'Nudging': The Cure for Corporate Gender Discrimination

Most companies want to do the right thing; they know there is benefit in doing so. So why, then, aren't firms taking on gender inequity in the workplace?, an issue that never seems to be resolved despite decades of talk and study.

Iris Bohnet, a behavioral economist at Harvard and director of the Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Program, knows just the thing. She calls it the "nudge," a concept borrowed from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

She tells the Harvard Gazette, "Nudges change the environment ever so slightly -- they change organizational practices, they change how we hire, how we promote people, creating a more equal playing field for men and women."

One reason gender inequity is not repaired, she suggests, is that bosses don't intentionally discriminate against women. But bosses, like all of us, are victims to biases in the ways we think. We stereotype, for example. So we believe, subconsciously anyway, that Nancy doesn't have the math skills required for this job. And we don't promote her because she doesn't have the leadership aptitude that Fred owns.

These biases most often show themselves after one-on-one interviews. Interestingly, says Bohnet, in experiments where male and female candidates were interviewed together, "The gender gap completely disappeared." Employers were more concerned with past performance than gender differences.

So that's one small nudge companies can take -- allowing time for candidates to interview as a group, in addition to one-on-ones. (Sound familiar? Think political candidates fielding questions from voters.)

But what about when it comes time for promotions? It's impractical to hold up promotion decisions until a few can be collected together for better performance comparisons. Instead, she says, a nudge might be to use other comparisons when considering Nancy's fitness to move up the corporate ladder, such as evaluating her performance with the pool of people promoted over the last few years.

"We're encouraging companies to think creatively about the decisions they make and to build on insights from behavioral decision research to restructure their environments," says Bohnet.

You can read more in this op-ed she wrote for the Financial Times.

What do you think? Is gender discrimination so bored into the brain that only small changes, nudges, can create change?

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(Photo by Flickr user gccoldironjr2003, CC 2.0)