Men as allies at work: Behaviours, motives and outcomes of workplace gender allyship

Abstract

Despite growing interest in workplace gender allyship, little is known about how allyship manifests in everyday organizational practice. Understanding workplace gender allyship requires identifying not only what men employees do during their everyday workplace interactions, but also why they do it and what outcomes those behaviours are perceived to have. Using qualitative survey data from open‐ended critical incident reports and descriptive frequency analyses, we examined the workplace allyship experiences of 85 working men (45 managers and 40 non‐managers). Our analyses revealed a typology of enacted and recommended allyship behaviours encompassing three overarching categories: support behaviours (providing instrumental, emotional and social support and mentoring), social change behaviours (advocacy, promoting organizational change, acting as a social change agent and confronting sexism), and self‐education . Although both managers and non‐managers were motivated by moral obligation and social justice concerns, managers were more strongly motivated by job‐related motives, whereas non‐managers more often emphasized empathic concern for women coworkers. Workplace allyship was associated with meaningful benefits for women, whereas participants reported relatively few negative consequences for themselves. These findings provide an empirically grounded framework linking allyship behaviours, motives and outcomes, with implications for employee training and organizational interventions.