived organizational support for family was an

important positive influence on this relationship.

Second, scholarship suggests gendered career-equality outcomes

can be foregrounded in specific contexts and career and work-life incon-

gruities and pressures. For example, in “Why Do Women Engineers

Leave the Engineering Profession? The Roles of Work-Family Con-

flict, Occupational Commitment, and Perceived Organizational

Support,” Singh et al. (2018) focused on women's intent to leave the

engineering profession, using the Conservation of Resources (COR)

theory, turnover theory, and the voluntary career-change model.

They found occupational turnover intentions and work-life balance

may indirectly influence women's decisions about staying in

engineering.

Third, published scholarship and that included in this special issue

must increasingly be multilevel, bridging individual and organizational per-

spectives on the employment, career, and leadership relationships. Simply

put, individual career experiences cannot be fully understood without

understanding the organizational and occupational and societal con-

textual pressures shaping career inputs and outcomes (Kossek et al.,

2017). Noting that they focused on availability and not use, Fritz and

van Knippenberg's “Gender and Leadership Aspiration: The impact of

Work Life Initiatives” found the availability of work-life initiatives can

remove barriers to advancement, thus affecting women's leadership

aspirations that, in turn, predict hierarchical advancement, occupa-

tional status, and objective career success. These initiatives were also

important for men. Fritz and van Knippenberg scale up their findings

to make recommendations about how such initiatives could be consid-

ered part of employees' rights, how they could be embedded within

the organizational infrastructure and culture, how women (and men)

could avoid the stigmatization and career penalties that seem to come

with use of work-life policies, and how supervisors could model and

support multidimensional work-life efforts for satisfaction with career,

family, community, and other personal life aspects (see Hall, Kossek,

Briscoe, Pichler, & Lee, 2013).

In their article “Support for Quotas for Women in Leadership: The

Influence of Gender Stereotypes,” Mölders et al. (2018) bridge stereo-

types and institutional quotas. Their explicit aim is to better under-

stand factors that affect quotas for women in leadership. They use

sensemaking, role congruity, female leadership advantage, and

cognition scholarship, noting outgroup biases. They show how gender

stereotypes influence political attitudes.

3.2 | Cluster II: Scholarship to practice applications

Turning to the second cluster, a number of articles move this scholar-

ship into research-to-practice recommendations and suggestions for

how to make such practices feasible and sustainable. The special issue

accomplishes these goals in three ways.

First, these articles affirm a needed employer and organizational

view in career-equality studies. Although there are benefits of

employee-centric and national or organizational focused views on

gender and career equality, an advantage of research and practice

incorporating dual employer and organizational perspectives is that

both employee employability and well-being goals and business-

profitability goals are examined and both must be balanced in socially

responsible ways for mutual gains. One question posed by our special

issue call for articles was: How does one display the competence, sim-

ilarity or likeability, and promotability without being seen as being too

aggressive, too ambitious, and too self-interested?

One answer is influence. Guillén et al. (2018) found when women

engineers appear to be self-confident—or “are perceived as being able

to meet his/her performance standards, or has a sense of agency at

work”—these appearances are “precursor(s) of individual influence in

organizations” with career effects. Self-confidence appearance also

needs to be accompanied by prosocial or communal orientations.

Women should be achievement-oriented, competent, self-confident,

nurturing, and communal—a tall order for anyone but especially for

women in male-dominated careers. Influence, expertise, and authority

are developed, accorded, structurally embedded, and performed dif-

ferently by women and men.

It would be easy to fall into the “fix the woman” trap of stipulating

that such research suggests that women should perform well, display

self-confidence, and enact feminine qualities. In fact, the authors

found low prosocial orientation may disadvantage women engineers

by resulting in their not being able to gain influence as readily as their

male counterparts. They also observe these time-consuming activities

of managing others' perceptions while also engaging in successful role

performance could slow down women's advancement. Moreover,

they maintain the status quo by failing to change the hegemonic order

or the inequality regime, as Acker (2006) phrases it, does not address

the deep-gendered divide that produces such inequalities. The

authors suggest organizations make membership, rewards, and oppor-

tunity structures explicit and disavow bias in phases from selection

through retention and promotion. They suggest changing organiza-

tional systems to foster greater authenticity in career-developmental

activities. Such points can be combined with Singh et al.'s practical

implications insofar as they note the high costs of turnover, loss of tal-

ent, and the crucial role of organizational work-life support.

