Introduction

Gender inequality in women's career advancement to managerial and leadership positions is one of the most persistent and complex challenges facing modern organizations. This phenomenon is not merely a result of individual or structural inefficiencies, but is rooted in deeper layers of the ideological reproduction of gender order that is recreated in the context of everyday organizational interactions (Yousefvand & Abdollahi, 2026: 110). According to the institutional approach, gender inequality is the outcome of institutionalized norms that perpetuate the marginalized position of women in managerial occupations (Khan et al., 2024: 7). In this framework, two categories of factors play a key role: normative factors including values, beliefs, and social expectations that guide behaviors through normative pressure; and cognitive factors including mental frameworks, fundamental assumptions, and unconscious stereotypes that influence the perception of women's competence (Khan et al., 2024: 7; O'Connor, 2023: 674). Despite the fact that women constitute more than half of the educated population in Iran, their presence in managerial positions and decision-making levels remains negligible. The gap between women's human capital and their meager share of organizational power structures indicates that the barriers to career advancement are no longer at the level of access to education, but are rooted in the normative and cognitive layers of organizations (Yousefvand & Abdollahi, 2026: 111). Globally, the Global Gender Gap Report (2023) shows that only 27 percent of managerial positions worldwide are occupied by women (World Economic Forum, 2023: 9). Recent studies have emphasized the role of institutional factors in the reproduction and persistence of gender inequality, arguing that this issue, beyond social and cultural problems, has deep organizational dimensions (Halim et al., 2023: 8; Khan et al., 2024: 5). This study aims to understand women's perception of normative and cognitive factors affecting the reproduction of gender inequality in the path of career advancement in public organizations, seeking to answer the question of which normative and cognitive factors play a role in this reproduction.



Methodology

This qualitative study employed thematic analysis based on Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-phase framework within an interpretive paradigm (Farias et al., 2020: 156). The target population comprised female managers in Tehran's public organizations, along with executive experts and university specialists in women's studies. Purposive sampling with snowball technique was used, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 18 participants. To ensure trustworthiness, Guba and Lincoln's (1985) four criteria (credibility, confirmability, transferability, dependability) were applied (Bryman & Bell, 2015: 231; Swinton & Mowat, 2016: 48; Cameron, 2011: 18). Data analysis followed six steps: familiarization, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report (Braun & Clarke, 2019: 590). From 526 statements in interview texts, 274 initial codes were extracted. After repeated reviews, a final hierarchical theme structure was established, consisting of 111 basic themes, 17 organizing themes, and 2 overarching themes: cognitive factors and normative factors.



Findings

The findings revealed that normative factors including unwritten organizational culture, stereotypical gendered role expectations, and the ideal woman as something natural and taken for granted limit women's advancement to managerial positions. These factors include dual evaluation standards where the same mistake by a man is considered experience while by a woman it is considered innate incapability. Traditional beliefs emphasize domestic and breadwinning roles over women's professional identity. Paternalistic compassion refers to supportive gestures that actually deprive women of opportunities. Everyday discriminatory micro‑aggressions such as sexist jokes, hidden surveillance, and physical segregation are other instances. Regarding women's management as a risk means seeing womanhood as a risk factor and women's promotion as a costly decision. Exclusion from informal decision‑making networks happens through invisible removal from meetings and male communication groups. Pressures and psychological burnout lead to conscious or silent exit due to continuous exposure to discrimination. Gender stereotypes of competence include the belief in women's physical and emotional limitations. Gendered authority norms define authority and decision‑making as inherently masculine characteristics. Together, these constitute the normative factors that reproduce inequality. On the other hand, cognitive factors include unconscious stereotypes, hidden gender biases of evaluators, and deep‑seated beliefs that women are less competent for senior managerial positions. These factors construct a distorted image of women's capabilities and influence their advancement through symbolic boundary‑making and invisible gender authority. The requirement to prove double competence means that for women the principle is incompetence unless they prove themselves with extraordinary performance. The mental model of the ideal male manager holds that a successful manager must have masculine characteristics. Denial of women's capabilities and agency refers to systematically ignoring their achievements and attributing success to chance or connections. Limiting conceptions of women's roles involve separating expertise from authority and consolidating a marginal role for women. Internalization and self‑inhibition mean accepting inequality as natural and withdrawing from competition. Perceptual biases in evaluation include emotionalizing women's assertive behavior while considering the same behavior in men as authority. Weakness of organizational training and learning is evident in the lack of anti‑bias training for managers. Lack of gender knowledge and awareness shows itself in the inability to distinguish genuine support from limitation. These are the most important cognitive factors reproducing inequality. Frequency analysis of the codes showed that exclusion from informal decision‑making networks with a frequency of 14 among normative factors and the requirement to prove double competence with a frequency of 11 among cognitive factors were the most prominent themes from the participants' perspective.



Conclusion

Normative and cognitive factors legitimize the existing order of inequality through the invisible and everyday reproduction of gender boundaries. This legitimation establishes discrimination not as an exception or violation of rules, but as "normal routine" and "the correct way of doing things". Consequently, gender inequality in career advancement is no longer perceived as an anomalous phenomenon but as part of the natural organizational order, thus being more resistant to change than formal laws (Kim, 2022: 4; Waylen, 2014: 214). The findings also show that internalization and self-inhibition – the process in which women themselves accept stereotypical beliefs and withdraw from competition – is not an individual trait or sign of personal weakness, but a systematic and inevitable product of repeated exposure to institutional discriminations and gendered norms (Taparia & Lenka, 2022: 395). Therefore, what appears superficially as women's "voluntary exit" or "lack of motivation" is in fact a rational and adaptive reaction to a structure where the cost of staying far outweighs the cost of exiting. Hence, eliminating the phenomenon of gender inequality from women's career advancement path is not possible merely through amending formal laws and regulations; regulatory factors only cover the surface layer of this phenomenon. What is essential is the radical redesign of cultural infrastructures to change unwritten norms and organizational customs, as well as cognition-oriented interventions aimed at transforming deep-seated beliefs and unconscious gender stereotypes. This conclusion clearly implies that real gender equality is achieved not through issuing directives, but through transformation in the semantic, value, and cognitive layers of organizations and society. By systematically distinguishing normative and cognitive factors and demonstrating the mechanisms of the invisible reproduction of inequality, this study provides an analytical framework that can serve as a basis for sustainable changes in organizational culture and human resource policies.