February 5, 2021
The Conrad N. Hilton College Hotel and Restaurant Management student focuses on gender diversity in hotels. | File photo
In an area where most positions of authority are held by men, a study led by a doctoral student at the Conrad N. Hilton University of Hotel and Restaurant Managementfound that hotels that promote women to equally qualified men tend to be perceived as fairer.
Michelle Russen and her team investigated how hotel managers’ perspectives affect the hotel employee promotion process, specifically based on gender. They created an experimental design using a sample of 87 hotel managers who were then differentiated according to whether they promoted men or women.
“The study was started because we conducted diversity training courses for hotel managers almost every year at Hilton College,” said Russen. “We wanted to get their opinion on the fairness of the promotion process and how they thought women were promoted and whether it was fair. So we did an experiment and that was that paper. “
Released by doing International magazine for contemporary hotel management, The study that mentions Russians is the first to analyze the narrative of gender inequality in the context of hospitality.
The results of the study show that gender had an impact on the likelihood of promoting women in the industry. However, hotels that wanted to promote more women often turned out to be less discriminatory and showed a higher level of fairness within the organization.
A little background knowledge in hotels, the top management team is mostly men, while the frontline teams are about 70 percent women. Hence, there is this huge inequality, which is why Russians chose their field of research, she said.
The team of Russians suggested setting up a blind review process for evaluating candidates during the promotion process and possibly involving a third party to review information as well as criteria for the positions.
“Owners and operators need to recognize the bias and investigate how fair they are in their trials,” said co-author Mary Dawson, assistant dean of academic affairs and professor of Donald H. Hubbs at UH Hilton College.
“If I’m a woman doing research on a company I’ve applied to but only see men in management, then I’d be questioning the corporate culture.”