Second, this special issue calls for scholars to derive research-to-

practice implementations that can be translated to different contexts and

under certain conditions. While most published research highlights bar-

riers and obstacles for gender-equitable workplaces, the vast majority

of studies are not very useful for fostering a meaningful employment

change. Many organizations loathe sponsoring true field-based

KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL 817

randomized control intervention studies, sharing sensitive data on

women's turnover, disclosing documented experiences of adverse

impact and implicit and explicit bias, and discussions of chilly (and

sometimes even hostile) climates (with accompanying turnover and lit-

igation). From an individual perspective, women may also be reluctant

to be frank on bullying, discriminatory actions, and other toxic interac-

tions they faced that may jeopardize current employment or status

and reputation in their fields.

And yet, we are in a time when the #MeToo movement has gone

viral on sexual assault and harassment globally with women exercising

voice and solidarity online and offline in offices, on media, and in

courtrooms. This may be the moment when corporations are willing

to exhibit vulnerability so that their transparency can ward off possi-

ble future claims about inequalities and mistreatment. Clearly, there is

a need for academic practitioner partnerships to bridge science and

practice from employee and employer perspectives. In attempts to

gain a better understanding of how context and intersectionality

relate to organizational change, we can ask several questions. For

example, will the same change strategies used in business work in

nonprofit or STEM sectors? What about across jobs and occupations

such as initiatives employed to support IT workers who can some-

times work from home, compared to employees directly caring for

patients, for example. Do strategies need to be adapted across organi-

zational and societal levels? For example, what practices are needed

to support those at the top such as CEO or COO compared to those

who cannot seem to break through the glass ceiling? What about

changing the country cultural context? Will the same employment

change strategies that work in New York be effective in Dubai or

Shanghai or Des Moines?

Moreover, in what ways does organizational support for women's

career equality need to be customized for diverse women's identity

subgroups? For example, how do employer talent management and

support strategies need to vary across career-life stages and genera-

tions from millennials to mid-career to senior high-talent women who

are freed from child rearing now propelling rapidly upward before

elder care, spouse, or health demands kick in? How about customizing

strategies across heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual or transgen-

dered identity groups? What are cross-cutting and unique issues?

How do work-family and dual career issues shape career equality?

What should support look like for women with geographic diversity

such as the need to commute long distance back and forth between

work and home to stay partnered or care for their families while

advancing in career? Or how about the unique career needs of women

with color or immigrant women? What about customizing strategies

for those women with special needs or poor women facing accumula-

tive stress or other challenges?

Gould et al. (2018) examine strategies for the Australian cul-

tural context. In their article, “Gender Diversity from the Top: The

Trickle-Down Effect in the Australian Public Sector,” they found an

effect between board representation by women and executive rep-

resentation by women in Australia. What makes the trickle-down

effect work over time is that women in senior leadership roles be

present and/or advocate and sponsor other women. This means

promotion of qualified women to top corporate levels is important,

with Gould et al.’s results indicating effects would appear within

a year.

Third, the research-to-practice sections of articles are designed to

generate a positive change for both women and men. Extant scholar-

ship and that published in this special issue are combined to extend

knowledge and generate more complex research agendas and prac-

tices. Of importance here is determining which interventions might

promote equality, or at least equity, within particular types of sys-

tems with consideration of the ironic consequences that sometimes

arise in the context itself and at multiple levels within systems.

Improving careers for women often involves changing careers and

systems for both men and women. In research-to-practice design, an

initial step involves figuring out what the problem is, how to articu-

late the problem, what perspective or level might be appropriate for

integrating scholarship and practice in specific contexts, and how

theory and prior research might inform the issues. Afterward, studies

should be conducted with attention to how they might serve the

stakeholders and organizational contexts, values and beliefs, and

reflections about beliefs.

As one example of this approach, Van Esch et al. (2018) provide

a list of HR best practices to create a positive process and environ-

ment for the selection and success of women leaders in senior posi-

tions. Ladge et al. (2018) offer a concise table with listings of actions

to support new mothers. These actions are organized according to

practices designed to generate internally based organizational sup-

port, externally based organizational support, and managerial sup-

port. Mölders et al. lay out several practices to highlight and

showcase women and their agentic behaviors and to provide mem-

bers' opportunities to interact with women in leadership. They stipu-

late that these initial practices are designed to set the stage for and

create opportunities for women in leadership. Besides highlighting

positive examples, showcasing accounts of women's agentic behav-

ior also implies organizations need to refrain from actions proven to

undermine women's success and agency in organizations. These

actions include putting women in leadership positions that subject

them to failure because they are too risky (Ryan & Haslam, 2007), as

well as patronizing women by withholding challenging jobs

(De Pater, Van Vianen, & Bechtoldt, 2010) and important resources

(Vescio, Gervais, Snyder, & Hoover, 2005). Furthermore, organiza-

tions should carefully communicate affirmative actions such as the

introduction of quotas. As affirmative action can be interpreted as a

signal of women's lack of agency and competence (Leslie, Mayer, &

Kravitz, 2014), organizations should highlight hindering factors for

women's advancement such as stereotypes to make sure that quotas

do not backfire by seemingly confirming gender stereotypes such as

women being less agentic than men. This means organizations

should enable women to perform successfully in their job, while at

the same time, they should ensure all employees understand the rea-

soning behind the introduction of quotas, avoiding quotas to back-

fire and hinder women's success.

