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 Gender Bias in der Personalauswahl (Jul 7 2023)

On July 7th, Dr. Lisa Howarth visited the Faculty of Mathematics to do a workshop on gender biases in the scientific field are dealt with today and how the performance of an individual can be distorted by gender, and on how to use bias-management methods to create a more equal way of choosing the staff, based on competence, not gender.

The Organizer

Dr. Lisa Howarth is a psychologist, university and organization advisor. She has been researching on topics of equality internationally for 10 years and is also a coach for University executives and colleagues, etc. as well as having concepted University-Career-Programs and Gender and Diversity Competence Programs. She is also part of GenderWerkstätte, GMEI (Gender Mainstreaming Experts International) and director of FELIN (female leaders initiative)

Important Aspects

A few important aspects that the attendees took away from the workshop were:

• Everyone has some form of bias → you have to try to get rid of that bias by realizing that there is one
• Simliarity Effect: if recruit is similar to last member/ other members, it is more likely that they will get picked
• Questions to ask yourself: If the person was older/ male/ of a different ethnicity, would you be more likely to choose them? → Then do so.
• Ways to prevent making biased decisions:
  • Bias observing/ flagging
  • More than one person to make the decision
  • No decisions after a long day
• The Cognitive Bias Codex: