Women’s Promotion to Management and Unfairness Perceptions—A Challenge to the Social Sustainability of the Organizations and Beyond

Abstract

Inequality between women and men in top management positions is still a current reality where women are underrepresented. Gender discrimination against women in managerial positions violates the Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality. Gender discrimination affects women but also has negative consequences for employee output. Our aim is analyzing how the role of gender moderates the relationship between gender barriers to managerial positions and performance, mediated by organizational justice and commitment, and whether this relationship is stronger in women than in men. This study was carried out with 1278 employees (45.2% women and 54.8% men) of a Spanish financial group consisting of three different organizations. We performed a moderated mediation path analysis with Mplus. Results show that some gender barriers are associated with lower perceptions of organizational justice, which in turn are associated with lower organizational commitment, thus reducing performance. Moreover, this relationship is significant in men and women for work–family balance and barriers to accessing influential networks, but for unfair HR policies and practices, it is only significant in women. Removing gender barriers and unfairness perceptions is the goal that will contribute to organizational sustainability from the gender perspective.