Women’s perceived contributions to diversity: The impact of target race and contextual gender salience

Abstract

Diversity is a desired attribute for many organizations. Yet, there is limited scientific understanding of what leads people to perceive diversity, and past studies focus on racial diversity to the exclusion of other social identities. We investigated how an individual’s race and gender conjointly impact their perceived contributions to organizational diversity and whether context-driven gender salience affects these judgments. Study 1 established that, in the absence of an organizational context, women of color are considered to contribute more to diversity than men of color, White women, and White men. In Studies 2A–2C, we manipulated an organization’s demographic composition and found that female representation affected White women’s perceived contributions to diversity more than Black women’s perceived contributions to diversity. Similarly, in Study 3, we found that an organization’s history of gender discrimination increased White women’s, but not Black women’s, perceived contributions to diversity. This research has implications for diversity-related hiring decisions.