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STRIDE Recommended Readings

The STRIDE Committee has read widely in its work since 2002 and in developing the Faculty Recruitment Workshop. Below are some of the readings the committee recommends.

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Ameri, M., Schur, L., Adya, M., Bentley, F. S., Mckay, P., & Kruse, D. (2017). The Disability Employment Puzzle: A Field Experiment on Employer Hiring Behavior. ILR Review, 71(2), 329-364. doi:10.1177/0019793917717474

The authors investigate potential discrimination against people with disabilities through a field experiment that sent job applications to 6,016 accounting positions for which the applicants’ disabilities are unlikely to affect productivity. One-third of the cover letters disclosed that the applicant had a spinal cord injury, one-third disclosed the presence of Asperger’s syndrome, and one-third did not mention disability. The disability applications received 26% fewer expressions of employer interest. This gap was concentrated among experienced applicants and small private companies that are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Tests suggest possible positive effects of the ADA, but not of state laws, in reducing the disability gap. Results indicate there may be substantial room for employer and policy initiatives to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

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American Sociological Association (2019). Statement on Student Evaluations of Teaching. https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/asa_statement_on_student_evaluations_of_teaching_feb132020.pdf
Atherton, T. J., Barthelemy, R. S., Deconinck, W., Falk, M. L., Garmon, S., Long, E., & Reeves, K. (2016). LGBT climate in physics: Building an inclusive community. College Park, MD: American Physical Society.

The authors offer six recommendations that their committee identified as the most critical steps the American Physical Society could take to ensure that LGBT individuals pursuing physics can enter a level playing field.

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Bauer, C. C., & Baltes, B. B. (2002). Reducing the effects of gender stereotypes on performance evaluations. Sex Roles, 47(9-10), 465–476.

This study is one of many showing (1) that people vary in the degree to which they hold certain stereotypes and schemas; (2) that having those schemas influences their evaluations of other people; and (3) that it is possible to reduce the impact of commonly held stereotypes or schemas by relatively simple means.  In this study college students with particularly negative stereotypes about women as college professors were more likely to rate accounts of specific incidents of college classroom teaching behavior negatively, if they were described as performed by a female.  In the second phase of the study students’ reliance on their stereotypes was successfully reduced by providing them with time and instructions to recall the specific teaching behaviors of the instructors in detail.  Thus, focusing attention on specific evidence of an individual’s performance eliminated the previously demonstrated effect of gender schemas on performance ratings.

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Berdahl, J. L., & Min, J. A. (2012). Prescriptive stereotypes and workplace consequences for East Asians in North America. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18(2), 141–152.

We pursue the idea that racial stereotypes are not only descriptive, reflecting beliefs about how racial groups actually differ, but are prescriptive as well, reflecting beliefs about how racial groups should differ. Drawing on an analysis of the historic and current status of East Asians in North America, we study descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes of East Asians along the dimensions of competence, warmth, and dominance and examine workplace consequences of violating these stereotypes. Study 1 shows that East Asians are descriptively stereotyped as more competent, less warm, and less dominant than Whites. Study 2 shows that only the descriptive stereotype of East Asians as less dominant than Whites is also a prescriptive stereotype. Study 3 reveals that people dislike a dominant East Asian coworker compared to a nondominant East Asian or a dominant or a nondominant White coworker. Study 4 shows that East Asians who are dominant or warm are racially harassed at work more than nondominant East Asians and than dominant and nondominant employees of other racial identities. Implications for research and theory are discussed.

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Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. American Economic Review, 94(1), 991–1013.

Empirical study demonstrating impact of implicit discrimination by race, and not attributable to class.

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Bertrand, M., Chugh, D., & Mullainathan, D. (2005). Implicit discrimination. American Economic Review, 95(2), 94–98.

Reflective discussion of how and where implicit discrimination operates. Includes useful review of the literature, and fairly extended discussion of research needed.

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Biernat, M. & Kobrynowicz, D. (1997). Gender and race-based standards of competence: Lower minimum standards but higher ability standards for devalued groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(3), 544–557.

Stereotypes may influence judgment via assimilation, such that individual group members are evaluated consistently with stereotypes, or via contrast, such that targets are displaced from the overall group expectation. Two models of judgment—the shifting standards model and status characteristics theory—provide some insight into predicting and interpreting these apparently contradictory effects. In two studies involving a simulated applicant-evaluation setting, we predicted and found that participants set lower minimum-competency standards, but higher ability standards, for female than for male and for Black than for White applicants. Thus, although it may be easier for low- than high-status group members to meet (low) standards, these same people must work harder to prove that their performance is ability-based.

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Blair-Loy, M.; Rogers, L.E.; Glaser, D.; Wong, Y.L.A.; Abraham, D.; Cosman, P.C. Gender in Engineering Departments: Are There Gender Differences in Interruptions of Academic Job Talks? Soc. Sci. 2017, 6, 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010029

We use a case study of job talks in five engineering departments to analyze the under-studied area of gendered barriers to finalists for faculty positions. We focus on one segment of the interview day of short-listed candidates invited to campus: the “job talk”, when candidates present their original research to the academic department. We analyze video recordings of 119 job talks across five engineering departments at two Research 1 universities. Specifically, we analyze whether there are differences by gender or by years of post-Ph.D. experience in the number of interruptions, follow-up questions, and total questions that job candidates receive. We find that, compared to men, women receive more follow-up questions and more total questions. Moreover, a higher proportion of women’s talk time is taken up by the audience asking questions. Further, the number of questions is correlated with the job candidate’s statements and actions that reveal he or she is rushing to present their slides and complete the talk. We argue that women candidates face more interruptions and often have less time to bring their talk to a compelling conclusion, which is connected to the phenomenon of “stricter standards” of competence demanded by evaluators of short-listed women applying for a masculine-typed job. We conclude with policy recommendations.

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Bobo, L., Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, R. A. (1997). Laissez-faire racism: The crystallization of a kinder, gentler, antiblack ideology. In S. A. Tuch & J. K. Martin (Eds.), Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change (pp.15–42). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Studies of racial attitudes in the U.S. present a difficult puzzle. On the one hand, several recent studies point to the steadily improving racial attitudes of whites toward African Americans (Steeh and Schuman 1992; Firebaugh and Davis 1988). These attitudinal trends are reinforced by many more tangible indicators, most notably the size, relative security, and potentially growing influence of the black middle class (Dawson 1994; Landry 1987). On the other hand, a number of social policies put forward to improve the status of African Americans and other minorities, such as affirmative action, are often contested if not ubiquitously unpopular (Bobo and Smith 1994; Kluegel and Smith 1986). Again, signs of negative racial attitudes are borne out by a number of tangible indicators such as the burgeoning evidence of racial discrimination experienced by blacks almost irrespective of social class background (Bobo and Suh 1995; Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991; Feagin and Sikes 1994; Braddock and McPartland 1986; Waldinger and Bailey 1991; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff 1991).

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Cahn, P.S., Gona, C.M., Naidoo, K. et al. Disrupting Bias Without Trainings: The Effect of Equity Advocates on Faculty Search Committees. Innov High Educ (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-021-09575-5

Many institutions of higher education have implemented workshops for hiring committee members to familiarize them with the pernicious effects of implicit bias and how to counteract them. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm for implicit bias trainings is not matched by the evidence for their effectiveness. Recognizing the difficulty of removing entrenched biases and the potential for trainings to backfire, we introduced the role of equity advocate (EA) at one institution. EAs are trained volunteer faculty and staff members who serve on search committees outside their home departments to identify behaviors and judgments that might have a disparate racial effect in hiring. We conducted focus groups to document the perspectives of both EAs and non-EA search committee members who completed a cycle of academic hiring. Search committee members credited EAs with helping to mitigate bias by questioning their assumptions and introducing standardized tools for evaluating candidates. By contrast, EAs reported a more contentious relationship with the rest of the search committee and expressed less confidence that the process was free from bias. Both groups agreed that the EAs added valuable race-conscious equitable practices, and untrained committee members identified ways they could apply the lessons of bias reduction in other parts of their professional roles. Our study provides evidence for how to engage all faculty and staff members in sustainable, equity-minded efforts.

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Calisi, R. M. (2018). Opinion: How to tackle the childcare–conference conundrum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(12), 2845–2849.

Conferences are vital forums for academic researchers. At these meetings, scientists communicate new discoveries, form research collaborations, make contacts with funding agencies, and attract new members to our labs and programs. Even with new technological advances that allow remote communication, resource sharing, and networking, face-to-face interactions are a crucial component for one’s career advancement and ongoing education. Early-stage researchers, who benefit significantly from these events, face some notable barriers to attendance. One major challenge is what we call the childcare–conference conundrum: Parent–researchers face a conundrum as they struggle to attend key conferences and further their careers while finding care for the children. Conferences face a conundrum as they assess how to better accommodate mothers and families.

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Carrell, S. E., Page, M. E., & West, J. E. (2009). Sex and science: How professor gender perpetuates the gender gap. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3), 1101–1144.

Why aren’t there more women in science? Female college students are currently 37 percent less likely than males to obtain a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and comprise only 25 percent of the STEM workforce. This paper begins to shed light on this issue by exploiting a unique dataset of college students who have been randomly assigned to professors over a wide variety of mandatory standardized courses. We focus on the role of professor gender. Our results suggest that while professor gender has little impact on male students, it has a powerful effect on female students’ performance in math and science classes, their likelihood of taking future math and science courses, and their likelihood of graduating with a STEM degree. The estimates are largest for female students with very strong math skills, who are arguably the students who are most suited to careers in science. Indeed, the gender gap in course grades and STEM majors is eradicated when high performing female students’ introductory math and science classes are taught by female professors. In contrast, the gender of humanities professors has only minimal impact on student outcomes. We believe that these results are indicative of important environmental influences at work.

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Casadevall, A., & Handelsman, J. (2014). The Presence of Female Conveners Correlates with a Higher Proportion of Female Speakers at Scientific Symposia. MBio, 5(1).

