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The speaker introduces her research on gender inequality, explaining her focus on formal and informal organizational processes. She also outlines her multi-method approach using experiments, surveys, field data, and interviews.
hi everyone thank you so much for having me um before we get started I can give you a quick overview of my research program the methods I take and the goals of my research more broadly um I startedstudying gender inequality in my doctoral program at Carnegie melon um but before that I was interested in studying these issues from when I was a student at Wellsley College um the reason why I'm so interested in studying genderinequality is because despite the fact that we've made a lot of progress in society more broadly towards Equity um gender Equity there still is a lot more progress still to be made these issues we've seen stalling in termsof pay gaps and inequity persistent in equity and career advancement rates um and so my the goal of my research program is to continue to investigate what why are these gaps persisting um I do that through studying both
formal and informal processes in organizations and careers and so what I mean by that is formal processes are these gatekeeping Pro procedures that we have hiring decisions promotion decisions task assignments things like that um and there's evidence thatdiscrimination can occur there as well as more implicit biases and so I have a paper that looks at how even when women have reached high levels of qualification they still face different types of negative biases about their careercommitment um I also study informal processes so these are all of the other ways that help you advance in your career beyond the formal steps you take through hiring and promotion so the main focus is on mentorship andsponsorship this is when senior colleagues lend their time expertise and Social Capital to help you develop skills help you develop your network use their social capital to then identify career opportunities for you that help push you up the
organizational lad and research shows that while mentorship is really important sponsorship is really what uh is impactful in terms of career advancement and so that's why I study both of those processes um I take a multi-methods approach whichmeans I do both quantitative and qualitative data analysis so I do both behavioral experiments surveys and the field field I also do in-depth interviews with Leaders with the goal of gaining both deeply contextualized insights from people working withinorganizations as well as broader more generalizable findings um from larger data sets and I find that combination is really important if you want to understand systemic issues but also develop targeted Solutions because organizations all have their own idiosyncrasiesand nuances that need to be taken into account great thank you so much for being here today um we learned about your work as we were do working on the Chancellor's advisory committee on the status of women and
The conversation turns to how she became interested in gender inequality, from her undergraduate experience to a formative job in market research. She describes a mentor’s example and the coffee-meeting incident that led her to notice non-promotable tasks.
it just seemed so relevant to that work but I think to our work collectively just um you know some of the things you mentioned are probably things that people are are struggling with um every day so I wantedto start off by just asking you um you mentioned that you initially got interested in this area of research in undergraduate and I think a lot of us who do research you have to find your particular Niche umand there's often some kind of inspiration or spark that gets you to there and so I wonder what that spark was that kind of set you on the path yeah so in undergrad um I actually thought I wantedto be a clinical psychologist so that was years ago um and mo most of my research training was actually focused on developmental Clinical Psychology um it wasn't until my senior year that I realized that that wasn't a good
fit for me um but the uh really impactful part about going to wzy is that all of your courses are designed in a way to encourage you to to question the way that history is written and stories aretold and to think about the fact that people's voices who have not historically been considered we should Center that in all of our conversations um and so my you know education at Welsley did give me that Foundation tobe thinking about the world in that way um but my senior year in college I decided I didn't want to pursue clinical training and so I ended up going to work in market research this gets to your questionum and and that um that firm it was a great experience it allowed me to develop applications to my research abilities that um I didn't realize you could apply it told me about the field of organizational behavior which
I didn't know as a field until then um but the one instance that always uh sparked my interest in gender inequality was um I had this fantastic mentor and sponsor at the firm um she never hesitated to bringme to meetings to help me to allow me to shadow um gain off additional experience um and so she provide both mentorship and sponsorship and so I had a really great role model of how impactful um receiving careersupport from a senior female leader can look like um but the one instance that always sticks out in my mind is I remember in one meeting um she brought the coffee to the meeting and that was something prettycommon that most people do um but I notice it happened more than once and this was despite us having a um a receptionist whose job was to do the catering for the meetings um and so I asked her
why and I remember her saying oh you know someone asked me to bring it so I just thought I would agree to it and at the time I remember thinking I guess that's fine um but something never quitesat well with me about it um I I didn't understand why one of the few women in the room was the one bringing the coffee to the meetings um and I didn't learn until much later at Carnegie melonwhere Linda Babcock does work there on what's called non- promotable tasks and this this idea that there are all of these little jobs that really anyone can do within organizations things like um you know putting together social eventsbringing catering to meetings that help the organization function more generally um but women are disproportionately likely to be asked to do these functions and the issue is that they don't contribute directly to your advancement that's why they're called
non-promoted tasks and so at the time I didn't know what that word was but it was that observation that sparked my interest in studying what gender inequality looks like today because we've made a lot of progress from saythe experiences of um my mom when she worked in finance and Consulting you know 20 30 years ago um and and so we've made a lot of progress since then but um we still have more work to doclearly it's cool that a female Mentor was somebody who really sparked your yes she was a fantastic example of how to be a good sponsor yeah I had the same experience I was originally intending to do something elsein college but then I had this amazing chemistry professor female chemistry professor who just wow like just wowed me and also became a mentor and a sponsor like that's distinction I think that's really helpful actually um and yeah
I think that's that's really important looking back how important and sometimes it's just a small thing that that really can set you on that yes and it's actually particularly impactful in stem Fields like you mentioned chemistry there's lotsof research coming out that shows when fields are stereotypically um male dominated um having a sponsor you know a highly tenured female sponsor and Mentor can be really impactful for junior women's advancement yeah that's really cool um so
She discusses how workplace sexism has changed form over time, including motherhood penalties, intersectional biases, and age-related stereotypes. The discussion also covers why studying discrimination is difficult when people alter their responses in research settings.
