1.4 Research objective and research questions

Which barriers hinder women’s access to the corporate top, are they interrelated and, if so, how?

This sub-research question will be answered in Chapter 2. This sub-research question contributes to the main research question by identifying the barriers hindering women’s access to the corporate top. As explained previously, the barriers first need to be identified before an analysis can be developed regarding the appropriateness of interventions aimed at overcoming the identified barriers to women’s advancement. Therefore, this sub-research question is answered first.

What governmental interventions have countries adopted to increase the number of women at the corporate top and to achieve gender equality?

This sub-research question will be answered in Chapter 3. The answer to this sub-research question is operationalized by comparing the Belgian quota legislation with the Dutch proposed quota legislation in order to identify what the Dutch government can learn from the Belgian legislation in terms of expected results of the legislation. This sub-research question contributes to the main research question by unravelling a specific governmental intervention, namely gender quota, and by discussing whether the proposed Dutch gender quota could be an effective means for achieving gender equality at the corporate top of Dutch companies.

How have Dutch companies applied the concepts of gender equality and gender diversity in practice, and which organizational interventions have they implemented?

This sub-research question will be answered in Chapter 4. This chapter will analyze what rationale underpins companies’ implementation of organizational interventions, i.e., the business case rationale/economic rationale and/or human rights rationale. The research further investigates what interventions companies have implemented to achieve gender diversity and gender equality in their corporate boards, and whether these interventions are perceived by them as effective. This sub-research question contributes to the main research question by discussing the organizational interventions implemented by Dutch companies to achieve gender equality. The goal of this sub-research question is to collect data to compile an overview of the implemented interventions in order to develop a first inventory of organizational interventions.

How have Dutch companies implemented organizational interventions to increase the number of women at the corporate top and to achieve gender equality?

How do organizational interventions overcome the barriers to women’s advancement and contribute to getting more women into the corporate top?

These two sub-research questions will be answered in Chapter 5. As the third sub-research question aims to establish a first inventory of organizational interventions, these two sub-research questions are posed to delve deeply into the questions of how Dutch companies have implemented the identified organizational interventions and how these organizational interventions work in practice.

The findings of the study furthermore analyze how the implemented organizational interventions can help to overcome the barriers to women’s advancement to the corporate top in the Netherlands that were identified in sub-research question 1. These sub-research questions together contribute to answering the main research question regarding the role and effectiveness of organizational interventions in achieving gender equality in the corporate top.