We investigated the hypothesis that the gender of conveners at scientific meetings influenced the gender distribution of invited speakers. Analysis of 460 symposia involving 1,845 speakers in two large meetings sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology revealed that having at least one woman member of the convening team correlated with a significantly higher proportion of invited female speakers and reduced the likelihood of an all-male symposium roster. Our results suggest that inclusion of more women as conveners may increase the proportion of women among invited speakers at scientific meetings.

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Chesler, M. A. (1996). Protecting the investment: Understanding and responding to resistance. The Diversity Factor 4(3), 2–10.

This article discusses common barriers to successful implementation of diversity-related cultural change efforts, including both those that are intentional and unintentional. It also outlines strategies for addressing or dealing with these various forms of resistance. (Not available digitally.)

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Chesler, M. A., & Young, A. A. (2013). Faculty identities and the challenge of diversity: reflections on teaching in higher education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

This book examines the undergraduate teaching experiences and collegial relationships of university faculty who hold appointments in social science, humanities, or natural science and engineering, and who have received undergraduate teaching or service-to-diversity nominations and awards. Documenting and interpreting faculty members’ social identities and pedagogical practices, this book explores how professors address the diverse racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities of their students.

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Clancy, K. B., Lee, K. M., Rodgers, E. M., & Richey, C. (2017). Double jeopardy in astronomy and planetary science: Women of color face greater risks of gendered and racial harassment. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 122(7), 1610–1623.

Women generally, and women of color specifically, have reported hostile workplace experiences in astronomy and related fields for some time. However, little is known of the extent to which individuals in these disciplines experience inappropriate remarks, harassment, and assault. We hypothesized that the multiple marginality of women of color would mean that they would experience a higher frequency of inappropriate remarks, harassment, and assault in the astronomical and planetary science workplace. We conducted an internet‐based survey of the workplace experiences of 474 astronomers and planetary scientists between 2011 and 2015 and found support for this hypothesis. In this sample, in nearly every significant finding, women of color experienced the highest rates of negative workplace experiences, including harassment and assault. Further, 40% of women of color reported feeling unsafe in the workplace as a result of their gender or sex, and 28% of women of color reported feeling unsafe as a result of their race. Finally, 18% of women of color, and 12% of white women, skipped professional events because they did not feel safe attending, identifying a significant loss of career opportunities due to a hostile climate. Our results suggest that the astronomy and planetary science community needs to address the experiences of women of color and white women as they move forward in their efforts to create an inclusive workplace for all scientists.

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Clauset, A., Arbesman, S., & Larremore, D. B. (2015). Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks. Science advances, 1(1), e1400005. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1400005

The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network—who hires whose graduates as faculty—we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality. Furthermore, doctoral prestige alone better predicts ultimate placement than a U.S. News & World Report rank, women generally place worse than men, and increased institutional prestige leads to increased faculty production, better faculty placement, and a more influential position within the discipline. These results advance our ability to quantify the influence of prestige in academia and shed new light on the academic system.

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Correll, S., Benard, S., & Paik, I. (2007). Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty? American Journal of Sociology 112(5), 1297–1338.

Survey research finds that mothers suffer a substantial wage penalty, although the causal mechanism producing it remains elusive. The authors employed a laboratory experiment to evaluate the hypothesis that status-based discrimination plays an important role and an audit study of actual employers to assess its real-world implications. In both studies, participants evaluated application materials for a pair of same-gender equally qualified job candidates who differed on parental status. The laboratory experiment found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.

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Cox, W. T., & Devine, P. G. (2019). The prejudice habit-breaking intervention. In R. K. Mallet & M. J. Monteith (Eds.), Confronting Prejudice and Discrimination (pp. 249-274). Academic Press. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-814715-3.00015-1

Confronting Prejudice and Discrimination: The Science of Changing Minds and Behaviors focuses on confrontation as a strategy for reducing bias and discrimination. The volume tackles questions that people face when they wish to confront bias: What factors influence people’s decisions to confront or ignore bias in its various forms? What are the motives and consequences of confrontation? How can confrontation be approached individually, through education and empowerment, and in specific contexts (e.g., health care) to yield favourable outcomes? These questions are paramount in contemporary society, where confrontation of bias is increasingly evident. Moreover, great strides in the scientific study of confrontation in the past 20 years has yielded valuable insights and answers. This volume is an essential resource for students and researchers with an interest in prejudice and prejudice reduction, and will also be valuable to non-academics who wish to stand up to bias through confrontation.

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Dembouski, L. M. (2018). Honest and Uncomfortable: A Loving Look at My Exclusive Campus. Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia (pp. 103-116). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90590-7_10

Ableism is alive and well on my campus and, I suspect, on your campuses, too. Assumptions about, desirability of, and privileging of able-bodiedness are the norms in US society, and campuses tend to reflect societal constructs, at least in part. So ableism is probably where you are, as well. This chapter calls out the exclusion borne of ableism I regularly experience as a person with a dis/ability who works on a highly able-bodied campus. I highlight that it is past time we change our exclusive ways with several narratives that explain and illustrate my experiences here. Finally, I make three “simple” suggestions for ways to interrupt and change exclusion grounded in ableism, they are: (1) ensure safety, (2) own that inclusion is everyone’s work, and (3) be willing to change.

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Dennehy, T. C., & Dasgupta, N. (2017). Female peer mentors early in college increase women’s positive academic experiences and retention in engineering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(23), 5964–5969.

Scientific and engineering innovation is vital for American competitiveness, quality of life, and national security. However, too few American students, especially women, pursue these fields. Although this problem has attracted enormous attention, rigorously tested interventions outside artificial laboratory settings are quite rare. To address this gap, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment investigating the effect of peer mentoring on women’s experiences and retention in engineering during college transition, assessing its impact for 1 y while mentoring was active, and an additional 1 y after mentoring had ended. Incoming women engineering students (n = 150) were randomly assigned to female or male peer mentors or no mentors for 1 y.

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Dotson, K. (2013). How is this paper philosophy?. Comparative Philosophy, 3(1), 121-121. doi: 10.31979/2151-6014(2012).030105

This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, Dotson gestures to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, Dotson advocates that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to a culture of praxis. Finally, Dotson provides a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective.

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Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (1998). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The causes, consequences, and challenges of aversive racism. In J. Eberhardt & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Confronting racism: The problem and the response (pp. 3–32). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

This chapter examines one factor that contributes to the current frustrations of black Americans: the operation of a subtle form of racism among individuals that is less overt but just as insidious as old-fashioned racism.

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Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (2000). Aversive racism and selection decisions: 1989 and 1999. Psychological Science, 11(4), 315–319.

Investigated differences over a 10-year period in Whites’ self-reported racial prejudice and their bias in selection decisions involving Black and White candidates for employment in a sample of 194 undergraduates. The authors examined the hypothesis, derived from the aversive-racism framework, that although overt expressions of prejudice may decline significantly across time, subtle manifestations of bias may persist. Consistent with this hypothesis, self-reported prejudice was lower in 1998–1999 than it was in 1988–1989, and at both time periods, White participants did not discriminate against Black relative to White candidates when the candidates’ qualifications were clearly strong or weak, but they did discriminate when the appropriate decision was more ambiguous. Theoretical and practical implications are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)

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Dutt, K., Pfaff, D. L., Bernstein, A. F., Dillard, J. S., & Block, C. J. (2016). Gender differences in recommendation letters for postdoctoral fellowships in geoscience. Nature Geoscience, 9(11), 805.

The authors examined postdoctoral fellowship recommendation letters: 1224 letters submitted by recommenders in 54 countries. Female applicants are much less likely to receive excellent letters vs. good letters as compared to male applicants. Letter length differs by region (longest in the Americas) but letter tone is equivalently distributed across all regions.

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Eaton, A. A., Saunders, J. F., Jacobson, R. K., & West, K. (2019). How Gender and Race Stereotypes Impact the Advancement of Scholars in STEM: Professors’ Biased Evaluations of Physics and Biology Post-Doctoral Candidates. Sex Roles, 1-15. doi: 10.1007/s11199-019-01052-w

The current study examines how intersecting stereotypes about gender and race influence faculty perceptions of post-doctoral candidates in STEM fields in the United States. Using a fully-crossed, between-subjects experimental design, biology and physics professors (n = 251) from eight large, public, U.S. research universities were asked to read one of eight identical curriculum vitae (CVs) depicting a hypothetical doctoral graduate applying for a post-doctoral position in their field, and rate them for competence, hireability, and likeability. The candidate’s name on the CV was used to manipulate race (Asian, Black, Latinx, and White) and gender (female or male), with all other aspects of the CV held constant across conditions. Faculty in physics exhibited a gender bias favoring the male candidates as more competent and more hirable than the otherwise identical female candidates. Further, physics faculty rated Asian and White candidates as more competent and hirable than Black and Latinx candidates, while those in biology rated Asian candidates as more competent and hirable than Black candidates, and as more hireable than Latinx candidates. An interaction between candidate gender and race emerged for those in physics, whereby Black women and Latinx women and men candidates were rated the lowest in hireability compared to all others. Women were rated more likeable than men candidates across departments. Our results highlight how understanding the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in STEM requires examining both racial and gender biases as well as how they intersect.

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El-Alayli, A., Hansen-Brown, A. A., & Ceynar, M. (2018). Dancing backwards in high heels: Female professors experience more work demands and special favor requests, particularly from academically entitled students. Sex Roles, 79(3-4), 136-150.

Although the number of U.S. female professors has risen steadily in recent years, female professors are still subject to different student expectations and treatment. Students continue to perceive and expect female professors to be more nurturing than male professors are. We examined whether students may consequently request more special favors from female professors. In a survey of professors (n = 88) across the United States, Study 1 found that female (versus male) professors reported getting more requests for standard work demands, special favors, and friendship behaviors, with the latter two mediating the professor gender effect on professors’ self-reported emotional labor. Study 2 utilized an experimental design using a fictitious female or male professor, with college student participants (n = 121) responding to a scenario in which a special favor request might be made of the professor. The results indicated that academically entitled students (i.e., those who feel deserving of success in college regardless of effort/performance) had stronger expectations that a female (versus male) professor would grant their special favor requests. Those expectations consequently increased students’ likelihood of making the requests and of exhibiting negative emotional and behavioral reactions to having those requests denied. This work highlights the extra burdens felt by female professors. We discuss possible moderators of these effects as well as the importance of developing strategies for preventing them.

