After screening 8855 citations from the electronic database searches, 803 extracts from grey literature searches, as well as 663 full-text articles, 24 unique trials [23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45] (including 3 from the grey literature and 3 from included study reference scanning), and 1 companion report [34] (i.e., publications that provided supplementary material to the main trial publication) fulfilled inclusion eligibility criteria (Fig. 1). Brady 2015 included data on two studies which were considered as unique trials [42]. One trial within Huis 2019 was classified as a companion report as it was unclear if the sample was independent from another trial within the same article [34]. All included studies were published in English. A list of studies that were closely related to the inclusion criteria but ultimately excluded is provided in Additional file 1: Appendix 10.

Most trials were RCTs randomized at the participant level (n = 18) [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39, 41, 42, 45] and four were randomized at the cluster level [23, 40, 43, 44], while the remaining two were quasi-randomized RCTs [26, 36]. The trials were published between 1979 and 2022, with over 50.0% published since 2017. Trials were predominantly conducted in the USA (n = 13). Seventeen of the included trials were conducted in high-income countries (HICs) [23, 24, 26,27,28, 30,31,32,33, 35, 37,38,39, 41, 42, 45], 2 in middle-income countries (MICs) [25, 43], 4 in lower-middle income countries (LMICs) [29, 34, 40, 44], and one in a combination of LMICs and MICs [36]. Trials were set in workplaces spanning various sectors, including eight in the academic or educational sectors [23, 26,27,28, 30, 39, 41, 42], five in microfinance [33,34,35, 43, 44], one in healthcare [45], five in corporate [24, 31, 32, 37, 42], three where the workplace setting was either not clearly described or fictitious [25, 29, 40], one in a military workplace setting [38], and one in a forestry workplace setting [36]. Trials conducted in MICs and LMICs were primarily microfinance initiatives where the focus was on increasing the involvement of women in household finance decisions or expanding their small businesses with their husbands. The setting was multi-site in 12 trials [23, 25, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43,44,45], single site in 10 trials [24, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34, 37, 39, 42], and 2 trials did not report sufficient information to determine the site setting [32, 41]. Nineteen were directed at the individual level [24,25,26,27, 29,30,31, 33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44], 3 at the organizational level [23, 42, 45], and 2 at both the individual and organizational levels [28, 32]. Further details on the included trials as well as the companion report are available in Additional file