The Persistence of Global Workplace Gender Inequality: What Does a Wicked Problems Framework Bring to HRM Research and Practice?

The ongoing failure to resolve gender equality in workplaces emphasises the urgent need to consider new paradigms for understanding and resolving this worldwide issue. In this provocation paper, we argue that problematising workplace gender inequality using the paradigm of a wicked problem has significant implications for designing future HRM research and practice. After mapping the many factors and examples of outcomes linked to continued gender inequality, we critique the state of current research by applying the three dimensions of wicked problems thinking: complexity, divergence and uncertainty. Using numerous examples of HRM issues, we identify six implications for future HRM research. Implications include that gender inequality be investigated as many related problems; the trade-offs between complexity and over-simplification in research designs; variations in the usefulness of research findings to impacted stakeholders and more efforts towards engaged scholarship with its features of bottom-up research and greater interdisciplinary collaboration. Turning to HRM practices, we identify how wicked problems thinking highlights how HRM practitioners also need to fully embrace the complexity of gender inequality, both causes and solutions. This demands the use of research methods that are collaborative and stakeholder-focused, accepting the utility of partial solutions; and recognising the unintended positive and negative consequences that often occur from HRM interventions.