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Ely, R. J., & Thomas, D. A. (2001). Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(2), 229–273.

This paper develops theory about the conditions under which cultural diversity enhances or detracts from work group functioning. From qualitative research in three culturally diverse organizations, we identified three different perspectives on workforce diversity: the integration-and-learning perspective, the access-and-legitimacy perspective, and the discrimination-and-fairness perspective. The perspective on diversity a work group held influenced how people expressed and managed tensions related to diversity, whether those who had been traditionally underrepresented in the organization felt respected and valued by their colleagues, and how people interpreted the meaning of their racial identity at work. These, in turn, had implications for how well the work group and its members functioned. All three perspectives on diversity had been successful in motivating managers to diversify their staffs, but only the integration-and-learning perspective provided the rationale and guidance needed to achieve sustained benefits from diversity. By identifying the conditions that intervene between the demographic composition of a work group and its functioning, our research helps to explain mixed results on the relationship between cultural diversity and work group outcomes.

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Fiechter, J. L., Fealing, C., Gerrard, R., & Kornell, N. (2018). Audiovisual quality impacts assessments of job candidates in video interviews: Evidence for an AV quality bias. Cognitive research: principles and implications, 3(1), 47.

Video job interviews have become a common hiring practice, allowing employers to save money and recruit from a wider applicant pool. But differences in job candidates’ internet connections mean that some interviews will have higher audiovisual (AV) quality than others. We hypothesized that interviewers would be impacted by AV quality when they rated job candidates. In two experiments, participants viewed two-minute long simulated Skype interviews that were either unedited (fluent videos) or edited to mimic the effects of a poor internet connection (disfluent videos). Participants in both experiments rated job candidates from fluent videos as more hirable, even after being explicitly told to disregard AV quality (experiment 2). Our findings suggest that video interviews may favor job candidates with better internet connections and that being aware of this bias does not make it go away.

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Fiske, S. T. (2002). What we know about bias and intergroup conflict, the problem of the century. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(4), 123–128.

Discusses what psychologists, after years of study, now know about intergroup bias and conflict. It is stated that most people reveal unconscious, subtle biases, which are relatively automatic, cool, indirect, ambiguous, and ambivalent. Subtle biases underlie ordinary discrimination: comfort with one’s own in-group, plus exclusion and avoidance of out-groups. Such biases result from internal conflict between cultural ideals and cultural biases. On the other hand, a small minority of people, extremists, do harbor blatant biases that are more conscious, hot, direct, and unambiguous. Blatant biases underlie aggression, including hate crimes. Such biases result from perceived intergroup conflict over economics and values, in a world perceived to be hierarchical and dangerous. Reduction of both subtle and blatant bias results from education, economic opportunity, and constructive intergroup contact.

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Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902.

This article presents results of research proceeding from the theoretical assumption that status is associated with high ratings of competence, while competition is related to low ratings of warmth. Included in the article are ratings of various ethnic and gender groups as a function of ratings of competence and warmth. These illustrate the average content of the stereotypes held about these groups in terms of the dimensions of competence and warmth, which are often key elements of evaluation.

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Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. (July 2018). GLAAD Media Reference Guide (10th ed.). Retrieved from http://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/GLAAD-Media-Reference-Guide-Tenth-Edition.pdf

GLAAD’s Media Reference Guide offers reporters the language tools they can use to tell stories regarding the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered culture and people in a way that brings out journalistic excellence, while portraying the story participants with dignity, accuracy and fairness.

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Ginther, D. K., Schaffer, W. T., Schnell, J., Masimore, B., Liu, F., Haak, L. L., & Kington, R. (2011). Race, ethnicity, and NIH research awards. Science, 333(6045), 1015–1019.

We investigated the association between a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 applicant’s self-identified race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an award by using data from the NIH IMPAC II grant database, the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, and other sources. Although proposals with strong priority scores were equally likely to be funded regardless of race, we find that Asians are 4 percentage points and black or African-American applicants are 13 percentage points less likely to receive NIH investigator-initiated research funding compared with whites. After controlling for the applicant’s educational background, country of origin, training, previous research awards, publication record, and employer characteristics, we find that black applicants remain 10 percentage points less likely than whites to be awarded NIH research funding. Our results suggest some leverage points for policy intervention.

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Goldin, C., & Rouse, C. (2000). Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of “blind” auditions on female musicians. American Economic Review, 90(4), 715–741.

A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras—adoption of “blind” auditions with a “screen” to conceal the candidate’s identity from the jury—provides a test for gender bias in hiring and advancement. Using data from actual auditions for 8 orchestras over the period when screens were introduced, the authors found that auditions with screens substantially increased the probability that women were advanced (within the orchestra) and that women were hired. These results parallel those found in many studies of the impact of blind review of journal article submissions.

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Guarino, C. M., & Borden, V. M. (2017). Faculty service loads and gender: Are women taking care of the academic family? Research in Higher Education, 58(6), 672–694.

The authors analyzed national survey data as well as annual faculty performance reporting system data from a Midwestern university. They find that women faculty perform more service than male faculty, even after controlling for rank, race/ethnicity, and field of study or department, and that this difference is driven by internal (rather than external) service.

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Guest Pryal, K.R. (2014, November 20). Rough Accommodations. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://community.chronicle.com/news/809-rough-accommodationsPryal

The author discusses the struggle to obtain disability accommodations with fellow faculty and graduate students. Suggestions for improvement of the campus culture are provided.

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Gutiérrez y Muhs, G., Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (Eds.). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

This book is an account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators.

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Hale, G. B., & Regev, T. (2014). Gender ratios at top PhD programs in economics. Economics of Education Review, 41, 55–70.

Analyzing university faculty and graduate student data for the top-ten U.S. economics departments between 1987 and 2007, we find that there are persistent differences in gender composition for both faculty and graduate students across institutions and that the share of female faculty and the share of women in the entering PhD class are positively correlated. We find, using instrumental variables analysis, robust evidence that this correlation is driven by the causal effect of the female faculty share on the gender composition of the entering PhD class. This result provides an explanation for persistent underrepresentation of women in economics, as well as for persistent segregation of women across academic fields.

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Heilman, M. E. (1980). The impact of situational factors on personnel decisions concerning women: varying the sex composition of the applicant pool. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 26, 386–395.

One hundred male and female MBA students evaluated a woman applicant for a managerial position when the proportion of women in the applicant pool was varied. Results indicated that personnel decisions of both males and females were significantly more unfavorable when women represented 25% or less of the total pool. Additional findings suggest that this effect was mediated by the degree to which sex stereotypes predominated in forming impressions of applicants. The results were interpreted as supportive of the thesis that situational factors can function to reduce the adverse effects of sex stereotypes in employment settings.

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Heilman, M. E. (2001). Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women’s ascent up the organizational ladder. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 657–674.

This review article posits that the scarcity of women at the upper levels of organizations is a consequence of gender bias in evaluations. It is proposed that gender stereotypes and the expectations they produce about both what women are like (descriptive) and how they should behave (prescriptive) can result in devaluation of their performance, denial of credit to them for their successes, or their penalization for being competent. The processes giving rise to these outcomes are explored, and the procedures that are likely to encourage them are identified. Because of gender bias and the way in which it influences evaluations in work settings, it is argued that being competent does not ensure that a woman will advance to the same organizational level as an equivalently performing man.

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Heilman, M. E., & Okimoto, T. G. (2007). Why are women penalized for success at male tasks?: The implied communality deficit. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(1), 81–92.

In 3 experimental studies, the authors tested the idea that penalties women incur for success in traditionally male areas arise from a perceived deficit in nurturing and socially sensitive communal attributes that is implied by their success. The authors therefore expected that providing information of communality would prevent these penalties. Results indicated that the negativity directed at successful female managers – in ratings of likability, interpersonal hostility, and boss desirability – was mitigated when there was indication that they were communal. This ameliorative effect occurred only when the information was clearly indicative of communal attributes (Study 1) and when it could be unambiguously attributed to the female manager (Study 2); furthermore, these penalties were averted when communality was conveyed by role information (motherhood status) or by behavior (Study 3). These findings support the idea that penalties for women’s success in male domains result from the perceived violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions.

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Hofstra, B., Kulkarni, V. V., Munoz-Najar Galvez, S., He, B., Jurafsky, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2020). The diversity–innovation paradox in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(17), 9284-9291.

Prior work finds a diversity paradox: Diversity breeds innovation, yet underrepresented groups that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. Does the diversity paradox hold for scientists as well? We study this by utilizing a near-complete population of ∼1.2 million US doctoral recipients from 1977 to 2015 and following their careers into publishing and faculty positions. We use text analysis and machine learning to answer a series of questions: How do we detect scientific innovations? Are underrepresented groups more likely to generate scientific innovations? And are the innovations of underrepresented groups adopted and rewarded? Our analyses show that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. However, their novel contributions are devalued and discounted: For example, novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups. These results suggest there may be unwarranted reproduction of stratification in academic careers that discounts diversity’s role in innovation and partly explains the underrepresentation of some groups in academia.

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Hoppe, T. A., Litovitz, A., Willis, K. A., Meseroll, R. A., Perkins, M. J., Hutchins, B. I., … & Santangelo, G. M. (2019). Topic choice contributes to the lower rate of NIH awards to African-American/black scientists. Science Advances, 5(10). doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw7238

Despite efforts to promote diversity in the biomedical workforce, there remains a lower rate of funding of National Institutes of Health R01 applications submitted by African-American/black (AA/B) scientists relative to white scientists. To identify underlying causes of this funding gap, we analyzed six stages of the application process from 2011 to 2015 and found that disparate outcomes arise at three of the six: decision to discuss, impact score assignment, and a previously unstudied stage, topic choice. Notably, AA/B applicants tend to propose research on topics with lower award rates. These topics include research at the community and population level, as opposed to more fundamental and mechanistic investigations; the latter tend to have higher award rates. Topic choice alone accounts for over 20% of the funding gap after controlling for multiple variables, including the applicant’s prior achievements. Our findings can be used to inform interventions designed to close the funding gap.