Glass and Cook (2018) study women's impacts on firms' practices

and policies by providing an overview on the contemporary focus on

financial performance as indicating impact as well as other variables

and processes that can affect firm performance. They focus on Board

composition and CEO gender in areas of governance, product

818 KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL

development, and equity at Fortune 500 companies. Using the theo-

retical lenses of gender difference, homophily, and diversity, the

authors test hypotheses about the unique advantages that women

CEOs bring to leadership when compared to men, about the ways

gender-diverse boards with multiple and/or influential women support

women CEOs, and about CEO-Board heterogeneity with men CEOs

but multiple and/or influential women foster innovation in terms of

business and equity practices, respectively. With limited support for

the gender difference and homophily models but consistent support

for the diversity perspective, this study demonstrates the presence of

influential women in top leadership positions can result in numerous

positive benefits. Practical implications indicate influence is a key to

successful outcomes for women, organization leaders and members,

and firm performance. The research-to-practice takeaway is that

Boards should be diversified and should include women leaders for a

positive change.

We now turn to lessons learned regarding gender and career

equality and closing thoughts that can act as a springboard for further

research-to-practice. Consistent with our earlier critique of prevailing

career and leadership theories, pathways, and imagery, we bring our

discussion full circle questioning how women's talent, competence,

careers, and leadership can benefit from more diverse (and expansive)

perspectives of career and leadership.

3.3 | Some lessons learned to build on in future research and practice

The articles in this special issue examined a range of topics on

women's careers, each with implications for addressing a persistent

organizational and societal challenge: “What is the organizational and

HR science on how to bridge the research to practice gap to move the

needle and improve women's career equality?” Taken together, these

articles indicate the complexity in gender equality in terms of women's

career advancement and leadership is dependent upon a number of

different factors and levels of possible intervention. The contributors

to this special issue offer insights into the processes or moderating

contextual influences that matter when trying to implement women's

career-equality initiatives.

Women tend to experience better career outcomes when perceived

overall support for work-life initiatives is generally high across country or

company context. Research shows cultural support about the value of

investing in work-life initiatives at the employer or public policy insti-

tutional level varies across contexts (Kossek, Lewis, & Hammer, 2010).

Although several authors showed both men and women tend to have

favorable attitudes and may benefit when there is higher perceived

supports for work-life initiatives, such support may mean even more

positive outcomes for women. When support is higher, women tend

to have higher leadership aspirations, and perceive less family-to-work

conflict even when maternal confidence is lower, and feel able to take

advance of flexible work arrangements and job autonomy even in

lower gender-equalitarian cultures. Several articles showed across

multiple societal contexts and levels of analysis, when there is per-

ceived broad cultural support for work-life by men and women alike,

the payoff is especially positive for women's career aspirations, stress,

and outcomes such as turnover.

The gender cultural context matters for the support for and effects of

initiatives on gender equality outcomes. Several articles demonstrate

significant moderating effects of the gender cultural context on the

effectiveness of initiatives. Whether it is national, occupational, or

organizational context, the gender culture such as whether men and

women are treated with lower gender stereotyping or the degree to

which an occupational is seen as masculine affects the degree to

which quotas are seen as viable. Quotas were seen as more accept-

able in male-dominated contexts.

Targeted women's leadership development initiatives focusing on

building psychological resources for work and maternal and organiza-

tional citizen role expectations are helpful. It was surprising to us that

25% of our articles found women's' individual self-confidence for the

maternal roles and confidence as a leader matter. We also think such

training needs to look at the context and that the differing expecta-

tions placed on being a “good mother” versus being a “good father”

and how that role is enacted and being a leader that is both agentic

but also communal (helping behaviors at work through differing

organizational citizen expectations need to be incorporated into

leadership and organizational development). The fact that confidence

for both maternal and job roles mattered as moderators of career

experiences also suggests that leadership development should not

just be work-role-based as most companies do, but also should

include discussion of maternal values and ambition. Rather than shy

away from maternal values and roles, companies need to be more

gender and work-life inclusive to support women (and men) as

“whole people.”

