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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 how 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: