Creating Gender-Inclusive Environments

Recent research indicates that both women and men are twice as likely to hire a man than a woman, even if the woman is more qualified.   This study pertains to business hiring, but research also exists demonstrating a similar hiring and pay bias for academic jobs in the STEM fields and the stories of women in those fields provide support for those conclusions. 

Both studies indicate that the biases exist in both men and women hiring authorities.  So how does a fair-minded leader remedy this?  Will Yakowicz offers three great suggestions:

1. Make gender bias a business issue, not a women’s issue:  An organization that is choosing less qualified men over more able women is going to lose in the long run, because their talent will go elsewhere or otherwise not be fully engaged. 
2. Educate yourself (regardless of your gender) instead of asking women to change:  Women tend to under-sell their abilities, while men tend to over-sell theirs.  When women are assertive about their abilities, they are perceived negatively and penalized.  So the burden is on the leader to understand this no-win dynamic for women and compensate for it rather than asking women to brag more about themselves.
3. Look for bias in hiring policies and systems:  Many hiring authorities believe that candidates who self-promote are the best, despite what’s noted above.  It’s important that they become aware of this erroneous bias and look for other ways to identify competence and ambition.

Samuel Bacharach offers some additional tips for leading in a way that includes everyone.

Do the stories of this kind of bias match with your experiences or observations?  If you work in a female-dominated field, do you see this playing out?