The perceived effect of feminist organisational culture on employee attitudestowards gender equality.

Sammanfattning

The thesis investigates how employees perceive that working in gender-equal organisationalcultures affects their own attitudes towards gender equality. Drawing on previous literature on genderequality, organisational culture and theories of attitudes, the study develops a framework where feminist orgender-equal cultures influence employees through workplace norms, socialisation and the rewarding ordiscouraging of particular behaviours. A qualitative, inductive research design is used, based on semi-structured interviews with five employees working in Swedish offices of European multinational companiesidentified as highly gender-equal by external indices such as Equileap and the Global Gender Gap Report.The findings indicate that respondents already held broadly positive views on gender equality priorto joining their current organisations, and that working in gender-equal cultures did not fundamentallychange these core values. Instead, the respondents reported increased awareness of gender equality issuesand greater comfort and frequency in discussing gender equality at work and in their private lives,suggesting changes primarily in the behavioural and affective components of their attitudes. The thesis alsohighlights the need for further research on which specific organisational practices are most influential aswell as whether gender-equal organisational cultures could act as catalysts that may enable potentialspillover effects beyond the workplace.