Gender-bias in candidate selection

[iismum]

I'm part of a project where we're employing lots of new people and we want to get a decent gender balance (it's techy, so that's hard). I know there is a lot of research out there - and, in particular, a recent study - that shows that CVs/job applications with a female name on are less successful on average than those with a male name (i.e., an application that is the same in every way except for the name), even when women are doing the choosing and even when the choosers don't think they're being biased.

I want to get all the people doing the recruiting to read a suitable article about this, so they know what the issues are and can be more aware of whether they are subconsciously doing this, to try to make sure that that kind of bias doesn't come into our selection process.

If anyone can give me any pointers, that would be great.

Why not just remove the name before sending the CVs out for review?

It'd probably be better to go straight to the research, because Fine's book is overtly impartial. Does she cite the work she's quoting?

I think that interviewing is utterly flawed when it comes to selection processes. Isn't there a study that shows this somewhere? I remember reading about it. All you should do is go on the CV (name anonymised) and online tests (ditto).

What is overtly impartial, please?

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into it.

Here's a Guardian article here if you google unconscious bias there is a wealth of info.

We had a Prof come into our work and talk to us about unconscious bias, it was absolutely fascinating and of course it is just true. He said that the people you have to watch for are the ones who claim to be unbiased - they are invariably the most biased. And of course it's not going to be the case that people will stop noticing and reacting to other people's colour, sex, attire and so on, the trick is to try and be aware of unconscious bias and that we all have it and to try and strip out those biases as much as we can.

It is so interesting and really important. Of course who do you think chose to go and listen to him speak? Predominantly women and non-white people in a company that is made up of plenty of white men. Shame really, but there you have it. People who aren't affected detrimentally by the current situation have no reason to be interested in this stuff, do they.