Why have we not detected gender differences in organizational justice perceptions?! An evidenced-based argument for increasing inclusivity within justice research

Abstract

While research from various disciplines shows that women continue to disproportionately face workplace injustices compared to men, OB research has not found meaningful gender differences in self-reported workplace justice perceptions. This paradox has received little attention in the otherwise well-established organizational justice literature. We applied an abductive approach to investigate this paradox by a) confirming its existence, and b) proposing and empirically evaluating seven possible explanations for its existence, using multiple methods and seven distinct datasets. We found that this paradox is unlikely to be explained by measurement invariance, different expectations for treatment, whether the context is male-dominated, differences across years, or differences in how justice perceptions are formed. We did find, however, that when using alternate measurement approaches, women recalled gender-based injustice experiences, reported them as having occurred more frequently than did men, and reported them as having been negatively impactful on their lives/careers. We conclude that the most promising explanation for this paradox is that extant organizational justice measures are deficient for the purpose of capturing variance accountable to gender-based injustice. This highlights the need for more inclusive approaches for the measurement and application of organizational justice, especially when studying the relationship between gender and organizational justice.