What is fair about gender-fair hiring policies? Policy justifications do not make gender quotas fairer

Corporate gender quotas have been widely introduced across Western countries to address women’s underrepresentation in economic leadership roles. The adoption of quota policies rests upon the belief that these policies are desirable since the goal is to instill gender equality in society. The current research investigated UK participants’ evaluations of three hiring policies: merit-based candidate selection, shortlist gender quota, and outcome gender quota, on the perceived fairness and efficiency in selecting the most qualified candidate. In Experiment 1, we compared participants’ evaluations of hiring policies when no policy justification was given; in Experiment 2, we tested for the effects of quota justifications (gender disparity vs. gender discrimination) on participants’ attitudes toward hiring policies. Results of both experiments showed more positive evaluations of merit-based hiring than gender quotas, and quota justifications had no effect on participants’ preference for merit-based hiring over gender quota policies. The more positive appraisal of merit-based hiring, relative to gender quotas, was found for both men and women. Results also revealed that people’s evaluations of hiring policies were moderated by their moral attitudes toward gender equality. Specifically, greater moral commitment to gender equality was associated with more positive appraisals of outcome quotas. However, even amongst strongly morally committed participants, they still surprisingly demonstrated a preference for competency-based hiring measures. Taken together, this research revealed a mismatch between the presumed public opinion and people’s actual attitudes toward gender quotas, which should be considered for the design of future equality interventions and policies.