thinking about some of the things you said we were talking a little bit about historical perspective right um because these are long-standing issues and so I'd like to hear a little more from you about um women in theworkplace today gender in the workplace today and maybe also how it intersects with some other um identities or even um age or or other factors yeah so in terms of what is different now is that we still dealwith a lot of systemic inequalities um I would see one main difference in comparing I think 30 40 50 years ago is that overt discrimination is less socially acceptable which is great progress I'm glad we've gotten there umand and so because of that the traditional things we think of when we hear gender discrimination we don't see that as much anymore but it doesn't mean it's not there it just has changed form um and there are
still some very persistent stereotypes inequalities that um pervade like assumptions about career commitments so the motherhood penalty is a well documented barrier that women face it's rooted this in this idea that um particularly in America we have astereotype that the ideal employee the ideal worker is one who's committed to their work above everything else um however women are still stereotyped to be the primary caregiver in families regardless of whether that's true or not um andbecause of that people are less likely to see women as the ideal worker and this leads to discrimination hiring and promotion decisions um and so there are still those I would call Old School discrimination I mean the ideathat women are still only the primary caregiver is a fairly dated bias but it still uh very much impacts women in today's workplace um what you see more of now is a lot of organizations have taken steps to
try to make advancements we see a lot of anti-bias training a lot of um policies that try to um you know obscure the gender of applicants and all of these things um very mixed evidence as to whether they'reactually effective or not um in fact anti-bias training the research shows can lead to backlash um particularly racial antibi training um and part of the reason is we haven't really addressed the underlying issues um and that's going tocontinue to be a problem in terms of Designing effective policies um in terms of intersectionality you are correct that definitely plays a role um my research focuses on gender inequality broadly um but of course there's plenty of evidencethat shows that women of color are face unique biases in the workplace um often much higher uh standards and uh more challenging biases than white women face um interestingly agism and gender inequality has received fairly little attention in
the research um which is a problem um but of the work that I've seen it shows that older women do face a unique combination of biases um to reflect the fact that they're no longer seen as the primarycaregiver um and Society does not know what to do with them quite in the workplace um and so they experience biases as a result um but that is a a pretty emerging area of research which is surprising consideringit's 2023 um but a lot of the intersectionality um angles on Research have only just started reading management um it doesn't mean that other fields like sociology and pschology have not explored these but in terms of applying itinto the workplace it's still pretty new it seemed like the issue of age was really relevant to your work because you were talking about the undervaluing of exceptional women it's often when you get later in your career that
you have seen exceptional but I was also thinking this morning I was looking something over and I was thinking the more efficient and effective you are in a way it's possible for you to be like the it makesyour work almost invisible to folks and so there is this aspect perhaps of maybe women being overlooked the better they are the more efficient they are more effective even it's possible um of the work I've done I haven'tlooked at age particularly but I have looked at um Rank and tenure within a field which correlates with age certainly um and in that work I have I find some evidence that um High highly ranked highly tenured womenum are actually perceived as exceptional um because of these growing awarenesses about gender biases people see High highly ranked women and there's an assumption that it was harder for them to get there um therefore they must be far
more competent than anyone else who did not face these double standards these unfair biases um however the application of that exceptionalism effect is it's unclear how far-reaching it is they've looked at General perceptions of leaders I looked atit in terms of how referrals or recommendations for job applications are perceived um however terms of more specific workplace interactions it's less clear how that extends to um and it's interesting because I have another work on um anotherpaper on overqualification which shows that overqualified women are more likely to be assumed to be highly committed to the firm compared to overqualified men um and what I mean by firm commitment is it's it's a theoretical construct inher field but it captures this idea that the firm to what extent The Firm assumes they will uh stay at the organization so you know it's kind of the reverse of like will they leave um overqualified men are
seen as a Flight Risk um what the data I have in some prior work shows is that overqualified men are assumed to think they're too good for jobs that they're overqualified for and they're just going to jump shipas soon as the next better opportunity comes along um and so people are actually less inclined to hire them compared to men with sufficient qualifications for the job um but people don't have that concern about overqualified women womenand it's not that they're never categorized as overqualified the data shows that they see overqualified women as highly competent highly qualified for the job um but they rationalize their qualifications in a way they don't for men so theydon't see them as a Flight Risk they don't worry about retention they actually rationalize it in a way that the presumptions women value their relationships more in the workplace so they're less likely to risk those relationships by leaving
for the next better opportunity um and of course these are all rationalizations and um thought processes it does not speak to women's and men's actual motivations so what the male and female job candidates are actually thinking hiring managersdon't know and so these are all their projections onto the candidate so I think that's a very important distinction is that I'm not claiming that this is what candidates are thinking themselves but the biases that others are havingabout their motivations um and so the reason I mentioned that is that there's an interesting balance there and that on one hand we see I have a paper that shows you know highly recommendations from highly tenured women arereally impactful particularly for junior female job candidates um but on the other hand we also see that overqualified um female job candidates are assumed to they're not a Flight Risk and presumably the firm is less concerned about having
to retain them um and so it's clear that there's not one blanket story about some discounting of competence that can happen which to date often has been um The Narrative of you know women are just assumed to notbe smart enough um the data now shows that that does not seem to be the case always and that people do recognize women's competence and qualifications but it still leads to biases in other ways so the story hasbecome more complicated now that's all good research is right the more you dig in the more you realize there's a lot of different yes and I think as societies become more aware of gender biases that has complicated thephenomenon as well um because there's more and more data that shows that people don't want to be biased people do have generally good motivations um and so they do try to make adjustments based on that and so that
makes how the effect plays out in organization is far more complicated does it also make it hard because people say the thing that they feel that they should say as opposed to saying the thing when you're doing researchyeah yes um that is a common problem for people studying all forms of discrimination so I was talking to a colleague who studies racial discrimination hiring decisions and he's faced a similar issue where he did what's called anaudit study which means he created um resumés and then you actually send them out to organizations and then record a response rates on the ré so it's a real behavioral test in that way as opposed to an experimentalstudy where you would get a sense of hiring intentions but it's not actually a real call back rate right because it's all done within the lab um and he consistently found these biases in the actual audit study application
data but then was struggling to replicate it within the lab data and that speaks to a broader issue that we often encounter that people change their responses if they think you're studying bias because they don't want to beseen as biased which makes sense um the problem is that if they're still making biased decisions because these often happen below people's levels of awareness we're not able to gain a full picture of it based on the datawe're collecting so techniques have emerged to try to get around around that um but it's it's a problem sounds like there are so many different things to study in this area which is really exciting but I wonder if
The speaker describes two active projects: one on how organizations misunderstand what exceptional women want in retention packages, and another on how competitive consulting cultures shape mentorship and sponsorship. She emphasizes that formal initiatives alone are not enough without aligned incentives.
you could um say either sort of a burning question you're working on or you really want to work on something you really want to get to the bottom of like a direction that your research you'd like it totake yeah so I have um two you know working projects that I have right now that I'm really excited about um one is just starting and the other is a little bit more developed but the just starting onethat uh is building off of this prior work I mentioned about gendered assumptions about firm commitment and retention um I'm working with some colleagues at the University of Virginia and where we want to examine the assumptions that organizationsmake about how they should go about retaining exceptional women um specifically about whether the um assumptions about what exceptional women want in retention packages is actually the same as what they actually want um and whether there are any
evidence of biases in terms of what types of retention packages are offered interestingly retention is retention packages specifically are challenging to study because they're so idiosyncratic to organizations and certain Fields um and so there isn't great data onum what these timelines look like what are common things um we assume pay you know bonuses vacation days perhaps um but there's no consistent paper that comes out that says this is the most common uh formula I guessfor a retention package um and there's there's a little bit of work showing that women may be less likely to get equity in these packages um but it's only one paper actually and so we wanted to build onthat and try to understand a bit more about what's going on there um because the packages that people put together are based on what they think they need to give a candidate to keep them working at the organization
right so speaks to what they believe that candidate values um and so we're interested in understanding what are the differences or gaps between what women actually value and what organizations think they value um so that's one paper Ihave another one that's actually purely qualitative field data I did interviews with leaders in a consulting firm um about their experience with providing mentorship and sponsorship um and I'm analyzing the data to develop a theory for how thisorganizational culture which is highly competitive anyone who's worked in Consulting knows this it's a very very competitive field and the organizational structure is often very competitive because it's project by project employment getting on the right project is reallyimpactful for your career advancement um and so I was interested in how these leaders make decisions about advocating for talent to Junior employees that they see within the organization um and I find some evidence that um the highly
competitive culture makes an impact specifically that even among the organization's claims that it values use equity and inclusion it want it encourages explicitly leaders to provide mentorship and sponsorship they actually use that terminology which more and more organizationsare using um but they never change the incentive structure so Junior employees and leaders are always incentivized based on performance the leaders themselves on the performance of their projects that they're leading um and who you choose to mentorand sponsor starts to you begin to then weigh it against what helps your performance because your performance is the only thing that you're getting incentivized for um and what I see is some evidence that male and female leaderswork through what that means for them as Leaders how to be a good leader and you know grapple with this tension and the incentive structure um and they do it in slightly different ways um which I won't get
into all the details because it's complicated but I think that that paper is important because it speaks the fact that organizational initiatives are are not sufficient so organizations having a formal mentoring program that they might have thrown togetherbecause they think it's helpful um which again best intentions um or maybe they have a networking event or two to try to help Junior employees make connections um that doesn't overway the issues with incentive structures if we're neveractually incentivizing leaders to provide this type of support um you begin to question whether we're actually going to get them to do it um and that speaks to broader issues that have been talked about in the mentorship andsponsorship literature researchers have noticed there's a lot of focus on the impact of these support on Junior men and women which is of course importance and gives us a lot of information um but there isn't a lot of
consensus on how to get male and female leaders to provide this type of support which is half the equation and so that's one of the focus that I take when I study career support is focusing on the male
The discussion shifts to practical advice for mentoring and sponsoring junior colleagues. She encourages leaders to support both skills and well-being, avoid assumptions, and normalize ongoing conversations about goals and opportunities.
and female leaders themselves but those are two projects that I'm working on it sounds like it'll really keep you busy actually yes yes um so we've we talked you talked a little bit um about mentorship and sponsorship andI'm I'm really curious because I think that you know at a university we have a lot of opportunities to Mentor folks who are we might have opportunity to Mentor students Mentor colleagues like there's a lot of different opportunitiesfor both men and women to to Mentor colleagues um and yet everyone's different right I mean some differences might be race or ethnicity but also personality differences and so um I'm wondering for those who really want to begood mentors but aren't necessarily you know sure how to go about it are there any anything either from your work or from things that you you've read that that could help people really in in thinking about how to
go about being a good Mentor yeah so I think the first thing to uh differentiate is to be aware of the fact that you can be both a mentor and a sponsor so so when people are looking forcareer support you can find a mentor and a sponsor for two two different people you can also find someone who can provide both types of support um and so as Leaders I think it's important for us to recognizethat we can also provide both types of support if we see that opportunity um work on mentorship speaks a lot to the fact that it's not just skills development but it's also social support within the workplace um andthat has a large documented impact on people's sense of self-worth within their organizations confidence at work um and so I would say as mentors I'd encourage you to focus on skills development but also focus on the psychological well-being
of the people that you are working with um I think often organizations there's a focus on performance which I understand um but employees are people too and so focusing on their psychological well-being is important um and I thinkthat relates to the fact that you should also always keep an eye out for sponsorship opportunities um of course these are more Challen alling to secure you have to Lobby your reputation your Social Capital to tap your networkto try to find these opportunities and secure them for junior employees um which can feel a bit riskier um as Leaders but the research shows it's so important for junior employees advancement um and it's particularly important for juniorwomen um like I said that paper I talked about before highly tenured women um when they provided recommendations for junior female job candidates they were the most likely to get hired after that compared to all other combinations of
um recommenders and job candidates um and so even though sponsorship can be harder I would encourage leaders to always be on eye out for opportunities for junior employees um and then finally is I would encourage people to notmake assumptions about what Junior employees or students want um I find based on my research and my broad read of the inequality literature is a lot of these is issues arise because of assumptions about what people want whatpeople need um and that's a problem um it's in my opinion a better approach to talk to Junior employees and students about what their goals are what they want to achieve and once you have that conversation and thento keep having it because they could change over time um to then take that as your guidance for seeking out opportunities for them rather than making assumptions about what they do or not want to do because you could
imagine a scenario where an opportunity does come along and then a leader says well I don't think she wants to do that um there was actually a um a leader in the consulting firm that I interviewed that Imentioned earlier um she said that she was sit in on these promotion meetings um and they have a partner track a lot like the tenure track a lot of consulting firms have this um and she disclosed to methat in this meeting she was talking about a junior female colleague that she had been working with that she wanted to put on the fast track for promotion and then one of her male colleagues said oh she didn'tsay anything about that I assume she didn't want to do that and the woman I was interviewing said it was strange to me the assumption that a woman wouldn't want to advance in the workplace um it is strange
it's a strange assumption um and so and I and I don't think that male colleague meant anything by it that being said I do not know who this person is um but my experience has been that often theseassumptions are not done with malice um however they can still be damaging and so I would encourage all leaders to constant constantly have a dialogue with your students your Junior employees always be aware of what they're looking forso then you can provide the most targeted opportunities and support for them I think your your suggestion to really open that conversation is so important because a lot of times I'm thinking especially of of students in Academia whomay want to go into industry or may want to go follow a sort of non-traditional path and the adviser might be completely happy with that but they've never had an opportunity to discuss it and so the mentee feels
like like I don't know if this is even okay should I so like opening that conversation could just be like so helpful for yes uh the mentee to realize oh oh this is actually okay you know yeah yeahI think this also speaks to a larger movement I advocate for personally um to normalize having these conversations uh my sense uh from my experience in the workplace and also my read of the research is that people hesitateto ask for things um because they particularly women they don't want want to be overly assertive because there are costs to that um they don't want to be labeled bossy um and and it's and as a result ifthey're seen as less likely to be asking for them then there's an assumption that they don't want it which is like that example that I gave you um which may not be true and so if we normalize the
conversation As Leaders actually initiating it then the onus is no longer on the junior employee exclusively to advocate for themselves you know of course they do have to advocate for themselves I would encourage all Junior women to alwaysadvocate for yourself um but we can't expect women to solve discrimination on their own that speaks to this larger issue that I've seen in organizations across the literature is that a lot of the solutions focus on how canwe Empower women um which is fine and it's helpful yes um these things can be very helpful they give us a lot of information about barriers that women are facing um but it doesn't fix the system we needto develop systemic Solutions um and so when I say start that conversation it's actually speaking to a broader process of let's normalize open conversations between leaders and Junior employees let's normalize conversations about what you want out of a
mentorship relationship what you want out of a sponsorship relationship rather than it feeling weird to ask about it um I fully recognize to all of those watching that it may feel weird for you to do this um theonly advice I can give is to be as genuine and authentic to yourself as possible um and there is research that shows actually that when you ask people for advice they like you more because they think you're morecompetent so let that take you as as you will um but but yes so that's why I also try to maintain the focus on what leaders can do to try to fix that system I think you've touched on
She addresses common misconceptions, including the belief that sexism is no longer a problem and that unconscious bias training is sufficient. The speaker argues for deeper institutional changes and explains why simple fixes often fail to solve structural inequities.
this a little bit but I wanted to come straight out and ask about um misconceptions about gender in the workplace and if there are any things that you you've come across either in your studies or things that you'veread that um that you'd like to maybe debunk or or talk about oh that's interesting um I think the one that I so I do not face this as much among researchers um however when I speak about theseissues more broadly um interestingly the one that I face that I continue to be surprised by is this assumption that sexism isn't a problem anymore um in that it's you know this isn't mad men anymore we treat wetreat women better than that and is the expectation I think people have um and this gets back to what we talked about earlier about how it's still there it looks different and so because it's changed form and it's
more implicit and less explicit what the reactions I've gotten is that it's not a problem anymore um which really surprises me because you talked to any woman in the workplace and I guarantee you either they themselves or someonethey know has faced an issue um and and that's you know not even including sexual harassment which is a whole different um field of problems um and so that's the biggest one that I I'm surprised by um Ibelieve I would theorize that part of the issue is that we're now more aware of these biases which is great um and because we've had these broader discussions about it like me too um that can lead people tofeel like well it was talked about so now it's fixed or or my organization introduced a policy so now it's fixed um unfortunately the problem is not solved that easily um and so I would encourage people if they
encounter anyone who is of that belief to try to dissuade them of that um because the concern is that if they think it's done efforts to fix it will become less urgent um and so that's the one thatI've faced I think the other one is that um unconscious bias training works it doesn't um not consistently uh the research shows that yes we have unconscious biases but the traines that exist very rarely address them in aconsistent way um as I mentioned before they can actually often lead to backlash where people have greater um unconscious biases than before they took the training um and there's many complicated reasons as to why that backlash happens umand there's research out there um Alexander Caleb is a great researcher in this area who's looking and Frank Dobbin who's looking at um how to design effective diversity and Equity trainings um but it gets back to this idea
that you have to develop a systemic solution and an unconscious biased training is cheap and easy for organizations to implement but all it does is communicate to employees that we think you are the problem we think you arethe biased ones um which people don't like being told that that doesn't make them feel good makes them react against it um and so that strategy is not a long-term effective solution even though it seems to be verypopular so yeah I wonder um I don't know that your research really speaks to exactly this but um thinking about things like blind searches and I mean I know in orchestras for instance that they have um made auditionsbe blind so that um people are behind a screen when they are playing their music so that you're just listening to music and I um I know that you have to be careful to control for like the person
walking down the aisle for instance because see a woman may sound different than a man walking down the aisle um but controlling for all of that that has actually really helped um improve the number of women in orchestrasand I don't I don't want to throw one thing out there as like this is the fix or anything but if they're I mean because it sounds like we're talking a lot about you know fixing people versus fixinginstitutions and this is kind of like we recognize people have these biases so maybe let's have some practices where we admit to our biases as well but we're saying oh no we need something a little a little bitbigger in order to maybe address this within an organization yeah so this is not to say that there are not easy solutions out there the one the example you showed with you know more or less anonymizing the screening
process for orchestras hanging up a sheet is not a expensive solution and it was effective in that case um and I don't do research on anonymizing applications um and so I can't speak to that directly I would saythough that these types of Solutions are necessary but ultimately not sufficient for a couple of reasons one is that when you anonymize applications to gender to race to disability status to all of these things um it removes somebiases but the issue is that it does not always account for then the um opportunity to achievement ratio is like I think that's what UCSD actually uses when they talk about faculty members achievements in the wake of coidis that we need to consider what someone's opportunity was to and then what they achieved based on those opportunities and so if it was harder for someone to accomplish what they accomplished based on their opportunities we should acknowledge
that and sometimes knowing their identity in terms of where they are from what their demographic uh demographics are if that helps us make that assessment then perhaps that information should be included but that's a very complicated process there'sno one fix and so I would I would not prescribe an organization to do one or the other I would encourage organizations to consider that this is a deeply complicated scenario and blanket Solutions are generally not going toget to where you want to go all the way um the other reality is that those types of solutions only work at hiring decisions once you're in the organization for a promotion decision getting assigned to a big projectthere's very few ways that you can truly anonymize that process um because people already know who everyone is the pools of people being considered are often very small when then it becomes almost impossible to truly anonymize the people
involved um and so it's again it helps with some situations but ultimately is not sufficient for solving other problems and so I'd con uh encourage organizations to continue to uh work with researchers to try to develop U youknow customized Solutions because again each industry is going to have unique hiring and promotion scenarios idiosyncrasies and you can design customized solutions for that requires more effort um might be more expensive but comes down to what your goalsare as a leader and as an organization what kind of leader do you want to be this is what I actually I talked to my mbas about my students is um yes it will often be harder and moreexpensive to implement truly effective equity and inclusion practices um but you should ask yourself what kind of leader do you want to be do you want all of your employees to have equal opportunity and to feel included if
so then you have to take the extra steps if you don't because it's too expensive um you know I realize that not all leaders have you know say over the entire organizational budget I recognize there are constraints umbut generally you should think about what you're willing to advocate for if you want to be a leader that gives people equal opportunities then you need to take steps to try to do that um and this speaks toorganizations more broadly what kind of firm do you want to run do you want to run one where people don't have equal opportunity or maybe sort of have equal opportunity um do you want one where people sort offeel included um or do you want one people actually feel included um and if so then you have to take the steps accordingly to achieve that goal um even if it's expensive yeah and they're probably a lot of