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Hunt, V., Prince, S., Dixon-Fyle, S., & Yee, L. (2018). Delivering through diversity. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity

Delivering through Diversity both tackles the business case and provides a perspective on how to take action on I&D to impact growth and business performance. This latest research reaffirms the global relevance of the correlation between diversity (defined here as a greater proportion of women and ethnically/culturally diverse individuals) in the leadership of large companies and financial outperformance. The research is based on a larger data set of over 1,000 companies covering 12 countries and using two measures of financial performance – profitability (measured as average EBIT margin) and value creation (measured as economic profit margin). As importantly, McKinsey studied the I&D efforts of 17 companies representing all major regions and multiple industries to have a more granular view of where in the organization diversity matters most, and crucially, how leading companies have successfully harnessed the potential of I&D to help meet their growth objectives.

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Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697–720.

Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.

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Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Kahneman explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

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Kang, S. K., DeCelles, K. A., Tilcsik, A., & Jun, S. (2016). Whitened résumés: Race and self-presentation in the labor market. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61(3), 469–502.

Using interviews, a laboratory experiment, and a resume audit study, we examine racial minorities’ attempts to avoid anticipated discrimination in labor markets by concealing or downplaying racial cues in job applications, a practice known as ‘‘resume whitening.’’ Interviews with racial minority university students reveal that while some minority job seekers reject this practice, others view it as essential and use a variety of whitening techniques. Building on the qualitative findings, we conduct a lab study to examine how racial minority job seekers change their resumes in response to different job postings. Results show that when targeting an employer that presents itself as valuing diversity, minority job applicants engage in relatively little resume whitening and thus submit more racially transparent resumes. Yet our audit study of how employers respond to whitened and unwhitened resumes shows that organizational diversity statements are not actually associated with reduced discrimination against unwhitened resumes. Taken together, these findings suggest a paradox: minorities may be particularly likely to experience disadvantage when they apply to ostensibly pro-diversity employers. These findings illuminate the role of racial concealment and transparency in modern labor markets and point to an important interplay between the self-presentation of employers and the selfpresentation of job seekers in shaping economic inequality.

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Katznelson, I. (2006). When Affirmative Action was White. Poverty and Race Research Action Council, 15(2).

This article proposes that many federal programs can be best understood as “affirmative action for whites” both because in some cases substantial numbers of other groups were excluded from benefiting from them, or because the primary beneficiaries were whites. It states the rationale for contemporary affirmative action as “corrective action” for these exclusionary policies and programs.

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Keller, J. (2007). Stereotype threat in classroom settings: The interactive effect of domain identification, task difficulty and stereotype threat on female students’ maths performance. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(2), 323–338.

Stereotype threat research revealed that negative stereotypes can disrupt the performance of persons targeted by such stereotypes. This paper contributes to stereotype threat research by providing evidence that domain identification and the difficulty level of test items moderate stereotype threat effects on female students’ maths performance.

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King MM, Bergstrom CT, Correll SJ, Jacquet J, West JD. Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time. Socius. January 2017. doi:10.1177/2378023117738903

How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper’s authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.

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Kozlowski, D., Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. R., & Monroe-White, T. (2022). Intersectional inequalities in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(2), e2113067119.

The US scientific workforce is primarily composed of White men. Studies have demonstrated the systemic barriers preventing women and other minoritized populations from gaining entry to science; few, however, have taken an intersectional perspective and examined the consequences of these inequalities on scientific knowledge. We provide a large-scale bibliometric analysis of the relationship between intersectional identities, topics, and scientific impact. We find homophily between identities and topic, suggesting a relationship between diversity in the scientific workforce and expansion of the knowledge base. However, topic selection comes at a cost to minoritized individuals for whom we observe both between- and within-topic citation disadvantages. To enhance the robustness of science, research organizations should provide adequate resources to historically underfunded research areas while simultaneously providing access for minoritized individuals into high-prestige networks and topics.

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Latu, I. M., Mast, M. S., Lammers, J., & Bombari, D. (2013). Successful female leaders empower women’s behavior in leadership tasks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 444–448.

Women are less likely than men to be associated with leadership, and the awareness of this stereotype may undermine women’s performance in leadership tasks. One way to circumvent this stereotype threat is to expose women to highly successful female role models. Although such exposures are known to decrease women’s leadership aspirations and self-evaluations, it is currently unknown what the effects of role models are on actual behavior during a challenging leadership task. We investigated whether highly successful female role models empower women’s behavior in a leadership task. In a virtual reality environment, 149 male and female students gave a public speech, while being subtly exposed to either a picture of Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Bill Clinton, or no picture. We recorded the length of speeches as an objective measure of empowered behavior in a stressful leadership task. Perceived speech quality was also coded by independent raters. Women spoke less than men when a Bill Clinton picture or no picture was presented. This gender difference disappeared when a picture of Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel was presented, with women showing a significant increase when exposed to a female role model compared to a male role model or no role models. Longer speaking times also translated into higher perceived speech quality for female participants. Empowered behavior also mediated the effects of female role models on women’s self-evaluated performance. In sum, subtle exposures to highly successful female leaders inspired women’s behavior and self-evaluations in stressful leadership tasks.

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Lauer, M. (2020, August 12). Institute and Center Award rates and funding disparities National Institutes of Health. Retrieved September 14, 2022, from https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2020/08/12/institute-and-center-award-rates-and-funding-disparities/

In 2011, Ginther et al. first demonstrated that African American and Black applicants to the National Institutes of Health received grant awards at a lower rate than their white counterparts. Since then, multiple studies have reproduced and extended this finding (Ginther 2016). Recently we reported that African American and Black (AAB) PIs are more likely to propose research on topics that are less likely to be funded. We found that topic choice has little or no effect on whether an application is chosen for discussion, but after considering a number of confounders, it accounts for over 20% of the gap in funding success for applications that are discussed.

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Lee, J. (2017). Parents in the Pipeline: Retaining Postdoctoral Researchers with Families. The Pregnant Scholar. Retrieved from http://www.thepregnantscholar.org/parents-in-the-pipeline/

While the numbers of women in STEM remain abysmally low, the rates of women’s academic achievement in other fields have reached or exceeded gender parity. One reason is that research appointments were not designed to be compatible with having a family, and the resulting strain pushes women – and many men – off their career track. This report, based on the first comprehensive nationwide survey of postdocs who have children, and institutional data provided by the National Postdoctoral Association, highlights the full dimensions of this parenthood leak in the STEM pipeline.

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Liera, R. (2020). Equity Advocates Using Equity-Mindedness to Interrupt Faculty Hiring’s Racial Structure. Teachers College Record, 122(9), 1–42.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The study examined faculty within search committees who received formal training to interrogate exclusionary hiring procedures and create race-conscious and equitable hiring practices. My goals were to understand the strategies and efforts to advance racial equity of faculty trained on equity-mindedness to negotiate and use practices to change exclusionary hiring procedures. Thus, I answer the following research questions: (1) How do professors enact their agency to create equitable hiring practices during faculty search committee meetings? (2) What challenges do professors encounter when using equity-minded practices during faculty search committees? How do professors overcome such challenges?

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Lincoln, A. E., Pincus, S., Koster, J. B., & Leboy, P. S. (2012). The Matilda Effect in science: Awards and prizes in the US, 1990s and 2000s. Social studies of science, 42(2), 307–320.

Science is stratified, with an unequal distribution of research facilities and rewards among scientists. Awards and prizes, which are critical for shaping scientific career trajectories, play a role in this stratification when they differentially enhance the status of scientists who already have large reputations: the ‘Matthew Effect’. Contrary to the Mertonian norm of universalism – the expectation that the personal attributes of scientists do not affect evaluations of their scientific claims and contributions—in practice, a great deal of evidence suggests that the scientific efforts and achievements of women do not receive the same recognition as do those of men: the ‘Matilda Effect’. Awards in science, technology, engineering and medical (STEM) fields are not immune to these biases. We outline the research on gender bias in evaluations of research and analyze data from 13 STEM disciplinary societies. While women’s receipt of professional awards and prizes has increased in the past two decades, men continue to win a higher proportion of awards for scholarly research than expected based on their representation in the nomination pool. The results support the powerful twin influences of implicit bias and committee chairs as contributing factors. The analysis sheds light on the relationship of external social factors to women’s science careers and helps to explain why women are severely underrepresented as winners of science awards. The ghettoization of women’s accomplishments into a category of ‘women-only’ awards also is discussed.

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Lucas, B. J., Berry, Z., Giurge, L. M., & Chugh, D. (2021). A longer shortlist increases the consideration of female candidates in male-dominant domains. doi:10.31219/osf.io/h7tnc

Making it onto the shortlist is often a crucial early step toward professional advancement. For under-represented candidates, one barrier to making the shortlist is the prevalence of informal recruitment practices (for example, colleague recommendations). The current research investigates informal shortlists generated in male-dominant domains (for example, technology executives) and tests a theory-driven intervention to increase the consideration of female candidates. Across ten studies (N = 5,741) we asked individuals to generate an informal shortlist of candidates for a male-dominant role and then asked them to extend the list. We consistently found more female candidates in the extended (versus initial) list. This longer shortlist effect occurs because continued response generation promotes divergence from the category prototype (for example, male technology executives). Studies 3 and 4 supported this mechanism, and study 5 tested the effect of shortlist length on selection decisions. This longer shortlist intervention is a low-cost and simple way to support gender equity efforts.

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MacNell, L., Driscoll, A., & Hunt, A. N. (2015). What’s in a name: Exposing gender bias in student ratings of teaching. Innovative Higher Education, 40(4), 291–303.

Student ratings of teaching play a significant role in career outcomes for higher education instructors. Although instructor gender has been shown to play an important role in influencing student ratings, the extent and nature of that role remains contested. While difficult to separate gender from teaching practices in person, it is possible to disguise an instructor’s gender identity online. In our experiment, assistant instructors in an online class each operated under two different gender identities. Students rated the male identity significantly higher than the female identity, regardless of the instructor’s actual gender, demonstrating gender bias. Given the vital role that student ratings play in academic career trajectories, this finding warrants considerable attention.

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Madera, J. M., Hebl, M. R., Dial, H., Martin, R., & Valian, V. (2018). Raising Doubt in Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Gender Differences and Their Impact. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1-17.

The extent of gender bias in academia continues to be an object of inquiry, and recent research has begun to examine the particular gender biases emblematic in letters of recommendations. This current two-part study examines differences in the number of doubt raisers that are written in 624 authentic letters of recommendations for 174 men and women applying for eight assistant professor positions (study 1) and the impact of these doubt raisers on 305 university professors who provided evaluations of recommendation letters (study 2). The results show that both male and female recommenders use more doubt raisers in letters of recommendations for women compared to men and that the presence of certain types of doubt raisers in letters of recommendations results in negative outcomes for both genders. Since doubt raisers are more frequent in letters for women than men, women are at a disadvantage relative to men in their applications for academic positions. We discuss the implications and need for additional future research and practice that (1) raises awareness that letter writers are gatekeepers who can improve or hinder women’s progress and (2) develops methods to eliminate the skewed use of doubt raisers.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Committee on Women Faculty. (1999). A study on the status of women faculty in science at MIT. The MIT Faculty Newsletter, XI(4).

This is the original MIT report that has spurred so many other studies

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McGee, E. O. (2020). Interrogating structural racism in stem higher education. Educational Researcher, 49(9), 633-644. doi:10.3102/0013189×20972718

The racialized structure of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) higher education maintains gross inequities that are illustrative of structural racism, which both informs and is reinforced by discriminatory beliefs, policies, values, and distribution of resources. Thus, an examination into structural racism in STEM is needed to expose the marginalization of underrepresented groups in STEM and to improve understanding of the STEM policies, practices, and procedures that allow the foundation of racism to remain intact. I argue that, even at the top of the education hierarchy, Black STEM doctorate students and PhD degree holders consistently endure the racist residue of higher education institutions and STEM employers. Thus, this manuscript also discusses how universities institutionalize diversity mentoring programs designed mostly to fix (read “assimilate”) underrepresented students of color while ignoring or minimizing the role of the STEM departments in creating racially hostile work and educational spaces. I argue that, without a critical examination of the structural racism omnipresent in the STEM, progress in racially diversifying STEM will continue at a snail’s pace.

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Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science: The reward and communication systems of science are considered. Science, 159(3810), 56-63.

This account of the Matthew effect is another small exercise in the psychosociological analysis of the workings of science as a social institution. The initial problem is transformed by a shift in theoretical perspective. As originally identified, the Matthew effect was construed in terms of enhancement of the position of already eminent scientists who are given disproportionate credit in cases of collaboration or of independent multiple discoveries. Its significance was thus confined to its implications for the reward system of science. By shifting the angle of vision, we note other possible kinds of consequences, this time for the communication system of science. The Matthew effect may serve to heighten the visibility of contributions to science by scientists of acknowledged standing and to reduce the visibility of contributions by authors who are less well known. We examine the psychosocial conditions and mechanisms underlying this effect and find a correlation between the redundancy function of multiple discoveries and the focalizing function of eminent men of science-a function which is reinforced by the great value these men place upon finding basic problems and by their self-assurance. This self-assurance, which is partly inherent, partly the result of experiences and associations in creative scientific environments, and partly a result of later social validation of their position, encourages them to search out risky but important problems and to highlight the results of their inquiry. A macrosocial version of the Matthew principle is apparently involved in those processes of social selection that currently lead to the concentration of scientific resources and talent (50).

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Mervis, J. (2005). A Glass ceiling for Asian scientists? Science, 310, 606–607.

This article documents the low rate of Asian and Asian American scientists at higher and leadership levels even in fields where they are relatively numerous at lower ranks.

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Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. A., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), 16474–16479.

Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.

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Nittrouer, C. L., Hebl, M. R., Ashburn-Nardo, L., Trump-Steele, R. C., Lane, D. M., & Valian, V. (2017). Gender disparities in colloquium speakers at top universities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(1), 104–108.

Colloquium talks at prestigious universities both create and reflect academic researchers’ reputations. Gender disparities in colloquium talks can arise through a variety of mechanisms. The current study examines gender differences in colloquium speakers at 50 prestigious US colleges and universities in 2013–2014. Using archival data, we analyzed 3,652 talks in six academic disciplines. Men were more likely than women to be colloquium speakers even after controlling for the gender and rank of the available speakers. Eliminating alternative explanations (e.g., women declining invitations more often than men), our follow-up data revealed that female and male faculty at top universities reported no differences in the extent to which they (i) valued and (ii) turned down speaking engagements. Additional data revealed that the presence of women as colloquium chairs (and potentially on colloquium committees) increased the likelihood of women appearing as colloquium speakers. Our data suggest that those who invite and schedule speakers serve as gender gatekeepers with the power to create or reduce gender differences in academic reputations.

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Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002). Harvesting implicit group attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration website. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 6, 101–115.

This article demonstrates widely shared schemas, particularly “implicit” or unconscious ones, about race, age and gender.

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Oreopoulos, P. (2011). Why do skilled immigrants struggle in the labor market? A field experiment with thirteen thousand resumes. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 3(4), 148–171.

Thousands of randomly manipulated resumes were sent in response to online job postings in Toronto to investigate why immigrants, allowed in based on skill, struggle in the labor market. The study finds substantial discrimination across a variety of occupations towards applicants with foreign experience or those with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Greek names compared with English names. Listing language fluency, multinational firm experience, education from highly selective schools, or active extracurricular activities had no diminishing effect. Recruiters justify this behavior based on language skill concerns but fail to fully account for offsetting features when listed.

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Page, S. E. (2007). Making the difference: Applying a logic of diversity. Academy of Management Perspectives, 21, 6–20.

This article explains why corporate spending of billions of dollars on diversity training, education, and outreach makes good business sense and why organizations with diverse employees often perform best. This is done by describing a logic of diversity that relies on simple frameworks. Within these frameworks, it is demonstrated how collections of individuals with diverse tools can outperform collections of high “ability” individuals at problem solving and predictive tasks. In problem solving, these benefits come not through portfolio effects but from superadditivity: Combinations of tools can be more powerful than the tools themselves. In predictive tasks, diversity in predictive models reduces collective error. Page shows that diversity matters just as much as highly accurate models when making collective predictions. This logic of diversity provides a foundation on which to construct practices that leverage differences to improve performance.

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Phelan, J. E., Moss-Racusin, C. A., & Rudman, L. A. (2008). Competent yet out in the cold: Shifting criteria for hiring reflect backlash toward agentic women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32(4), 406–413.

The authors present evidence that shifting hiring criteria reflects backlash toward agentic (“masterful”) women (Rudman, 1998). Participants (N = 428) evaluated male or female agentic or communal managerial applicants on dimensions of competence, social skills, and hireability. Consistent with past research, agentic women were perceived as highly competent but deficient in social skills, compared with agentic men. New to the present research, social skills predicted hiring decisions more than competence for agentic women; for all other applicants, competence received more weight than social skills. Thus, evaluators shifted the job criteria away from agentic women’s strong suit (competence) and toward their perceived deficit (social skills) to justify hiring discrimination. The implications of these findings for women’s professional success are discussed.

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Porter, N., & Geis, F. L. (1981). Women and nonverbal leadership cues: When seeing is not believing. In C. Mayo & N. Henley (Eds.), Gender and nonverbal behavior (pp. 39–61). New York, NY: Springer Verlag.

When study participants were asked to identify the leader of the group, they reliably picked the person sitting at the head of the table whether the group was all-male, all-female, or mixed-sex with a male occupying the head; however, when the pictured group was mixed-sex and a woman was at the head of the table, both male and female observers chose a male sitting on the side of the table as the leader half of the time.

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Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53. doi:10.1177/0003122418822335

Organizational theory scholars typically see organizations as race-neutral bureaucratic structures, while race and ethnicity scholars have largely neglected the role of organizations in the social construction of race. The theory developed in this article bridges these subfields, arguing that organizations are racial structures—cognitive schemas connecting organizational rules to social and material resources. I begin with the proposition that race is constitutive of organizational foundations, hierarchies, and processes. Next, I develop four tenets: (1) racialized organizations enhance or diminish the agency of racial groups; (2) racialized organizations legitimate the unequal distribution of resources; (3) Whiteness is a credential; and (4) the decoupling of formal rules from organizational practice is often racialized. I argue that racialization theory must account for how both state policy and individual attitudes are filtered through—and changed by—organizations. Seeing race as constitutive of organizations helps us better understand the formation and everyday functioning of organizations. Incorporating organizations into a structural theory of racial inequality can help us better understand stability, change, and the institutionalization of racial inequality. I conclude with an overview of internal and external sources of organizational change and a discussion of how the theory of racialized organizations may set the agenda for future research.

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Rivera, L. A. (2017). When two bodies are (not) a problem: Gender and relationship status discrimination in academic hiring. American Sociological Review, 82(6), 1111–1138.

Junior faculty search committees serve as gatekeepers to the professoriate and play vital roles in shaping the demographic composition of academic departments and disciplines, but how committees select new hires has received minimal scholarly attention. In this article, I highlight one mechanism of gender inequalities in academic hiring: relationship status discrimination. Through a qualitative case study of junior faculty search committees at a large R1 university, I show that committees actively considered women’s—but not men’s—relationship status when selecting hires. Drawing from gendered scripts of career and family that present men’s careers as taking precedence over women’s, committee members assumed that heterosexual women whose partners held academic or high-status jobs were not “movable,” and excluded such women from offers when there were viable male or single female alternatives. Conversely, committees infrequently discussed male applicants’ relationship status and saw all female partners as movable. Consequently, I show that the “two-body problem” is a gendered phenomenon embedded in cultural stereotypes and organizational practices that can disadvantage women in academic hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications of such relationship status discrimination for sociological research on labor market inequalities and faculty diversity.

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Rosette, A. S., Leonardelli, G. J., Phillips, K. W. (2008). The White standard: Racial bias in leader categorization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(4), 758–776.

