How to combat implicit bias and stereotype threat in academia Havi Carel & Richard Pettigrew Department of Philosophy University of Bristol

Women in philosophy

Professor Reader Senior Lecturer Lecturer Temporary staff PGR PGT Undergraduate 0 10 20 30 40 50

Women in universities

• In UK HE, 21% of professors are women Women Black Disabled In academia 38% 1% 3% In population 50% 3.5% 18%

Implicit Bias and Stereotype Threat

Cognitive processes, often unconscious, which influence our judgments, actions, and performances

Implicit Bias and Stereotype Threat

Arise from internalised associations between conceptions of the different groups and specific attributes

Implicit bias

Perceiving individuals, and assessing and interpreting their actions and performances, in accordance with the attributes associated to the social class under which one identifies them.

• • E.g.

Woman pilot Gay male child minder

Two features of IB: 1

You might have those attitudes unbeknownst to you even if you are sincerely and explicitly committed to equality

Two features of IB: 2

Not solely directed to members of social classes other than your own, but also to members of your own group and yourself

Examples

Behavioural Ecology introduced anonymous refereeing. This led to a 33% increase in articles authored by women.

Budden, A., Tregenza, T., Aarssen, L., Koricheva, J., Leimu, R. and Lortie, C. (2008) ‘Double-Blind Review Favours Increased Representation of Female Authors’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23(1): 4-6.

Examples

238 academic psychologists (118 male, 120 female) evaluated a CV randomly assigned a male or a female name. Both male and female participants gave the male applicant better evaluations for teaching, research, and service experience and were twice as likely to hire the male than the female applicant.

Steinpreis, R., Anders, K., and Ritzke, D. (1999) ‘The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study’, Sex Roles, 41(7/8): 509-528.

Examples

References for medical staff exhibited pronounced differences in the way in which they were written, depending on gender.

Trix, F. & C. Psenka, (2003) ‘Exploring the color of glass: letters of recommendation for female and male medical faculty’, Discourse & Society, 14 (2): 191-220.

Stereotype Threat

• • Exclusively self-directed. It consists in the operation of schemas in such a way that they sabotage your performance to make it fit the stereotype.

Esp. in a context where social class is negatively associated, and membership of that group is made salient.

– E.g. ‘Now it’s the girl’s turn to throw’

Two features of ST

• • Subtle ways of making membership identity salient have a greater effect than blatant ones.

The more one cares about the activity in question, the worse the effects of ST.

Examples

• Asian girls sit a maths test.

If ‘girl’ identity is made salient, then performance is ‘significantly worse’ than if Asian identity is made salient.

Examples

• • Black and White men play golf.

Told it is to test ‘natural athletic ability’: – White men perform ‘a lot worse’ (3 strokes more, 22 24 stroke course) than if they are not made think they are tested.

– Black men unaffected. Told it is to test ‘sports strategic intelligence’: – White men unaffected.

– Black men perform much worse (5 strokes more).

IB and ST interact

• • Where IB others hold towards you are clearly manifested, ST will be triggered Schemas which trigger IB and ST more often: – race – gender – sex – accents – sexual orientation – age – physical disability

IB and ST interact

• • IB and ST can serve useful functions: they can enable us to cope with our limited epistemic resources (IB), and act as self-protective mechanisms (ST).

But they can also be very damaging in a variety of ways.

What can we do?

• Change the stereotype.

• Mitigate the effects of IB and ST.

Changing the stereotype

• • • • • Aim for greater representation in: Reading lists for UG syllabi Conference speakers – Cf. Gendered Conference Campaign Research seminar speakers Citations in publications (Healey) Membership of learned societies/professional organisations

Also …

• • • Women underrepresented in conferences, research seminars, reading lists, course topics, and less cited This affects a woman’s CV negatively: she won’t have as many publications, won’t have been invited to speak at as many conferences, references won’t be as glowing. Even if she does manage to get her CV on a par with that of a male applicant her CV will be rated

lower than that of her male peer

What not to do

• • Don’t just tell yourself ‘don’t be biased’ – Some implementation intentions work, but very sensitive to formulation Don’t think about a past time when you managed to be unbiased

What sort of works

• Putting women on hiring committees in order ensure gender fairness – Women, like men, are likely to hold negative implicit biases against women. So that won’t help.

– However: can help candidates not to suffer from such serious stereotype threat while being interviewed.

• But one woman probably won’t be enough and increases burden on women.

• •

What works

Anonymise whenever possible – Hiring – Assessment – Journal practices Be aware of dangers of anonymising – IB affects aspects of women’s CVs: fewer conference invitations, citations, membership of boards

Publications in journals

• • • • 81% of philosophy journals don’t anonymise submissions to editors (2010) 93% of editors ‘desk reject’ papers 22% (mean) of papers rejected this way 12.36% of papers published in top journals in 2002-2007 were by women (26% women in the profession)

What works

Spend time thinking about counter-stereotypical exemplars.

What works

Being hungry, tired and rushed increases manifestation of implicit bias

What works in hiring

• • • Agree on criteria in advance. Don’t put too much weight on one thing (e.g. job talk).

Get feedback on each element as you go. This avoids overall gestalt evaluation.

What works

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

IB in teaching

• In talks/classes women’s contributions are – Overlooked – Attributed to men – Interpreted uncharitably (‘she’s confused’) – Women less called upon to answer – Women more frequently interrupted

Objection

• 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

What we are doing in philosophy

• • • • • Raise awareness of IB and ST External review with female PGs (2013) Pre-talk talks for women in dept Adopted the BPA/SWIP good practice scheme Designated member of staff http://www.bristol.ac.uk/philosophy/about/climate/