A new UT Dallas study is examining whether a rise in female executives spurs greater gender diversity throughout all ranks of businesses.
Dr. Sheryl Skaggs, associate program head for sociology at The University of Texas at Dallas, earned a recent grant from the National Science Foundation to spend the next year reviewing employment data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Catalyst Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks gender-equality issues.
"Surprisingly, there has not been much research on how women at lower levels of a company are affected by women rising into the executive ranks or joining boards of directors," Skaggs said. "We're now looking at the 'trickle-down effect' of these changes."
Researchers have written a great deal about the so-called "glass ceiling," blamed for blocking the promotion of women and minorities. But few studies look closely at how the women who break through may help pull up other women. Skaggs is examining data from the past two decades, so she's able to compare how Fortune 500 companies reacted to the gradual rise of female executives.
Skaggs and her research team speculate that increased gender diversity within top decision-making roles created opportunities for women's advancement at high, middle and low corporate levels, as well as reducing workplace sex segregation. Since individual corporations operate within complicated sets of internal policies and external constraints, the team also will consider how these features might influence gender diversity in corporate cultures.
The $59,000 grant covers one year and will look at data from 1996 to 2008. The sample includes more than 4,000 company-by-year observations.
"As women's labor force participation continues to rise, and pressure for workplace diversity increases, this line of investigation will be essential in the development of management strategies directed at expanding women's roles across all corporate levels," Skaggs said.
The findings could have far-reaching implications for the management of an increasingly diverse workforce, and for government and corporate policy development.
Skaggs said she hopes to extend her research to eventually include qualitative investigations. Her goal is to interview individual employees and get a more in-depth understanding of how they perceive women's role in mentoring.