The conversation explores hidden costs of turnover, the importance of flexibility, and how universities and other organizations differ in structure. She also explains how race, ethnicity, disability, and LGBTQ identities complicate workplace bias and mentorship needs.
hidden cost right because there hidden cost to losing someone especially somebody who's been there for a long time because there's so much institutional knowledge and retraining the new person and then you know you can't really put a pricetag on how that affects morale if that person was well loved and like all of these different things that are really okay maybe it's expensive to do this but at the end of the day maybe it actually savesmoney down down the road yeah and that's even kind of teasing apart uh broader policy changes from you know supporting specific leaders within the organization through efforts to retain them um I don't know as much about the turnoverliterature because it's not my expertise I do know of what I've read that organizations frequently do not account for the cost of turnover in the same way they account for other losses um it is more challenging for them
to do so it it often doesn't go through the same psychological framework so to speak um and so firms don't think about the cost in that way and so that you are correct in that they are hidden umit does not mean they are not there um McKenzie's women in the workplace report came out this year it's for those of you who are not familiar every year they do a very comprehensive survey of the status ofgender Equity across different Industries um it's very comprehensive highly recommend it reading it if you're interested in this type of uh uh research and they often will identify trends that characterize that year of data collection and since thisone you know is coming after a lot of the peak of coid uh related work restrictions and things like that um and the you know higher perceived higher rate of people leaving their organizations to move to another job
they found that women were uh you know expressed greater uh likelihood to change jobs and some of the reasons they looked to was a lack of flexibility things that I would argue could be solved by organizations um butthey don't and so the female leaders leave um which I would categorize as a loss for that organization so it's it's something that I think firms should keep uh in their mind so you've been talking and you justmentioned it now like different types of organizations have to be you know because there's different nuances the university is a very the university Academia in general not ours per se but in general the university is a very interestingplace right because we have these very different types of individuals we have undergraduate students and graduate students and we have post-doctoral Scholars and you know uh faculty at all like on all levels and then a whole bunch of
staff and and so I don't know if it's possible to generalize for the University but are there particular things for the University that comes out of um uh your work or or or things you read that I don'tknow recommendations or or maybe Oddities that we should be thinking about and and those sorts of things yeah so I um I'll give my advice within consideration of the fact that I'm not yet tendered um I I dojoke with my students that organizations are some of the most dysfunctional organ um universities are some of the most dysfunctional organizations um people don't tend to treat them as organizations even though universities are you know they're massive organations they're often more challenging to navigate because there is no formal hierarchy like there is in a firm it's always funny when I try to explain how the power hierarchy works at UCSD to my friends who work in
a normal company they find it perplexing because like within R for example there isn't a truly formal hierarchy among professors you have the dean um and then you have various levels of Deans and assistant Deans and things likethat but then the professors are all just one pool MH um even though you do have status and pay differences among them from you know assistant professor to associate with tenure to full but there is no direct reportingamong Professor ranks and so everything is informal um which I would argue makes things like mentorship and sponsorship all that more important because if there are not formal hierarchies then how to navigate that system becomes more challenging andso you rely on senior leaders to try to help you learn to navigate that um and like for example R uh assigns Junior faculty members with um mentors to help them do that and I have a great mentor
Pamela Smith um and she helps me with that the main thing to take into consideration is because the structure is so unique and so different we do not have the same luxury to just uh allow people to figurethings out it's more complicated so having those conversations with students and Junior employees about you know what they want in this mentorship Rel relationship how you the faculty member can help them achieve their goals that becomes even moreimportant because there aren't the same formal channels that they can go through as there isn't someone they automatically report to that they meet once a month um and so I would say becoming uh more intentional with reaching outto students to see if you can help them I think becomes important so um we have a question about how race and ethnicity impacts um misconceptions in the workplace for women um I'm not quite sure what misconception means
other than I I if I interpret that as biases and stereotypes certainly there are um you know stereotypes that women of color uniquely face so Asian-American women face different stereotypes and biases than white women than African-American and blackwomen um than women of other races and so that intersectionality makes things more challenging so what that means is prescription that researchers may have identified over the years um it's important to take those uh in context in thesense that you need to look at the sample that they used um the experimental stimuli that they used to see um what was how what was the extent at which this was tested what are the we call itthe boundary conditions of the effect um for example some studies use predominantly male samples or if they're looking at biases um they'll use pictures of only white women that's a problem because then we don't know if the effect
extends to women of other races um this is a broader issue that's happened in a lot of fields um I I actually just became aware of it um in medicine going back years that there has been a tendencyto um under research female samples um particularly when it comes to medications um and then develop uh dosages based on on exclusively or predominantly male samples Without Really any knowledge of beyond the um doctor's best uh educated guessesabout whether these are the same um and now there's an active push back against that so a lot of medical researchers are really actively pushing against that which is fantastic um and so we need to start questioning whatthe norm or the prototypical solution is and whether that applies to everyone because usually does not um and so I would I would encourage organizations to make sure that they're not introducing policies that only help one form of
women or one group of women um because Beyond race disability status there's also um lgbtq issues um non-binary individuals face very challenging different biases than heterosexual women um face there could be barriers that your colleagues or Junior employeesare facing that you're not even aware of because perhaps you come from a different set of lived experiences and so not making those assumptions becomes really important to making sure you're giving people the best mentorship and sponsorship that
She discusses the challenge of getting institutions to participate in research on bias and policy change. The speaker then evaluates the Implicit Association Test, arguing it can be informative but should not be treated as a definitive diagnostic tool or a way to opt out of inclusion efforts.
you can and that they need so another question is about um correcting institutional biases obviously that's kind of I know that your work sort of studies the psychological processes and the micro foundation so that's that's part of itbut these institutional biases I know you look at these different hierarchies so um I don't know if there's some some thoughts about that yeah it's a great question um whoever ask that if you want to do research inthe area like we welcome you there's so many questions that can be tested there's so many uh potential policies that can be tested um the biggest barrier actually I have found facing is not a shortage of potential ideasbut organizations willing to agree to work with us um getting an organization to allow you to run a pilot program to design a program to help address a bias that they have in the organization they're very resistant to
it to it um my theory is that it's because once they know there's a problem that's documented they feel there's an obligation to fix it which of course they should and they'd rather just not know um and soagain the biggest barrier I see to institutional um biases is getting those institutions to work with us um because researchers have ideas and have potential Solutions but there's no way to know what will work until we can starttesting them so there's a question I don't know if this is related exactly to your work but I'll I'll ask anyway um your opinion of the implicit biot test developed at Harvard do you think it's a good uhprerequisite for an individual um before um taking the implicit um bias training we've already discussed sort of some of the issues with implicit bias itself does the test yes so I am familiar with the test um I I
would encourage anyone who's interested in looking at the psychometric you know properties of the test meaning um you know what it's composed of like what it is actually testing to look into it um the IAT what it doesis test uh the speed of associations you have between certain words certain ideas and pictures and then the idea that like faster or slower associations can indicate bias based on my understanding I'm not an expert in the testso it's likely more Nuance than that um I would argue that that can give you some information with the caveat that that's a pretty narrow way to test unconscious bias and so if you Define unconscious bias as speedof associations between two ideas or two words or um a picture of someone and a word sure it can be helpful for that the problem with the IAT that I see is that it's become used as a tool
to diagnose biases um which I do not think that's what the researchers originally intended it for I think it's a way to gather information um and perhaps if it helps people acknowledge the fact that we all have implicitbiases that could be educational um because it's true we all have them uh I Define the uh the important thing I think is that we do something about it so it's the choices that you make to try toaccount for or disrupt the impact of unconscious biases on your decisions um so in terms of helping people be more Ware of that reality and accepting their own unconscious biases perhaps it's helpful um I I do become concernedof organizations using it as a way to scream people to somehow you're put in a category of your implicit bias test is you know Above This score so therefore you don't have to take the training um that would
really that's what I I don't know if that happens I'm just theorizing that's possible that that would happen um I do not think that that is the intention of the test nor would it be a productive use ofit um the equity and inclusion trainings as if they're effectively designed should be inclusive to everyone everyone should be involved everyone should have a say the idea that you could somehow test out of it really defeats the wholeidea of inclusion in my opinion um this is my personal opinion again I'm um anyone watch I'm not coming after iats um I I I just do think there are limitations to what it tells tell us and sowe should be careful about how we apply what it tells us yeah I think that's a really good point because there's a lot of psychological tests that are they were originally intended for one purpose and they've been used
in a they're being used in a very very different way so I think it's always important to keep that in mind you know what was the original purpose yeah we see that with even General IQ tests and thingslike that you know they were designed for one purpose and then now they're being applied for different things and we need to keep in mind of what a test was originally designed for what its purpose was so thenwe can interpret the information is telling us accordingly so somebody asked a question I was thinking about this when when you were talking about um institutions not wanting to participate and so I was wondering somebody just asked aquestion about um whether our institution has approached you at all to um do any research related to EDI and um you know the some of the best practices and that sort of thing basically to be a place to
to be studied no no well maybe they will after watching this broadcast well so I think the differen is UCSD has definitely expressed a commitment to these issues um the fact that we have several committees that focus onthis and um there's even I like I've spoken to Victor at The Faculty Equity he's EVC of Faculty equity and so there are several committees and people uh in certain positions to make sure that equity and inclusion andtheir best efforts happen um does not mean it always does happen um I do not think UC hasn't given me any data if that's what they're asking asking um There are rules about that um that I you knowwhether they would or would not be allowed to release uh any data to me um but I would always be open to institutions wanting to try to design pilot programs to implement new policy changes um all of that
The final section covers leadership turnover, exit interviews, and how organizations can detect patterns of attrition. She closes with a call for new researchers to enter the field and for leaders to be intentional, supportive mentors and sponsors.
