Abstract
Gender equality is a matter for debate worldwide. In 2018, Portugal enacted legislation (Decree Law no. 62/2017) to balance gender representation on the executive boards of listed and public sector organizations with measures similar to those causing controversies in other countries. Thus, in accordance with previous research, a study took place to examine the attitudes towards the justice of this legislation and the role of merit in these attitudes. This study (n = 129 women and 94 men) deployed an experimentally manipulative type of affirmative action program to consider the role of individual perceptions of the justice of the legislation coupled with the influence of beliefs in meritocracy and participant gender. The results identify how the type of affirmative action impacted on the perceived justice, also influenced by merit, which seems normative and fundamental to evaluating the justice of such legally stipulated provisions. Nonetheless, objectively evaluating candidate merits revealed difficulties in disentangling this process from personality traits.
Highlights
Female participation in the labor market has increased (Amâncio and Santos2021), their under-representation in management positions remains a present and transversal phenomenon in various organizations and societies (Acker 2009; Casaca and Lortie 2018; Castaño et al 2019)
The four experimental scenarios were adapted from the research studies of Santos (Santos 2004) and Lorenzi-Cioldi and Buschini (Lorenzi-Cioldi and Buschini 2002), and differed in the type of target affirmative action measures (AAMs): here, the weak preferential treatment (PT) conditions included the scenarios in which there was an equality of competencies between the female candidate and the male candidate and in which the female candidate was more competent than the male candidate, along with strong PT conditions corresponding to the scenarios in which the female candidate was less competent than the male candidate and in which the choice was based on group membership
Despite the numerous studies on this theme, to our knowledge there have been no studies evaluating the reactions towards the justice of Law Number 62/2017
Summary
Female participation in the labor market has increased (Amâncio and Santos2021), their under-representation in management positions remains a present and transversal phenomenon in various organizations and societies (Acker 2009; Casaca and Lortie 2018; Castaño et al 2019). The definition of adulthood associated with the female stereotype is limited to affective functions and being objects of desire and to a lack of any of the qualities oriented towards work and individual autonomy (Amâncio and Oliveira 2006) To combat these gender inequalities, affirmative action measures (AAMs) have been implemented in various sectors (Kravitz and Platania 1993). AAMs are temporary and proactive policies (Lee 1999) that aim to eliminate and prevent discrimination based on group membership and to correct existing imbalances and the effects of past discrimination (Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality 2015) In this sense, the objectives of this research are to understand the reactions of individuals to an AAM and to analyze what role meritocracy plays in these attitudes
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