Equality is a key value at ESSEC Business School, as highlighted by the Together Institute for Sustainability and Social Change. One lever for building a more inclusive society is research, and a number of ESSEC faculty study different facets of equality in their work.
ESSEC celebrates International Women's Day with Dr. Angela Sutan
6.3.2026
In honor of International Women’s Day, ESSEC is highlighting the work of one such professor, Angela Sutan, Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Political Science and Society, who conducts research on gender equality. Dr. Sutan is also the Scientific Director of the Experimental Lab, the Academic Director of the Executive Master in Strategies for Sustainability. and the point of contact on gender equality matters for ESSEC faculty. She also works closely with the ESSEC Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, led by Sandie Meusnier-Tommaso, on applying research to practice, testing practical tools for improving equality, and creating a more equitable learning environment for all students.
We asked Dr. Sutan questions about her work, her motivations, and where we can go from here. As she explains, gender equality is not just a women’s issue: it concerns us all, and we need to work together to create better systems and organizations.
I design incentivized experiments to explore how decision-making is shaped by gender, by common knowledge about gender and roles, and by strategic considerations. This means that I look at how women make decisions, how people modify decisions if they know women are involved, and how people are able to anticipate different situations. The experimental setting allows me to transfer those results directly into the real world and to look at leadership roles and systemic transformations. Basically, I do not look at why women are different: I look at how systems push women to make specific decisions and to evolve.
I have two different motivations: one is scientific, one is personal. Scientifically, when you make small changes in norms, in institutions, and in organizations, this will directly influence decision-making and it will produce micro-decisions. I look at how these micro-decisions aggregate, because they will have a systemic impact. Personally, I am looking at how diversity training and a culture of encouragement and aspiration will allow women to take on leadership roles and allow young people to go into scientific careers.
Those interactive experiments in the lab mimic real-world situations. This means that they don’t look at “stated behavior” - people’s declarations of how they would hypothetically act in a given situation. This allows me to translate the results directly into the business world. It also allows me to use the lab setting to check if a specific change will have the desired effect, or if it will have an unintended, counterproductive effect. For example, you can design an intervention with the best of intentions, but it can have unintended consequences - and it’s best to test in the lab and uncover these consequences ahead of time.
One striking conclusion from my research is the following: even when quotas are introduced, gender stereotypes do not disappear, they shift. In sequential recruitments,we observe that men tend to be recruited first and are perceived as the “default choice.” Women, by contrast, are more often recruited only to “fill the quota,” typically toward the end of the process.
In situations of workforce reduction, women are also more frequently the first to be let go, as if their presence were more contingent or less secure.
In other words, quotas alone are not sufficient to neutralize implicit biases. They may change the composition of a group, but they do not automatically transform evaluation norms. Real change requires rethinking the criteria, the decision-making routines, and the very way merit is collectively constructed. It also involves redesigning recruitment processes themselves, which tend to be less biased when conducted globally — enabling more systematic comparisons of competencies rather than sequential, stereotype-driven choices.
Research becomes powerful when it translates into design. We know, for instance, that women contribute more to the public good. This means that we should give women better leadership roles so that they can push for more coordination. Gender equality is not a women’s issue: it’s an issue of the system. Together, we need to redesign the system if we want better outcomes.
