Crying more than the bereaved: women’s lived experiences of equality and polychronous gender diversity management in Saudi Arabia

Although gender diversity management (GDM) practices in the so-called Global North have seen success, gender equality remains elusive, especially in culturally complex Global South regions such as the Middle East, in which these practices often overlook local disparities. This study examines women’s lived experiences of diversity and equality in two public-sector higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia, employing Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to explore the alignment between organisational policies and women’s substantive freedoms to achieve valued outcomes. Based on semi-structured interviews with 34 women, the findings reveal three context-specific gaps in Saudi Arabia’s GDM practices: (1) a disconnect between organisational policies and women’s lived realities, (2) inequitable access to opportunities and favouritism towards women with privileged networks, and (3) superficial policy advocacy and implementation that fails to challenge systemic barriers. To address these challenges, this study introduces polychronous GDM, a framework that operationalises the capabilities approach by advocating flexible, phased human resource management (HRM) interventions responsive to immediate and evolving inequalities while sensitive to local sociocultural and institutional contexts. Situated within international debates on gender equality, this study advances the strategic HRM literature by critiquing one-size-fits-all GDM and the power dynamics perpetuating workplace inequalities, proposing polychronous GDM as a transformative, context-sensitive framework for advancing gender equality in the Global South.