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This paper aims to explore the relationship between workplace gender diversity among peers and management aspirations among male and female employees. It focuses on whether gender diversity influences men and women’s management aspirations.

The study builds on cross-sectional survey data from the Danish public sector.

Results shows that in mixed-gender workplaces, male employees are less likely to express management aspirations than male employees in mono-gender workplaces, but female employees in mixed-gender workplaces express management aspirations to the same – low – degree as female employees in mono-gender workplaces. All in all, the findings show that gender differences in career aspirations are not just a matter of individual preferences and/or macro-structural factors but also a matter of factors at organizational level. The findings suggest both positive and negative implications of gender diversity, and hence problematize a – rather common – simplistic celebration of gender diversity. First of all, gender diversity seems to counteract the fertilization of rigid stereotypes of men and hence prevents some men from being pushed into management positions and a career ladder they perhaps do not want to be placed at in the first place.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The findings seem to identify that the challenge of secure a large and qualified pool of potential managers might be even extra challeging for managers in gender-diverse organisations.

A more nuanced view of the implications of gender diversity based on a basic argument of gender-asymmetry. Furthermore, the study are build on a unique dataset that allows to study the implications of gender diversity across a wide range of occupational setting and hence control for occupation specific characteristics.

The purpose was to find out if greater gender diversity affected male and female aspirations to be managers

Hypothesis 1A was that: “Workplace gender diversity of peers is positively correlated with management aspirations among women, but negatively among men.” Hypothesis 1B was that: “Workplace gender diversity of peers is positively correlated with perceived career possibilities among women, but negatively among men.” The authors studied questionnaires from 2,818 respondents from 13 occupations

The data only partially supported Hypothesis 1A. Results confirmed that it was negatively correlated with men, who had a 4.6% point lower probability of being interested in a management position than males in less diverse organizations. But there was no positive effect of gender diversity on women, in contradiction of expectations. Meanwhile, Hypothesis 1B was rejected.

The authors advise organizations to look for advice in studies of management recruitment strategies for solutions to these problems. As women represent the largest pool of available resources in public organizations, they say it would be wise to focus more energy on them.