(De)Constructing Invisible Barriers: The Gender Projection Model of Organizational Inequality

Fabrice Gabarrot^1,2*

• ¹Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Besançon, France
• ²FernUni Schweiz Fakultat Psychologie, Brig, Switzerland

Gender inequality in contemporary organizations persists despite decades of policy initiatives, partly because many barriers have shifted from overt exclusion to subtle, often invisible, mechanisms embedded in everyday practices. Existing models—whether grounded in economics, sociology, or social psychology—tend to focus on either the "supply" of candidates or the "demand" of organizations, reify gender categories, and overlook the active role of dominant groups in defining competence standards. This article introduces the Gender Projection Model (GPM), an identity–structural framework that explains how dominant-group members project their own attributes, life patterns, and interactional styles onto the prototypes of valued organizational roles such as leaders, experts, or the "ideal worker." These prototypes, presented as neutral, are in fact historically situated and power-sensitive, shaping both evaluation criteria and the aspirations of those perceived as non-prototypical. The GPM predicts that projection is strongest when the gender hierarchy is perceived as legitimate, stable, and impermeable, and that it operates as a feedback loop: prototypes influence evaluations and opportunities, which in turn reinforce status beliefs and prototype stability. By reframing "supply" as a product of organizational demand, the model unifies phenomena often treated separately—glass ceiling, sticky floor, glass cliff, backlash, tokenism— within a single identity-driven mechanism. Beyond its theoretical integration, the model generates testable predictions about when projection strengthens or weakens and offers an empirical and diagnostic framework for organizational analysis. This article thus outlines testable implications, proposes a cumulative research agenda, and discusses practical and organizational interventions aimed at redefining prototypes to foster equitable access to valued roles.