In 4 experiments, the authors investigated whether race is perceived to be part of the business leader prototype and, if so, whether it could explain differences in evaluations of White and non-White leaders. The first 2 studies revealed that “being White” is perceived to be an attribute of the business leader prototype, where participants assumed that business leaders more than nonleaders were White, and this inference occurred regardless of base rates about the organization’s racial composition (Study 1), the racial composition of organizational roles, the business industry, and the types of racial minority groups in the organization (Study 2). The final 2 studies revealed that a leader categorization explanation could best account for differences in White and non-White leader evaluations, where White targets were evaluated as more effective leaders (Study 3) and as having more leadership potential (Study 4), but only when the leader had recently been given credit for organizational success, consistent with the prediction that leader prototypes are more likely to be used when they confirm and reinforce individualized information about a leader’s performance. The results demonstrate a connection between leader race and leadership categorization.

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Ross, D. A., Boatright, D., Nunez-Smith, M., Jordan, A., Chekroud, A., & Moore, E. Z. (2017). Differences in words used to describe racial and gender groups in medical student performance evaluations. PloS one, 12(8).

The transition from medical school to residency is a critical step in the careers of physicians. Because of the standardized application process–wherein schools submit summative Medical Student Performance Evaluations (MSPE’s)–it also represents a unique opportunity to assess the possible prevalence of racial and gender disparities, as shown elsewhere in medicine.

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Russ, T. L., Simonds, C. J., & Hunt, S. K. (2002). Coming out in the classroom . . . an occupational hazard?: The influence of sexual orientation on teacher credibility and perceived student learning. Communication Education, 51(3), 14.

This study examined the influence of instructor sexual orientation on perceptions of teacher credibility. The purpose was to determine if college students perceive gay teachers as less credible than straight teachers. In addition, the researchers sought to explore the role of teacher credibility in terms of perceived student learning. In order to examine these variables, a male confederate presented a lecture on cultural influences to 154 undergraduate students enrolled in eight separate introductory communication classes. In each class, the confederate was careful to keep his delivery and immediacy cues (e.g. vocal expressiveness, movement, and eye contact) natural and consistent. The confederate’s sexual orientation, however, was systematically manipulated. Findings indicate that students perceive a gay teacher as significantly less credible than a straight teacher. This study also found that students of a gay teacher perceive that they learn considerably less than students of a straight teacher. To help explain the complex reasons behind students’ biased evaluations, the authors have included an in-depth qualitative analysis of participants’ responses.

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Sackett, P. R., DuBois, C. L. Z., & Noe, A. W. (1991). Tokenism in performance evaluation: the effects of work group representation on male-female and white-black differences in performance ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(2), 263–267.

Male-female differences in performance ratings were examined in 486 work groups across a wide variety of jobs and organizations. As suggested by the sex stereotyping literature, women received lower ratings when the proportion of women in the group was small, even after male-female cognitive ability, psychomotor ability, education, and experience differences were controlled. Replication of the analyses with racial differences (White-Black) in 814 work groups demonstrated that group composition had little effect on performance ratings. The effects of group composition on stereotyping behaviors do not appear to generalize to all minority contexts

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Schiebinger, L. L., Henderson, A. D., & Gilmartin, S. K. (2008). Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know (pp. 1–98). Stanford, CA: The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

Meeting the needs and expectations of dual-career academic couples—while still ensuring the high quality of university faculty—is the next great challenge facing universities. Academic couples comprise 36 per-cent of the American professoriate—representing a deep pool of talent. The proportion of academic couples (i.e., couples in which both partners are academics) at four-year institutions nationally has not changed since 1989. What has changed is the rate at which universities are hiring couples. Academic couple hiring has increased from 3 percent in the 1970s to 13 percent since 2000. In a recent survey of Canadian science deans, couple hiring emerged as one of the thorniest issues confronting their faculties. Administrators in this study concur.

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Schmader, T., Whitehead, J., & Wysocki, V. H. (2007). A linguistic comparison of letters of recommendation for male and female chemistry and biochemistry job applicants. Sex Roles, 57(7-8), 509–514.

Letters of recommendation are central to the hiring process. However, gender stereotypes could bias how recommenders describe female compared to male applicants. In the current study, text analysis software was used to examine 886 letters of recommendation written on behalf of 235 male and 42 female applicants for either a chemistry or biochemistry faculty position at a large U.S. research university. Results revealed more similarities than differences in letters written for male and female candidates. However, recommenders used significantly more standout adjectives to describe male as compared to female candidates. Letters containing more standout words also included more ability words and fewer grindstone words. Research is needed to explore how differences in language use affect perceivers’ evaluations of female candidates

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Sekaquaptewa, D. (2014). On being the solo faculty member of color: Research evidence from field and laboratory studies. In S. A. Fryberg & E. J. Martinez (Eds.), The truly diverse faculty: New dialogues in American higher education (future of Minority Studies) (pp. 99–124). New York, NY: St. Martins Press LLC.

In 1988, Duke University had a plan. In a large effort to diversify their faculty, each of their 56 departments was mandated to hire one black faculty member within five years. Five years later, administrators conceded that although 25 new black faculty members had been hired, 18 had left the university. What the administrators may have failed to recognize is that hiring only one person of color per academic department can create demonstrable negative experiences and outcomes directly attributable to the situation of solo status, or being the only member of one’s racial group in the department. In this chapter, I review research addressing the issues faced by junior faculty of color (JFC) who face, as these newly hired black faculty likely faced, being one of few or the only person of color in his or her department. This research provides insight into the heightened visibility experienced by such faculty members and how it influences the career experiences of JFC, and suggests potential strategies for reducing negative outcomes.

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Sekaquaptewa, D., Takahashi, K., Malley, J., Herzog, K., Bliss, S. (2019) An evidence-based faculty recruitment workshop influences departmental hiring practice perceptions among university faculty. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 38 (2), 188-210.

Many university programs seek to promote faculty diversity by reducing biases in hiring processes. The purpose of this paper is to conduct two studies to test the individual- and department-level impact of a faculty recruitment workshop (FRW) on faculty attitudes toward evidence-based, equitable hiring practices.

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Sensoy, Ö., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). “We are all for diversity, but…”: How faculty hiring committees reproduce Whiteness and practical suggestions for how they can change. Harvard Educational Review, 87(4), 557–580.

Despite stated commitments to diversity, predominantly White academic institutions still have not increased racial diversity among their faculty. In this article Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy focus on one entry point for doing so—the faculty hiring process. They analyze a typical faculty hiring scenario and identify the most common practices that block the hiring of diverse faculty and protect Whiteness and offer con-structive alternative practices to guide hiring committees in their work to realize the institution’s commitment to diversity.

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Settles, I. H., Buchanan, N. T., & Dotson, K. (2019). Scrutinized but not recognized: (In)visibility and hypervisibility experiences of faculty of color. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 113, 62-74. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.003

Because of their minority group status and underrepresentation, faculty of color (FOC) are tokens and as such, are highly visible within the academy. Paradoxically, token status may result in their being made to feel simultaneously invisible (e.g., accomplishments are unimportant, lack of belonging) and hypervisible (e.g., heightened scrutiny). Drawing from 118 interviews, we identified six themes related to how Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and American Indian faculty members at a single, predominantly White, research-intensive university, describe issues of (in) visibility at work. FOC experienced hypervisibility when they were treated as Tokens and used to represent diversity within the institution, and they felt invisible when they experienced Social and Professional Exclusion and Epistemic Exclusion (i.e., lack of recognition for their scholarship and achievements) from colleagues. FOC responded to tokenism and exclusion using three (in)visibility strategies: Strategic Invisibility (i.e., disengaging with colleagues while remaining engaged with their scholarly activities) to remove themselves from negative environments; Working Harder to prove themselves, counter exclusion, and create positive visibility; and Disengagement (i.e., removed effort from work). Our analysis suggests that a lack of control over one’s (in) visibility is problematic for FOC. In response, FOC may attempt to increase or decrease their own visibility to counter such experiences, often with some positive effects.

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Settles, I. H., Jones, M. K., Buchanan, N. T. & Brassel, S. T. (2021). Epistemic exclusion of women faculty and faculty of color: Understanding scholar(ly) devaluation as a predictor of turnover intentions. Journal of Higher Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2021.1914494

Faculty of color experience a number of challenges within academia, including tokenism, marginalization, racial microaggressions, and a disconnect between their racial/ethnic culture and the culture within academia. The present study examined epistemic exclusion as another challenge in which formal institutional systems of evaluation combine with individual biases toward faculty of color to devalue their scholarship and deem them illegitimate as scholars. Using data from interviews with 118 faculty of color from a single predominantly White, research-intensive institution, we found that epistemic exclusion occurs through formal hierarchies that determine how scholarship is valued and the metrics used to assess quality, and through informal processes that further convey to faculty of color that they and their scholarship are devalued. In addition, there was variability in reporting these experiences by race, gender, nationality, and discipline. We found that faculty of color coped with epistemic exclusion by being assertive and by seeking validation and support outside the institution. Finally, participants described a number of negative work-related and psychological consequences of their epistemic exclusion. We discuss epistemic exclusion as a form of academic gatekeeping that impedes the recruitment, advancement, and retention of faculty of color and offer strategies to address this barrier.

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Settles, I. H., Warner, L. R., Buchanan, N. T., & Jones, M. K. (2020). Understanding psychology’s resistance to intersectionality theory using a framework of epistemic exclusion and invisibility. Journal of Social Issues, 76(4), 796-813.

Although intersectionality has become part of the everyday lexicon, the field of psychology has demonstrated resistance to the theory, which we argue reflects epistemic exclusion. Epistemic exclusion is the devaluation of some scholarship as illegitimate and certain scholars as lacking credibility. We suggest that intersectionality has been epistemically excluded because it challenges dominant psychological norms about the scientific process and has been most readily endorsed by psychologists from marginalized groups. We provide evidence that epistemic exclusion has occurred through formal means (e.g., exclusion from mainstream journals) and informal processes (e.g., repeated misrepresentation of the theory). We use visibility theory to highlight the role of disciplinary power in this process, such that dominant psychologists act as gatekeepers. Finally, we discuss how the epistemic exclusion of intersectionality is a barrier to social issues scholarship and social justice in psychology, and offer structural recommendations for intersectionality’s epistemic inclusion.

