Published on: January 5, 2026 at 3:00 pm
In 2026, employers who have stayed the course on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) will finally see the payoff from their gender-equality efforts, according to Academy of Management Scholar Carol Kulik of Adelaide University (previously of the University of South Australia).
Gender inequality in organizations has proven to be a particularly stubborn problem. Equal-opportunity legislation and stakeholder pressure produced an encouraging increase of women in leadership roles, Kulik noted, but after that initial spike, progress plateaued.
“There is still a limited proportion of women in top-level managerial roles across many industries,” Kulik said.
In 2025, government support for gender-diversity initiatives abruptly declined worldwide, and some governments, including the Trump administration in the United States, have become actively hostile to DEI. In response, many organizations have been dismantling their gender-equality agenda, Kulik noted: becoming less vocal about actively recruiting women; transitioning women-focused mentoring and leadership training into gender-neutral initiatives; and expressing less interest in sector awards celebrating gender diversity.
“A pessimistic view suggests that these behaviors foretell even slower progress toward gender equality,” Kulik said. “But I’m going out on a limb to argue that the withdrawal of government support for gender equality may have an unintended positive benefit.
“When organizations are pressured to take on a social cause—gender equality, environmental sustainability, or other causes—the poorest performers do just enough to ‘hide in the herd,’” she said.
For example, once organizations appoint one or two women to their top management team, they become less likely to appoint another woman to the team, Kulik noted. And organizations that make progress on one gender equality metric (a gender-balanced management team) are less motivated to make progress on another metric (they maintain a gender pay gap in that team).
“In the absence of stakeholder pressure, it will become easier to identify which organizations are engaging with gender equality because ‘they want to’ versus because ‘they have to,’” Kulik said.
“As a result, women will make more informed decisions to join employers who are making the systemic changes to create more gender-equal workplaces, as opposed to superficial changes,” she said.
For example, when so many organizations are insisting on a full-time return to office, the organizations that offer flexible scheduling will stand out and attract top talent, including female professionals with sought-after skills and experience.
“There’s an opportunity for committed value-led organizations to walk their talk and leapfrog ahead of the competition,” Kulik said.
A lot of academic research shows that organizations with more gender diversity in leadership are better for employees (they offer more opportunities for employee participation), better for customers (they develop more innovative products) and better for society (they engage more in philanthropy).
“These benefits will become much more distinctive and valuable in 2026 as the organizations committed to gender equality clearly emerge from the herd,” Kulik said.
