Hedia Zannad and Pierre Lescoat, professors at NEOMA Business School, write contributions for a book on Quantifying Equality in the workplace, which addresses the role of quantification in the political project for gender equality.

By contributing to such a book, Pierre Lescoat, Accounting, Control & Legal Affairs Department, and Hedia Zannad, People and Organisations Department, demonstrate the interest of NEOMA professors, as a community of researchers, in transdisciplinary research that addresses today’s social issues.

Published in April 2021 by the Presses Universitaires de Rennes, the book, entitled Quantifier l’égalité au travail  (Quantifying equality at work), looks at the means and ends of measuring  gender inequality, such as quotas for crimes against women, stat activism (the use of statistics to defend a political project) and the role of management tools in the quest for fair assessment.

Pierre Lescoat‘s contribution, co-authored as part of his PhD research with Claire Dambrin, his thesis supervisor, applies the question of quantification to the measurement of performance and the assessment of individual performance. “I show that although a shared assessment standard has been applied, (e.g. a profit target), inequality between men and women persists, particularly in how performance is seen (a woman is said to have achieved her objective due to luck, and a man because he is competent). The research shows that it is necessary to denaturalise current management tools in order to construct more egalitarian measures,” he says.

Hedia Zannad, who has already published two articles on the subject (‘Les enjeux techniques et symboliques de la mesure des discriminations de genre’ and ‘Le plafond de verre chez France Télévisions’ – transl: ‘Technical and Symbolic issues of measuring gender discrimination’ and ‘The Glass Ceiling and France Television’), was invited to write a chapter on the political implications in measuring gender inequalitiy, in collaboration with another professor, Annie Cornet (HEC Liège). “It has taken quite a while for the book to appear, due in particular to the pandemic. So, I am delighted to see it has finally been published and adds to other publications on themes such as gender discrimination, sexism and the glass ceiling, issues in which the School is already highly implicated,” explains Hedia.

Further reading:

« Mesurer les inégalités de genre dans les organisations : des aspects techniques aux enjeux politiques », Hédia Zannad (NEOMA) et Annie Cornet

« Dé-neutraliser l’évaluation de la performance. Les illusions de l’« objectivité » et de la « méritocratie » en salles de marché » Pierre Lescoat (NEOMA) et Claire Dambrin

in Quantifier l’égalité au travail : Outils politiques et enjeux scientifiques. Ouvrage collectif dirigé par Soline Blanchard et Sophie Pochic. Postface d’Emmanuel Didier. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, avril 2021.