Unconscious Gender Bias in Academia: Scarcity of Empirical Evidence

Torsten Skov

doi:10.3390/soc10020031

Abstract

Implicit or unconscious bias is commonly proposed to be responsible for women’s underrepresentation in academia. The aim of this scoping review was to identify and discuss the evidence supporting this proposition. Publications about unconscious/implicit gender bias in academia indexed in Scopus or psycInfo up to February 2020 were identified. More than half were published in the period 2018–2020. Studies reporting empirical data were scrutinized for data, as well as analyses showing an association of a measure of implicit or unconscious bias and lesser employment or career opportunities in academia for women than for men. No studies reported empirical evidence as thus defined. Reviews of unconscious bias identified via informal searches referred exclusively to studies that did not self-identify as addressing unconscious bias. Reinterpretations and misrepresentations of studies were common in these reviews. More empirical evidence about unconscious gender bias in academia is needed. With the present state of knowledge, caution should be exercised when interpreting data about gender gaps in academia. Ascribing observed gender gaps to unconscious bias is unsupported by the scientific literature.

Highlights

Implicit or unconscious bias is commonly assumed to be responsible for women’s underrepresentation in academia
Reviews and commentaries about unconscious bias often refer to studies of bias against women in academia that do not self-identify as being about unconscious bias, but re-interpret them as being about unconscious bias
A systematic, qualitative review of the published literature of empirical data pertaining to unconscious gender bias in academia was performed

Summary

Introduction

Implicit or unconscious bias is commonly assumed to be responsible for women’s underrepresentation in academia. Association Test (IAT) rests on the belief that people act on the basis of internalized schemas of which they are unaware and can, and often do, engage in discriminatory behaviors without conscious intent This idea increasingly features in public discourse and scholarly inquiry with regard to discrimination, providing a foundation through which to explore the why, how, and what of gender inequity”. The scope of the review includes publications that have used the term unconscious or implicit bias in the title, abstract, or keywords. These will be said to self-identify as being about unconscious bias. The present paper gives examples of such reinterpretations and discusses their validity

Methods

Results

Conclusion