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Shaw, A. K., & Stanton, D. E. (2012). Leaks in the pipeline: separating demographic inertia from ongoing gender differences in academia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 279(1743), 3736–3741.

Identification of the causes underlying the underrepresentation of women and minorities in academia is a source of ongoing concern and controversy. This is a critical issue in ensuring the openness and diversity of academia; yet differences in personal experiences and interpretations have mired it in controversy. We construct a simple model of the academic career that can be used to identify general trends, and separate the demographic effects of historical differences from ongoing biological or cultural gender differences. We apply the model to data on academics collected by the National Science Foundation (USA) over the past three decades, across all of science and engineering, and within six disciplines (agricultural and biological sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, physical sciences, psychology, and social sciences). We show that the hiring and retention of women in academia have been affected by both demographic inertia and gender differences, but that the relative influence of gender differences appears to be dwindling for most disciplines and career transitions. Our model enables us to identify the two key non-structural bottlenecks restricting female participation in academia: choice of undergraduate major and application to faculty positions. These transitions are those in greatest need of detailed study and policy development.

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Sheltzer, J. M., & Smith, J. C. (2014). Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(28), 10107–10112.

Women make up over one-half of all doctoral recipients in biology-related fields but are vastly underrepresented at the faculty level in the life sciences. To explore the current causes of women’s underrepresentation in biology, we collected publicly accessible data from university directories and faculty websites about the composition of biology laboratories at leading academic institutions in the United States. We found that male faculty members tended to employ fewer female graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (postdocs) than female faculty members did. Furthermore, elite male faculty—those whose research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, or who had won a major career award—trained significantly fewer women than other male faculty members. In contrast, elite female faculty did not exhibit a gender bias in employment patterns. New assistant professors at the institutions that we surveyed were largely comprised of postdoctoral researchers from these prominent laboratories, and correspondingly, the laboratories that produced assistant professors had an overabundance of male postdocs. Thus, one cause of the leaky pipeline in biomedical research may be the exclusion of women, or their self-selected absence, from certain high-achieving laboratories.

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Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 10(1), 80–83.

Recent studies have documented that performance in a domain is hindered when individuals feel that a sociocultural group to which they belong is negatively stereotyped in that domain. We report that implicit activation of a social identity can facilitate as well as impede performance on a quantitative task. When a particular social identity was made salient at an implicit level, performance was altered in the direction predicted by the stereotype associated with the identity. Common cultural stereotypes hold that Asians have superior quantitative skills compared with other ethnic groups and that women have inferior quantitative skills compared with men. We found that Asian-American women performed better on a mathematics test when their ethnic identity was activated, but worse when their gender identity was activated, compared with a control group who had neither identity activated. Cross-cultural investigation indicated that it was the stereotype, and not the identity per se, that influenced performance.

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Sommers, S. (2006). On racial diversity and group decision making: Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(4), 597–612.

This research examines the multiple effects of racial diversity on group decision making. Participants deliberated on the trial of a Black defendant as members of racially homogeneous or heterogeneous mock juries. Half of the groups were exposed to pretrial jury selection questions about racism and half were not. Deliberation analyses supported the prediction that diverse groups would exchange a wider range of information than all-White groups. This finding was not wholly attributable to the performance of Black participants, as Whites cited more case facts, made fewer errors, and were more amenable to discussion of racism when in diverse versus all-White groups. Even before discussion, Whites in diverse groups were more lenient toward the Black defendant, demonstrating that the effects of diversity do not occur solely through information exchange. The influence of jury selection questions extended previous findings that blatant racial issues at trial increase leniency toward a Black defendant.

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Stacy, A., Goulden, M., Frasch, K., & Broughton, J. (2018). Searching for a Diverse Faculty: Data-Driven Recommendations (pp. 1-54, Rep.). Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Report and data appendices available at: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/equity/uc-berkeley-data

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Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co.

Through dramatic personal stories, Claude Steele shares the experiments and studies that show, again and again, that exposing subjects to stereotypes—merely reminding a group of female math majors about to take a math test, for example, that women are considered naturally inferior to men at math—impairs their performance in the area affected by the stereotype. Steele’s conclusions shed new light on a host of American social phenomena, from the racial and gender gaps in standardized test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men. Steele explicates the dilemmas that arise in every American’s life around issues of identity, from the white student whose grades drop steadily in his African American Studies class to the female engineering students deciding whether or not to attend predominantly male professional conferences. Whistling Vivaldi offers insight into how we form our senses of identity and ultimately lays out a plan for mitigating the negative effects of “stereotype threat” and reshaping American identities.

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Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811.

Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group. Studies 1 and 2 varied the stereotype vulnerability of Black participants taking a difficult verbal test by varying whether or not their performance was ostensibly diagnostic of ability, and thus, whether or not they were at risk of fulfilling the racial stereotype about their intellectual ability. Reflecting the pressure of this vulnerability, Blacks underperformed in relation to Whites in the ability-diagnostic condition but not in the nondiagnostic condition (with Scholastic Aptitude Tests controlled). Study 3 validated that ability-diagnosticity cognitively activated the racial stereotype in these participants and motivated them not to conform to it, or to be judged by it. Study 4 showed that mere salience of the stereotype could impair Blacks’ performance even when the test was not ability diagnostic. The role of stereotype vulnerability in the standardized test performance of ability-stigmatized groups is discussed.

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Steinpreis, R. E., Anders, K. A., & 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.

The authors of this study submitted the same c.v. for consideration by academic psychologists, sometimes with a man’s name at the top, sometimes with a woman’s. In one comparison, applicants for an entry-level faculty position were evaluated. Both men and women were more likely to hire the “male” candidate than the “female” candidate, and rated his qualifications as higher, despite identical credentials. In contrast, men and women were equally likely to recommend tenure for the “male” and “female” candidates (and rated their qualifications equally), though there were signs that they were more tentative in their conclusions about the (identical) “female” candidates for tenure.

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Stevens, K. R., Masters, K. S., Imoukhuede, P. I., Haynes, K. A., Setton, L. A., Cosgriff-Hernandez, E., … & Eniola-Adefeso, O. (2021). Fund black scientists. Cell, 184(3), 561-565.

Our nationwide network of BME women faculty collectively argue that racial funding disparity by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) remains the most insidious barrier to success of Black faculty in our profession. We thus refocus attention on this critical barrier and suggest solutions on how it can be dismantled.

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Stewart, A. J., & Valian, V. (2018). An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence. MIT Press.

In this book, the authors argue that diversity and excellence go hand in hand and provide guidance for achieving both. Stewart and Valian, themselves senior academics, support their argument with comprehensive data from a range of disciplines. They show why merit is often overlooked; they offer statistics and examples of individual experiences of exclusion, such as being left out of crucial meetings; and they outline institutional practices that keep exclusion invisible, including reliance on proxies for excellence, such as prestige, that disadvantage outstanding candidates who are not members of the white male majority. Most importantly, the authors provide practical advice for overcoming obstacles to inclusion.

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Stewart, A. J., Malley, J. E., & Herzog, K. A. (2016). Increasing the representation of women faculty in STEM departments: What makes a difference?. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 22(1), 23–47.

The focus of this paper is on the process of increasing the representation of women in STEM as it occurred in academic departments within a research university explicitly committed to diversifying the faculty in science and engineering fields. The authors used thematic analysis of interviews with 59 senior faculty drawn from 20 departments to identify forces that enabled or constrained demographic change over 13 years. The accounts by faculty from departments that most increased the representation of women included references to four enabling forces (open recognition of a serious problem coupled with shame about past circumstances; strong leadership on diversity from one or more department chairs; change-enabling features of the departmental and disciplinary context; and proactivity in pursuing diversity). The accounts by faculty from departments that did not increase diversity at all included reference to three constraining forces (viewing other priorities as more important than diversity; external factors that constrain or limit the possibility of change; and unfavorable features of the departmental context). Departments that increased faculty diversity somewhat expressed some enabling and some constraining forces, and omitted some. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for successful departmental change, particularly in the context of larger institutional change efforts.

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Stone, J., Lynch, C. I., Sjomeling, M., & Darley, J. M. (1999). Stereotype threat effects on Black and White athletic performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1213–1227.

Two experiments showed that framing an athletic task as diagnostic of negative racial stereotypes about Black or White athletes can impede their performance in sports. In Experiment 1, Black participants performed significantly worse than did control participants when performance on a golf task was framed as diagnostic of “sports intelligence.” In comparison, White participants performed worse than did control participants when the golf task was framed as diagnostic of “natural athletic ability.” Experiment 2 observed the effect of stereotype threat on the athletic performance of White participants for whom performance in sports represented a significant measure of their self-worth. The implications of the findings for the theory of stereotype threat (C. M. Steele, 1997) and for participation in sports are discussed.

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Storage, D., Horne, Z., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2016). The frequency of “brilliant” and “genius” in teaching evaluations predicts the representation of women and African Americans across fields. PloS one, 11(3).

Women and African Americans—groups targeted by negative stereotypes about their intellectual abilities—may be underrepresented in careers that prize brilliance and genius. A recent nationwide survey of academics provided initial support for this possibility. Fields whose practitioners believed that natural talent is crucial for success had fewer female and African American PhDs. The present study seeks to replicate this initial finding with a different, and arguably more naturalistic, measure of the extent to which brilliance and genius are prized within a field. Specifically, we measured field-by-field variability in the emphasis on these intellectual qualities by tallying—with the use of a recently released online tool—the frequency of the words “brilliant” and “genius” in over 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, a popular website where students can write anonymous evaluations of their instructors. This simple word count predicted both women’s and African Americans’ representation across the academic spectrum. That is, we found that fields in which the words “brilliant” and “genius” were used more frequently on RateMyProfessors.com also had fewer female and African American PhDs.

