As the concept of psychological safety has become more well known, organizations have been striving to create cultures whereby employees are empowered to raise their opinions. Research from the University of Texas at Austin highlights how for women striving to raise gender equity issues, it helps their cause to have male allies.

The researchers quizzed over 3,000 volunteers across three studies, with the participants asked about a range of different gender equity proposals. In each, the participants consistently reacted more positively towards proposals from mixed-gender advocates than either female-only or male-only supporters.

Broad support

The authors argue that this is because mixed-gender coalitions were better able to highlight the importance of gender equity in the organization, while also signaling the right of the coalition to speak up on gender equity issues.

In such issues, there is an inherent expectation that women will be interested in gender equity, but the researchers believe that adding men to the message enhances its legitimacy by showing how it matters to a wider range of stakeholders.

“When only women advocate for gender equity, it can come across as a niche concern,” they explain. “When men speak up about it, they can be seen as lacking the right to protest an issue that doesn’t personally concern them. It’s really when you bring women and men together as advocates that you circumvent both concerns.”

Limited impact

Sadly, the impact of such broad coalitions seemed to be limited to women’s issues, as when managers were asked about issues such as improving customer service skills, a mixed-gender coalition was no more persuasive.

The researchers do believe, however, that this approach could be valuable for other socially charged workplace issues, such as racial justice. If advocates could include a demographically diverse coalition then it raises their credibility.

It was also pleasing to note that across the board, the volunteers took gender issues seriously, which shows that there has at least been some progress on these matters.

“If we had run this study 10 or 20 years ago, we might have uncovered much poorer attitudes toward gender equity in general,” the researchers conclude. “And as the workplace is always evolving, these findings may change 10 or 20 years from now, with more social progress. At least today, though, it helps to recruit men as allies. Gender equity advocacy is most effective when women and men work together.”