Women in Colombia remain underrepresented in leadership roles, with only 7% holding senior management positions and 35% being part of executive boards (Comfama, 2020). To address this disparity, ten Colombian organizations partnered on an initiative to identify and address behavioral and structural barriers preventing women from accessing and retaining leadership positions.

Comissioned by Comfama, a non-profit organization that focuses on improving the quality of life for workers and their families in the Antioquia region, our team carried out a year-long project that involved diagnosing, designing, testing and validating interventions aimed at fostering equitable opportunities for women in leadership roles across ten organizations.

Understanding the barriers

To tackle this challenge, we first focused on eight key organizational processes: talent attraction, recruitment of leaders, integration of leaders, leadership development, performance evaluation, remuneration practices, retention through policies, internal perceptions of women leaders.

A comprehensive behavioral diagnosis was conducted, combining:

• Building a theoretical foundation: We reviewed existing literature, frameworks and interventions on gender equity.

• Reviewing a administrative data: The companies’ existing data allowed us to identify gaps and trends within organizational practices.

• Gathering direct user insights: We conducted 25 in-depth interviews with women leaders and other stakeholders to identify behavioral and structural obstacles.

The diagnosis uncovered various barriers across these organizations, both general and specific to each context. Key barriers identified include:

• Ambiguity in recruitment materials: Women were less likely to apply to leadership roles with vague job descriptions, applying at much lower rates than men in ambiguous situations.

• Bias in performance evaluations: Women consistently rated themselves lower than their actual performance, leading to a significant gap in self-assessments compared to their peers and managers.

• Limited negotiation in remuneration: Women were less likely than men to negotiate salaries, often due to unclear norms about the negotiability of pay.

• Underutilization of family-friendly policies: Many leaders were unaware of available policies, or found it challenging to access them due to time constraints and cognitive overload.

The experiments

After analyzing the key barriers within the organizations, we designed four tailored interventions to address the primary challenge identified in each organization.

Note: This is a general description of the designed interventions, in line with confidentiality agreements with some organizations. The interventions were lab-in-the-field designs to avoid any real-life disparities between workers' careers. Participants were informed that their answers would be part of a study. 

1. Talent attraction

• Targeted barrier: Ambiguity in recruitment materials.

• Intervention: Designed a series of four targeted job advertisements to assess the impact of different messaging strategies.

  1. Control group: Participants were exposed to a posting with ambiguous and incomplete information.

  2. Uncertainty reduction group: Participants were exposed to a posting with more specific and concrete information (uncertainty reduction principle).

  3. Equality message group: Participants were exposed to a posting with the uncertainty reduction principle + a message explicitly highlighting the gender equality opportunities provided by the organization.

  4. Leadership reinforcement group: Participants were exposed to a posting with the uncertainty reduction principle + equality message + a video of a woman leader to reinforce the role of women as leaders.

2. Performance evaluations

• Targeted barrier: Bias in performance evaluations.

• Intervention: Designed an experiment to assess the effect of three treatments on self-evaluations and future confidence.

  • Control group: No messages presented between the test and self-evaluations, measuring the difference between actual performance and self-assessments.

  • Gender bias message group: Participants were informed about the gender biases present in their self-assessments.

  • Quantitative feedback group: Participants received feedback on their actual performance.

  • Combined feedback group: Participants received both quantitative feedback on their performance and the message about gender biases in their self-assessments.

3. Salary negotiations

• Targeted barrier: Limited negotiation in remuneration.

• Intervention: Tested the impact of communicating salary negotiability on participant perceptions.

  • Control group: Participants were not informed that the salary for the position was negotiable. The control group was aligned with the organization's traditional approach to salary communication.

  • Trigger group: Participants were informed that the salary for the position was negotiable, with both salary negotiability and the amount clearly communicated.

4. Adoption of family-friendly policies

• Targeted barrier: Underutilization of family-friendly policies.

• Intervention: Tested the impact of email reminders with different message framings on the adoption of family welfare policies.

  • Control group: No reminder sent, following traditional communication of policies.

  • Reminder group: Participants received a neutral reminder about the policies.

  • Positive framing group: Participants received a reminder framed with a positive (gain) message.

  • Negative framing group: Participants received a reminder framed with a negative (loss avoidance) message.

Results

Note: This is a general description of the main interventions' results, in line with confidentiality agreements with some organizations. 

• Applications intentions from women increased the most with detailed descriptions, equality message and the video of a female leader.  

• Quantitative performance feedback brought participants' self-assessments closest to their actual performance. However, reporting self-assessment biases, without supplementing this information with quantitative feedback on actual performance, decreased participants' precision in self-evaluation.

• Explicit negotiation cues increased the number of women engaging in salary discussions, narrowing gender pay gaps.

• Policy adoption rates rose significantly, with loss-framed messages particularly effective for women leaders.

Key takeaways

• Detailed job descriptions and explicit negotiation cues can reduce ambiguity and encourage women to actively participate in leadership processes.

• Providing transparent feedback on performance and addressing biases in self-assessments can enhance women’s confidence and evaluation accuracy.

• Timely and targeted reminders can promote the adoption of family-friendly policies, supporting work-life balance for women in leadership roles.

• These interventions are replicable across organizations, offering a framework to address systemic barriers to gender equity and foster inclusive leadership opportunities.