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Pitfalls of Bias Busting / Unwanted Similarities Between Gender Equity and Global Warming4 min read

Andrew Chi, MBA/MPA Class of 2015

In the same way that my head nearly implodes when I hear there are still people who don’t believe in global warming, I was shocked to learn that a renowned institution such as Harvard Business School would have such a primitive level of gender culture.

If you had a chance to read the gory details of the ongoing social experiment to bring gender equity to HBS, then you were perhaps like myself, thinking about whether this had any impact to our own school.  My first thought was, “Probably not.  With a 39% split of women to men in the 2013 class, how could that be?  Besides, I’ve never seen anything here that remotely resembles what was happening at HBS… [An image of a shirtless Duck pops into my head] Well, not of any females, at least.”

The problem with my thinking only became clear to me at Wednesday’s SWIB/SGov event.  A massive kudos to them for putting together an excellent panel (including Jodi Kantor, the author of the NY Times article) to foster some serious thought about a topic that few would openly discuss, especially amongst students and faculty.

During the session, I noticed that there was similar logic used to support the opposing viewpoint; it wasn’t until I heard the other side did I think to look deeper at my own thinking.  As a result, I wanted to issue some caution against two areas: (1) using outcomes to determine the level of equity and (2) confirmation bias.

Just because we have the highest ratio among the top business schools in the US, doesn’t mean there is no discrimination.  At the same token, a demographic of 3% female also should not imply a lack of equity.  In economic terms, equity is a measure of fairness, or the absence of bias (thank you, Wikipedia); this is different from equality, which is equal sharing and exact division (50/50) of resources.  As a result, when faced with an unequal outcome it should merely signal a need to investigate the underlying reasons for why this.  Getting back to points about the choices that individuals make and the systems that generate such outcomes (made by Karen Shin and Prof. Marciano during the panel), one would need to identify where in the process the equality was occurring and then determine if it is actually due to a lack of equity.  So, for example, perhaps the low percentage of females wasn’t discrimination in school or even with admissions, but rather in the career choices freely made by the individual.  At the same time, I do recognize that while a diversity of representation helps to ward off bias (as Prof. Murphy pointed out with his example of board room discussion changing with the addition of women); I would just add that it doesn’t need to have equal representation to obtain that diversity of thought.

The danger that arises with using outcomes to determine equity is further compounded by something called confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.  Credit once again to Wikipedia because I only vaguely remembered the concept after hearing Prof. Marciano say, “if you want to find evidence of gender bias, you will. If you want to find evidence of progress, you will.  It’s so plausible to credibly tell both stories equally dramatically.”  Although her statement was intended to explain two substantiated truths about HBS, it also reminded me of the pitfall of incompletely substantiated hypotheses.  So, for example, if I believe that female professors tend to favor calling on female students, I will remember each time when that professor has called my female peers and seemingly succeed in proving my point.  However, does this mean that my judgment is statistically sound?  As we learned in our intro stats class, proving a hypothesis (or even just proving a correlation) by counting each time it occurs is only truly valid if I am also counting when it does not occur – since although logical, my rationale for why it is happening is just an educated guess.

Recent news has told us that calls for action against global warming were exaggerated, mostly due to the association of seemingly logical, but unrelated facts to a worthy cause.  I truly hope those exaggerated calls for action will not deter progress to combat climate change.  In the same way, I also hope that as we examine gender equity at Stern, it will be done rigorously, absent of the aforementioned pitfalls that have the power to impede what may be necessary and justified change.

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