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Sue, D. W., Alsaidi, S., Awad, M. N., Glaeser, E., Calle, C. Z., & Mendez, N. (2019). Disarming racial microaggressions: Microintervention strategies for targets, White allies, and bystanders. American Psychologist, 74(1), 128-142. doi:10.1037/amp0000296

Given the immense harm inflicted on individuals and groups of color via prejudice and discrimination, it becomes imperative for our nation to begin the process of disrupting, dismantling, and disarming the constant onslaught of micro- and macroaggressions. For too long, acceptance, silence, passivity, and inaction have been the predominant, albeit ineffective, strategies for coping with microaggressions. Inaction does nothing but support and proliferate biased perpetrator behaviors which occur at individual, institutional and societal levels. This article introduces a new strategic framework developed for addressing microaggressions that moves beyond coping and survival to concrete action steps and dialogues that targets, allies, and bystanders can perform (microinterventions). A review of responses to racist acts, suggest that microaggression reactions/interventions may be primarily to (a) remain passive, retreat, or give up; (b) strike back or hurt the aggressor; (c) stop, diminish, deflect, or put an end to the harmful act; (d) educate the perpetrator; (e) validate and support the targets; (f) act as an ally; (g) seek social support; (h) enlist outside authority or institutional intervention; or (h) achieve any combination of these objectives. We organize these responses into four major strategic goals of microinterventions: (a) make the invisible visible, (b) disarm the microaggression, (c) educate the perpetrator, and (d) seek external reinforcement or support. The objectives and rationale for each goal are discussed, along with specific microintervention tactics to employ and examples of how they are executed.

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Sy, T., Shore, L. M., Strauss, J., Shore, T. H., Tram, S., Whiteley, P., & Ikeda-Muromachi, K. (2010). Leadership perceptions as a function of race-occupation fit: The case of Asian Americans. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(5), 902–919.

On the basis of the connectionist model of leadership, we examined perceptions of leadership as a function of the contextual factors of race (Asian American, Caucasian American) and occupation (engineering, sales) in 3 experiments (1 student sample and 2 industry samples). Race and occupation exhibited differential effects for within- and between-race comparisons. With regard to within-race comparisons, leadership perceptions of Asian Americans were higher when race–occupation was a good fit (engineer position) than when race–occupation was a poor fit (sales position) for the two industry samples. With regard to between-race comparisons, leadership perceptions of Asian Americans were low relative to those of Caucasian Americans. Additionally, when race–occupation was a good fit for Asian Americans, such individuals were evaluated higher on perceptions of technical competence than were Caucasian Americans, whereas they were evaluated lower when race–occupation was a poor fit. Furthermore, our results demonstrated that race affects leadership perceptions through the activation of prototypic leadership attributes (i.e., implicit leadership theories). Implications for the findings are discussed in terms of the connectionist model of leadership and leadership opportunities for Asian Americans.

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Sylvester, C.C., Sanchez-Parkinson, L., Yettaw, Matthew, Chavous, T. (2019) The Promise of Diversity Statements: Insights and an Initial Framework Developed from a Faculty Search Process. Currents, 1(1), 151-170 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/currents.17387731.0001.112

The representation of various personal and social identities among the faculty is important to the intellectual and cultural richness of our campuses, but it is also critically important to examine the many ways that faculty may think about and work to enhance DEI on their campuses. Doing so will allow us to more fully understand faculty DEI contributions as intellectual work and would help counter the tendency to equate “diversity contribution” with individuals’ identity groups (racial/ethnic, gender, social class, sexual orientation. etc.) within hiring and evaluation processes, a common phenomenon in higher education and in many organizational contexts. Furthermore, conflating diversity contribution with group membership or identity categories tied to ideological values in this way could lead to confusion or skepticism about the value of diversity statements.

As such, it is important for hiring units/departments to be clear about what they mean by diversity contributions and to: (a) conceptualize diversity/DEI commitments as part of the intellectual work of faculty, entailing the DEI-relevant knowledge, skills, competencies that individuals would use in their faculty roles, rather than simply identity membership or ideological beliefs; (b) explicitly articulate this definition to prospective applicants; and (c) provide prospective applicants with guidance around this definition, including examples that reflect the diverse ways that faculty might demonstrate their commitments to DEI through their scholarly work, teaching and mentoring, and/or service and engagement efforts.

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Temm, T. B. (2008). If you meet the expectations of women, you exceed the expectations of men: How Volvo designed a car for women customers and made world headlines. In L. Schiebinger (Ed.), Gendered Innovation in Science and Engineering (pp. 131–149). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

This article describes how a concept car designed by women was rated highly by men.

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Terrell, J., Kofink, A., Middleton, J., Rainear, C., Murphy-Hill, E., Parnin, C., & Stallings, J. (2017). Gender differences and bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men. PeerJ Computer Science, 3, e111.

The likelihood of computer code modifications being accepted by an open source software community was examined. When the gender of the contributor was unknown, women’s contributions were more likely to be accepted than men’s. When the gender was known, the opposite was true.

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Tilcsik, A. (2011). Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States. American Journal of Sociology 117(2), 586–626.

This article presents the first large-scale audit study of discrimination against openly gay men in the United States. Pairs of fictitious résumés were sent in response to 1,769 job postings in seven states. One résumé in each pair was randomly assigned experience in a gay campus organization, and the other résumé was assigned a control organization. Two main findings have emerged. First, in some but not all states, there was significant discrimination against the fictitious applicants who appeared to be gay. This geographic variation in the level of discrimination appears to reflect regional differences in attitudes and antidiscrimination laws. Second, employers who emphasized the importance of stereotypically male heterosexual traits were particularly likely to discriminate against openly gay men. Beyond these particular findings, this study advances the audit literature more generally by covering multiple regions and by highlighting how audit techniques may be used to identify stereotypes that affect employment decisions in real labor markets.

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

This study compares over 300 letters of recommendation for successful candidates for medical school faculty positions. Letters written for female applicants differed systematically from those written for male applicants in terms of length, in the percentages lacking basic features, in the percentages with “doubt raising” language, and in the frequency of mention of status terms.  In addition, the most common possessive phrases for female and male applicants (“her teaching” and “his research”) reinforce gender schemas that emphasize women’s roles as teachers and students and men’s as researchers and professionals.

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Valian, V. (1998). Chapter 1: Gender schemas at work; Chapter 7: Evaluating women and men. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This book attempts to uncover the invisible barriers that prevent women from achieving the same professional success as men. Valian’s arguments are based on statistical laboratory and field studies and center around gender schemas – our implicit hypotheses about sex differences. Though gender schemas are not entirely inaccurate, Valian argues that schemas alter our ability to evaluate men and women without bias. In general, the schema of a woman is incompatible with the schema of a successful professional. The consequence is that professional women are often underrated, while their male counterparts are overrated. Because of these imbalances, however slight, women accumulate advantage at a slower rate than men.

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Way, S. F., Morgan, A. C., Larremore, D. B., & Clauset, A. (2019). Productivity, prominence, and the effects of academic environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(22), 10729-10733.

Faculty at prestigious institutions produce more scientific papers, receive more citations and scholarly awards, and are typically trained at more-prestigious institutions than faculty with less prestigious appointments. This imbalance is often attributed to a meritocratic system that sorts individuals into more-prestigious positions according to their reputation, past achievements, and potential for future scholarly impact. Here, we investigate the determinants of scholarly productivity and measure their dependence on past training and current work environments. To distinguish the effects of these environments, we apply a matched-pairs experimental design to career and productivity trajectories of 2,453 early-career faculty at all 205 PhD-granting computer science departments in the United States and Canada, who together account for over 200,000 publications and 7.4 million citations. Our results show that the prestige of faculty’s current work environment, not their training environment, drives their future scientific productivity, while current and past locations drive prominence. Furthermore, the characteristics of a work environment are more predictive of faculty productivity and impact than mechanisms representing preferential selection or retention of more-productive scholars by more-prestigious departments. These results identify an environmental mechanism for cumulative advantage, in which an individual’s past successes are “locked in” via placement into a more prestigious environment, which directly facilitates future success. The scientific productivity of early-career faculty is thus driven by where they work, rather than where they trained for their doctorate, indicating a limited role for doctoral prestige in predicting scientific contributions.

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Weichselbaumer, D. (2003). Sexual orientation discrimination in hiring. Labour Economics, 10, 629–642.

Little research has been done to examine discrimination against gays and lesbians in the labor market. Wage regressions have documented lower incomes for gays but repeatedly showed higher incomes for lesbians. The results concerning lesbian women are striking but can be reconciled with the existence of labor market discrimination, however. Problems like sample selection and unobserved heterogeneity—in particular, lesbians’ violation of stereotypical female gender roles—might be responsible for their higher earnings. To investigate whether discrimination against lesbians actually does exist, a labor market experiment is conducted. Job applications of candidates, who are equivalent in their human capital but differ in their sexual orientation, are sent out in response to job advertisements. Furthermore, to test whether increased masculinity affects labor market outcomes, the applicants differ in their perceived gender identity. While results show a strong negative effect for lesbian orientation, gender identity does not have a significant overall impact on hiring chances.

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Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature, 387, 341–343.

This study assessed gender differences in ratings applications of postdoctoral fellowships from the Swedish Medical Research Council, as well as predictors of those ratings. Overall, female applicants were rated lower than male applicants, and therefore the rate of awards to females was lower than that to males. Using objective criteria of scientific productivity, the researchers found that in fact female applicants had to be 2.5 times more productive than their male counterparts in order to receive the same “competence” ratings from reviewers. Parallel findings were reported for U.S. funding agencies in a 1994 GAO report on Peer Review: Reforms Needed to Ensure Fairness in Federal Agency Grant Selection. Related issues have been raised in the recent (2004) GAO report Gender Issues: Women’s Participation in the Sciences has Increased, But Agencies Need to Do More to Ensure Compliance with Title IX.

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Yoshino, Kenji. (2006, January 15). The pressure to cover. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/magazine/15gays.html

In this article Yoshino discusses the underlying discriminatory practice of forcing minorities to assimilate into the mainstream culture by covering mutable cultural traits. A wide range of minorities is explored to illustrate how prone to injustice the American melting pot can be when faced with diversity.

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