Yet another study has just been released that shows that no matter how well women perform on a math test, men are still more likely to be hired! You would think that with all of the press about unconscious bias and bias especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field, that those in selection roles would be super sensitized to the disparities.
A newly released study by researchers from Columbia Business School, the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern showed that both men and women completed an arithmetic task equally well as potential job candidates. The test subjects had to decide who to hire. The results revealed a strong bias, among both male and female test subjects to hire male candidates.
Here is a summary of results:
- When the gender of the candidate was clear, the prospective employers were twice as likely to hire a man than a woman.
- Even after the candidates told perspective employers that they had performed equally well, men were still more likely to be hired. The researchers attribute this to men tending to boast about their performance and women more likely to “underreport” it.
- There was less bias when prospective employers were given full information about the candidate’s performance but only when that information came from the test giver and not the candidate herself.
Women account for 40% of those who go into STEM careers and over half leave the field after 8-10 years.
It looks like we have a problem getting women into STEM jobs with equal credentials and just as hard a time keeping them.
Do you think given the undisputed fact that we need more technically trained employees in our society that it makes sense to exclude anybody who is qualified? Do you also not think that we need to keep more women in the field as we complain about an overall shortage? Apparently our biases run so deep about women and STEM not mixing, that even when we make the biases public, the tide has not yet turned.
