Gender Gaps in Organizational Trust: Because It’s Not All Marketing and Advertising

Gender Gaps in Organizational Trust: Because It’s Not All Marketing and Advertising

Column by Luis Gavilán, Consultant at Almabrands, and Andrea Garderes, Partner and Project Director at Almabrands.

 

In recent years, we have seen companies, institutions and organizations across every sector work to narrow the gender gaps within them. These efforts have produced new practices, policies and dynamics to manage and drive organizational inclusion and diversity, which are undoubtedly welcome and worth celebrating. However, despite these efforts and the clear progress toward equity, many organizations still face significant gaps in this area.

 

In the Pulse 2024 wave of the Organizational Trust study, developed by Almabrands and OTIC Sofofa to understand and manage employee trust within organizations, some of these gaps become clearly visible: women hold a more critical view of both the Trust Network and the performance of the different dimensions.

 

The first difference appears in the average organizational trust score: for men, trust within their organizations reaches 5.6, while for women it stands at 5.4.

 

Trust network: trust declines across the board among women

 

Looking more closely at the trust network, which assesses trust within organizations toward different internal actors (the company as a whole, work teams, other teams, direct supervisors, and executives or managers), while men’s ratings improved in 2024, women’s ratings fell across all actors.

 

Dimensions of organizational trust: gender gaps in importance and performance

 

For men, the most important dimensions of the model are “Accountability and delivering on commitments,” “Clarity and honesty in communication” and “Ability to manage conflict and crisis,” reflecting a focus on more functional elements.

 

For women, on the other hand, the most important dimensions are “Adequate skills and support for development” and “Respect and organizational ethics,” which in a way mirror the reality we live in as a society, where women face greater challenges in accessing career growth despite the changes and progress made.

 

When it comes to how these dimensions perform, it is critical to note that those most important to women are also the ones performing worst today. In other words, the areas most relevant for women to trust their organization are precisely the ones that receive the lowest ratings.

 

What can we learn from these data?

 

Inclusion and diversity policies, as well as messages and advertising campaigns aimed at closing gender gaps, are necessary, urgent and essential, but not enough. If we truly want to keep moving toward a fairer society for everyone, what we do inside our organizations is key. Building and managing trust among men and women, addressing what matters to each, cannot wait.

 

Let’s measure, act on and strengthen trust networks within companies so they can become true engines of change and social transformation well beyond their own walls.

 

See the results of the latest study here.