I would always be open to sounds like a good place to for maybe students to get involved with research at least testing small you know small questions that sort of thing what are your thoughts on um term limitsand more frequent turnover in leadership in institutions um and I guess they're asking about like Department chairs and things like that but I guess maybe in general about um just whether or not leadership turnovers are you know helpfulnot helpful or are there any generalizations um that's a broad question um when they said department chair turnover I uh I mean those are they do have limits I believe this varies a lot by school and discipline umso my experience from R will likely be different than someone from a different department um like I'm not quite sure how it works in stem field things like that um I think Department chairs the issue with that is
they're often very heavily saddled my perception anyway I've never served in that position so my perception is that they're often very heavily saddled with a lot of uh you know guidelines that they have to follow service requirements umand it turns more into hurting cats than I think probably what most people in department chair positions would actually like to do with their time um and of course hurting cats is important you know we need to getthem all somewhere um and faculty members can be difficult to hurt um but I I do I do sometimes wish that there was um more impact at they could have and that I think most of them really wantto if they were given you know the time and the resources available to them um and so because of the amount of time and service that's required of them I think turnover is necessary because people can burn out
really quickly um like we're having turnover at our department or our dean of Faculty level which is like our department chair at R um because people they just can't hold that term for very long because it's very highamount of time commitment um in terms of leadership positions I think turnover is something has talked about a lot right now with the great resignation you know not too distant past um and I don't I can't really speakto whether turnover is good or bad um I would say what I would look to is whether there's a persistent pattern of turnover in your organization so if you see people leaving all within a certain amount of timeum that might be some piece of data so the one issue that I've seen talked about at universities a lot um is efforts made to recruit um faculty members that will help increase the diversity uh of the school
but then not provide the resources necessary for those faculty members to ultimately be successful in the long run um and so if you're recruiting faculty members to create diversity at The Faculty level but then faculty members are leavingand not getting tenured that's turnover and it speaks the fact that you're not actually solving the problem you're just recruiting um diverse incoming classes um of Faculty members and so at at another organization this could look at likeyou are actively recruiting more female leaders and you hire them but then they leave every six months yeah if you notice a specific population of leaders that's always leaving after a short amount of time you could then askthem in exit interviews why that is and you might learn that there's a Common Thread that ties those together um a lot of organizations don't do exit interviews at all which I think is a really missed opportunity um
because there could be a problem that you could easily solve that you just don't know about um but I do know learning that information can be scary and uncomfortable for people so and we avoid things we find scaryand uncomfortable yeah yeah I do like the idea of more exit interviews and also for retirees just to check to see because you don't know you know especially if there's you know a a there's a a tax toleaving early right because you lose certain things then some people retire out early so just asking that question to see if you know people are maybe retiring out yeah not because they want to but because they're not they'renot happy so yeah I think the larger issue also is if you do this then do it for all cases so uh like selective exit interviews are not going to give you any it should be centralized and everyone
has the opportunity to an opt in sort of thing right um I think we're coming to the end of our time this will be an amazing conversation I do want to give you just um the opportunity to leaveus with with one takeaway of either something you it could be a call to action something you'd really like to to think about or something you'd like you know everyone to do one maybe one small thing that wecould all do to make a difference or think about to make a difference I would say people who are interested in doing research in this area we always need um more young active Minds coming with new Solutions NewPassion for solving these problems if you are interested in pursuing this area of research don't let anyone tell you that you are not ready or not prepared or if you want to pursue a PhD in this Do It
um the field needs more young uh bright minds and so that I would encourage um for those of you listening who are in leadership positions um I would encourage you to make sure you can find a good Mentorand sponsor but that is harder to control but what you can control is the type of mentor and sponsor you are and so I would take to heart what we talked about of having that conversation with your Junioremployees on an ongoing basis about what they want to achieve and how you can help them do that and not making assumptions about what it is that they want to achieve in their
career