Gender bias persists within organizations around the world, but there is a sense that having a committee do the hiring rather than single individuals might help to promote fairer and more diverse recruitment.  Alas, a new study from UBC suggests that might not actually be the case.

The study found that when the hiring committee was skeptical about the existence of gender bias in the first place, they were significantly less likely to promote women than those committees who accept that women face certain barriers in the workplace.

The study assessed the performance of 40 hiring committees spread across France who were responsible for recruiting for senior positions at the National Committee for Scientific Research.  The authors believe that by using real data rather than hypothetical scenarios, their findings are more robust and transferable.

Testing biases

The researchers began by measuring how strongly hiring committee members associated science with men via an implicit association test.  The data from the test revealed that both men and women on the committees tended to fall into the trap of linking science with men.

“There’s research suggesting that you can document a ‘think science, think male’ implicit association showing up with kids as early as elementary school,” the researchers explain. “We learn associations from what we see in our environment. If we don’t see a lot of women who are role models in science, then we learn to associate science more with men than women.”

These implicit biases are important as the chances are they are distinct from our explicit beliefs.  Indeed, when explicitly quizzed on the role of women in science, and whether they are impacted by discrimination, it was not uncommon for hiring committees to pretend they didn’t exist.

When the data from these implicit and explicit tests were compared with actual hiring outcomes, it was perhaps not surprising to find that hiring committees who downplayed any concerns around discrimination in science were less likely to hire women for the roles.

The researchers believe that the findings highlight how important it is for hiring committees to not only be aware of the barriers women face, but to acknowledge them too so that implicit biases don’t affect subsequent hiring decisions.  Education can play a key role in this so that hiring committees are aware of gender bias and how they can guard against it.

If we are to truly create a meritocratic work environment, then it’s something that cannot happen soon enough.