Organizational implicit bias initiatives are needed to consciously

combat the different cultural gender role expectations for men and

women and performance linkages. We saw for star performers women

may be viewed as low-risky leaders than men but that for women

who were good average performers men were preferred as lower

risks. Similarly, we saw if women were less confident as top per-

formers they were more likely to have negative experiences, as

women were seen as being expected to engage in more gender role-

congruent helping behaviors. Such findings show to enhance women's

career equality, such implicit stereotypes that shape women's own

beliefs of role expectations and how others value and perceive these

roles as gender role congruent or not is critical to countervail stereo-

typing that is impeding women's advancement.

3.4 | Closing

These articles in this special issue suggest transformation toward

equality is both more complicated and more encouraging than it

sometimes seems and requires both individual- and organizational-

level change initiatives. The range of articles addresses issues such as

linkages between gender and the following issues: quotas, maternal

and job confidence, the meaning of work-life supports for leadership

aspirations, occupational commitment and family to work interfer-

ence, differential leadership expectations for extra role behaviors, risk-

iness in leadership selection, the need for top-down change

approaches, linkages between leader and board diversity and business

outcomes, and the adoption of equity practices. Overall, women's

individual influences such as their self-confidence in appearance and

KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL 819

motherhood as well as organizational support of work-life initiatives

and institutional and system-wide interventions such as quotas have

been found to benefit women (and men). Moreover, the ironies in

these findings are evident—it is never enough for women to be com-

petent, agentic leaders, and perform well in work- and personal-life

domains; they often must also embody feminine qualities and they

require advocacy, sponsorship, and efforts to determine how to

develop equal playing fields.

These findings are from numerous contexts and stakeholder

groups such as CEOs and Board members in businesses (Glass &

Cook, 2018), women and men engineers (Guillén et al., 2018), women

engineers (Singh et al., 2018), women and men employees in the

United Kingdom (Fritz & van Knippenberg, 2018) and in Germany

(Mölders et al., 2018), “professionally-employed new mothers in the

United States as they transitioned back to work” (Ladge et al., 2018),

and experiments looking at perceived riskiness of hiring women com-

pared to men leaders (Van Esch et al., 2018). The studies focused on

women in contrast to men or system-level phenomena.

Finally, we hope some of the lessons learned provide some

insights to build upon regarding gender and career equality that can

act as a springboard for further research-to-practice ideas. In returning

to our earlier discussions about the need to incorporate expansive

and multiple careers and leadership theories, pathways, and imageries,

we reflect upon the possibility that a focus on the diverse career and

leadership processes might also provide ways of rethinking career,

leadership, and organizational structures to be more gender inclusive.

Therefore, the questions may not center on what can be done to

change systems and opportunities but what can be done to change

the fundamental basis by which careers are organized, valued, and

embodied.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the Krannert School of Management and the

Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue

University for their generous support of this research, most notably

by supporting the inaugural Leadership Excellence and Gender Sym-

posium March 28-30, 2016 in West Lafayette, Indiana.

ORCID

Ellen Ernst Kossek http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7630-6397

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

ELLEN ERNST KOSSEK is the Basil S. Turner Professor at Pur-

due University's Krannert School of Management and the

Research Director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leader-

ship Excellence. She holds a PhD degree in organizational behav-

ior from Yale University. Her research focusing on organizational

and leader support of positive work–family-life relationships, gen-

der inclusion, and flexibility has won many awards, such as the

Rosabeth Moss Kanter research excellence award; the Sage Schol-

arly achievement award for advancing the understanding of gen-

der and diversity in organizations; and the Work-Life Legacy

award for helping to build or advance the work-life movement.

She was the first elected president of the Work-Family

Researchers Network, and in 2018 was recognized for seven

modalities of excellence in the work-family field, such as mentor-

ing future work-family researchers. She is a Fellow of the Ameri-

can Psychological Association, the Society of IO Psychology, and

the Academy of Management.

PATRICE M. BUZZANELL is the Chair and Professor of the

Department of Communication at the University of South Florida

and Endowed Visiting Professor of the School of Media and

Design at Shanghai Jiaotong University. She was the Fellow and

the Past President of the International Communication Associa-

tion (ICA). She served as the President of the Council of Commu-

nication Associations and the Organization for the Study of

Communication, Language, and Gender. She is a Distinguished

Scholar of the National Communication Association. Her research

focuses on career, work-life policy, resilience, gender, and engi-

neering design. She received ICA's Mentorship Award and the

Provost Outstanding Mentor Award at Purdue, where she was

the University Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair and

Director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership

Excellence.

How to cite this article: Kossek EE, Buzzanell PM. Women's

career equality and leadership in organizations: Creating an

evidence-based positive change. Hum Resour Manage. 2018;

57:813–822. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21936

822 KOSSEK AND BUZZANELL

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