Beyond boardrooms: The impact of corporate quota on gender equality in organizations

Corporate boardroom quotas ensure a more equal representation of women in leadership. How do they impact inequality in earnings and job careers beyond the boardroom? Assistant professor and sociologist Zoltán Lippényi received a VIDI grant to establish his own research group on this topic.

At this point it is unknown to what extent and in what ways quotas are successful in achieving broader equality aims. Beyond Boardrooms will be the first research project to address in what ways quota schemes impact gender equality. Zoltán Lippényi: 'With my VIDI project, I aim to deliver a significant contribution to the developing research field on corporate quota regulations and to our understanding of the organizational generation of inequality. It will be a major leap forward in understanding the broader, societal impact of quota regulations.'

His research will investigate how quotas impact women’s access to corporate leadership positions and HR policies and practices, to what degree the impacts trickle down to earnings inequality between men and women and occupational sex segregation, and to what degree they spill over across organizations, by examining a previously unresearched context, the Netherlands.

Women in leadership positions

Women in large European companies occupy less than 30% of corporate leadership positions and the pace of advancement of gender diversity in leadership is decelerating. European governments have experimented with corporate boardroom quotas to ensure a more equal representation of women in leadership positions, hoping that this representation would trickle down to affect women’s career opportunities at lower organizational ranks and spill over to organizations not directly targeted by these policies.

New data infrastructure

The study will consider the impact of two quota regulations, the corporate diversity target (2013-2020) and corporate quota (2022-2024). Lippényi will construct the Netherlands Integrated Database of Inequality in Organizations (NIDIO), a unique infrastructure that combines (1) administrative register and survey data about the earnings, occupation, and employment histories of Dutch organizational leaders and employees, and (2) business registers and diversity monitor surveys about organizational HR practices and policies. This data will be used by the Beyond Boardrooms project to provide important insight into the impacts of past and ongoing regulatory efforts as well as guidance for improving quota regulations and corporate strategies to further gender equality.

More information

Zoltán Lippényi, PhD
Assistant Professor in Sociology
University of Groningen
z.lippenyi@rug.nl
+31 50 36 32681