Jennifer Saul's presentation for Cambridge University's gender equality summit

Jennifer Saul [email protected]

Low numbers of women in Science, Engineering, Mathematics

Also other fields, e.g Philosophy (16-25% worldwide).

Low numbers of women at the top in almost every field

Innate, unchangeable psychological differences?

Difficulty combining work and childcare?

Conscious, old-fashioned sexism?

Sexual harassment? But there’s very good reason to believe that unconscious

psychological phenomena are playing a role (also with other groups).

Implicit Biases: those that we will be concerned with here are unconscious biases that affect the way we perceive, evaluate, or interact with people from groups that are stigmatised in our society.

Stereotype Threat: people’s awareness of their

group membership may (often unconsciously) have a negative impact on their performance.

Arises from our very useful tendency to make fast associations.

Our tendency to make automatic unconscious associations leads to problems when it comes to social groups.

Most of us have unconscious, automatic biases based on the ways that social groups

are stereotyped in our societies.

These are often contrary to genuinely held commitments.

They are held even by members of the target group.

Anonymous marking leads to higher marks for women (Bradley 1984, 1993)

Man:

• “brilliant” • “outstanding”; • “original”

06/05/2014 © The University of Sheffield

Woman: • “works hard” • “friendly” • “surprisingly successful • “friends with my wife” • “very attractive”


More likely to call on male students, more likely to charitably interpret their inchoate contributions.

More likely to take point raised by a woman seriously if re-stated by a man.


CVs: Same CV, with different names •John more employable than Jane. •John more employable than Yasser. •Parenthood harms women.

Dying out? No: 2012 Strong for men and women, of all ages.

2013 study, in International Relations • Of faculty members at research universities: The

average paper by an untenured male is cited 26.7 times, while the average paper by a female colleague at same level would be cited only 2.15 times.

Examples: People not receiving the marks that they

should Hiring not based on merit Women’s career progress impeded

Underperformance on particular tasks by members of groups stigmatised as less good at these tasks, when • They really care about doing well • Stakes are high • They are reminded of their group membership

Women who are reminded of their gender (by ticking a gender box, or by being surrounded by men), taking a high-stakes math test, will underperform.

Black men taking tests “of academic ability” will underperform.

White men at Ivy League universities doing tests of athletic ability will underperform if reminded of their race.

5-7 year old girls will do worse on a math test if they take it after colouring in a picture of a girl with a doll.

With exactly the same talent and dedication, it

will be harder for members of some social groups to perform well: UNJUST.

Many people will fail to perform as well as they otherwise might.

Society will not have the benefit of the full contributions that some groups might make.

First, Implicit Bias.


Don’t just tell yourself “ don’t be biased”. Don’t just tell yourself not to see gender or

race. Don’t just tell yourself to be objective.

Putting women on hiring committees in order ensure gender fairness. •Women, like men, are very likely to hold negative

implicit biases against women. So won’t help with implicit bias.

•However: can help candidates not to suffer from such serious stereotype threat while being interviewed. But note: One woman probably won’t be enough.

Anonymise– when possible. (Think about parts of process to anonymise.)

Spend some time thinking about counterstereotypical exemplar….

Get more counterstereotypical exemplars in. •As students, as lecturers, as researchers, as visiting

speakers, at conferences, on reading lists.

•This both reduces the influence of biases and helps to change the regularities in the world that perpetuate the biases.

But that means basing one’s judgments (in part) on something other than merit! •Our judgments are already (in part) based on

something other than merit: they are based partly on social prejudices.

•These prejudices prevent us from properly discerning merit.

•The only way we will ever be able to properly judge merit is if we first break down our bad, biased habits.

Being hungry, tired and rushed increases manifestation of implicit bias. Glucose decreases it.

Agree on criteria in advance.

Get feedback on each element as you go, to avoid overall gestalt evaluation.

Spend some time thinking about past instances where you were biased.

Try harder to notice when a woman student wants to speak.

If a woman’s comment is being ignored, or attributed to someone else, speak up.

Perhaps: adopt an affirmative action policy in chairing discussions.

Re-examine your letters of reference for gendered content.

Stereotype threat: alternative identity

Reflecting on counterstereotypical exemplars.

Sharing stories of those who have succeeded despite it.

Talk about it as a possible source of anxiety. Values affirmation.

Tackling phenomena like these requires reshaping the way that we think about bias…


Chris Hookway argues that to be responsible inquirers we need to know that we can trust our cognitive instruments.

The implicit bias literature shows us that we have faulty cognitive instruments.

It’s also starting to show us how to fix them.


• Being biased is not always blameworthy: the tendency to implicit bias is part of the human condition.

Many people are totally unaware of their implicit biases

and the effects that they have. Even after becoming aware, people are likely to not know

how to combat them. So blame is not appropriate just for having implicit biases.

Bias becomes blameworthy if people learn about implicit bias and don’t try to do anything to change.

We need, collectively and individually, to fix our cognitive instruments.


Jennifer Saul's presentation for Cambridge University's gender equality summit

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Transcript of Jennifer Saul's presentation for Cambridge University's gender equality summit