Getting more women interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers is not the only barrier to bridging the gender gap in these fields.
According to a study published in the Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences, male candidates were twice as likely to be hired over female candidates for a math-related position they were equally qualified for.
Male and female hiring managers could see what the applicants looked like, but were given no additional information. Without seeing the assessment scores, managers from both sexes were more likely to choose a male over a female, even though the candidates had equal scores on the math assignment.
Business school professors Paola Sapienza from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Ernesto Reuben from Columbia Business School and Luigi Zingales of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, worked together on the study.
Another variation of the experiment allowed the interviewees to predict their performance on the task. Male candidates often overestimated their performance and female candidates typically downplayed theirs, but men were still chosen over women twice as often.
Even after the hiring managers were given the assessment scores showing that the women were equally as skilled as the men, the managers continued to favor male candidates one-and-a half times more than female candidates.
Almost 20 percent of hiring managers decided to hire the candidate with the lower score on the assessment. Sixty-four percent of those candidates were men.
The study used an implicit association test (I.A.T.) to measure the gender bias of the hiring managers before beginning the experiment. Some I.A.T. results showed that the hiring managers were more likely to believe negative stereotypes against women.
“The very people who are biased against women about math, they’re also less likely to believe that men boast,” Dr. Zingales said. “So they’re picking up a negative stereotype of women, but not a negative stereotype of men.”
