{"id":29564,"date":"2013-01-10T10:51:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T08:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=29564"},"modified":"2013-01-10T11:28:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T09:28:06","slug":"the-end-of-the-gender-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/29564\/the-end-of-the-gender-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of the gender war"},"content":{"rendered":"

A study by\u00a0Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government<\/a> and Harvard Business School<\/a> proposes a solution to\u00a0gender discrimination in workplace promotions and job assignments.<\/p>\n

The study concluded that organisations should consider more than one candidate for a position at the same time rather than individually, as reported by the\u00a0Wall Street Journal (WSJ<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Academics at the Massachusetts-based institution\u00a0found that organisations who evaluated candidates individually were “highly influenced” by the candidates’ gender. However, when a group of potential employees were screened for promotion at the same time, the gender of the applicants were ignored.<\/p>\n

The study included 654 male and female participants, with\u00a0100 performing the role of candidates seeking new jobs while the rest acted in the role of employer.<\/p>\n

The candidates were tasked with math or verbal tests, believed to trigger gender bias because “females are believed to be worse at math tasks and better at verbal tasks than males,” the researchers said.<\/p>\n

According\u00a0to the WSJ,\u00a0employers were then asked to select those candidates who they believed qualified for a second round of aptitude tests.<\/p>\n

“Some employers were presented with information about a single candidate. In these instances, employers were more likely to choose men for additional math tasks and women for verbal tasks, even if their first-round performances were weak,” the paper wrote.<\/p>\n

By contrast, when employers were provided with information about both a male and a female candidates together, their past performance – as opposed to their gender – became the chief factor in determining which additional tests they would be tasked with.<\/p>\n

The results indicated therefore that gender bias played a role in determining which positions men and women were more suited to.<\/p>\n

The report also found that individual evaluations appeared to lead to poor hiring decisions. A little more than half of the employers who considered candidates individually selected an employee who\u00a0under-performed in relation to the peer group.<\/p>\n

By contrast, only 8% of the employers who considered candidates side-by-side chose\u00a0under performers, the study concluded.<\/p>\n

The report suggested that with only a single candidate in front of a manager, the employer’s context is often what’s in his or her own mind, which may have bias. But when candidates are evaluated in pairs or small groups, employers are more likely to compare them to each other and can therefore judge them on their performance.<\/p>\n

“If you see one pair of shoes in a store, it’s very hard for you to know how this pair compares in terms of quality or price or color. You base your judgment on whatever comes to mind,” said study co-author Iris Bohnet, a dean and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p>\n

“But when you have different shoes available, all of a sudden you can\u00a0calibrate the color and quality better,”\u00a0Bohnet said.<\/p>\n

The working paper, published on Harvard’s website, was co-authored by Prof. Bohnet and Alexandra van Geen of Harvard’s Kennedy School and Max H. Bazerman of Harvard Business School.<\/p>\n

The scholars noted that employers often evaluate candidates jointly for hiring decisions, but were less likely to do so for promotions and job assignments.<\/p>\n

“While it is not always feasible to bundle promotion decisions and explicitly compare candidates, our research suggests that, whenever possible, joint evaluation would increase both efficiency and equality,” the study’s authors said.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Facebook COO elected first female on board<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

White versus Black salaries in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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