̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies (UCCGS)

Claims AI can boost workplace diversity are ‘spurious and dangerous’, researchers argue

fpjl2 — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 08:18:21 +0000

Recent years have seen the emergence of AI tools marketed as an answer to lack of diversity in the workforce, from use of chatbots and CV scrapers to line up prospective candidates, through to analysis software for video interviews.

Those behind the technology claim it cancels out human biases against gender and ethnicity during recruitment, instead using algorithms that read vocabulary, speech patterns and even facial micro-expressions to assess huge pools of job applicants for the right personality type and 'culture fit'.

However, in a new report published in Philosophy and Technology, researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for Gender Studies argue these claims make some uses of AI in hiring little better than an 'automated pseudoscience' reminiscent of physiognomy or phrenology: the discredited beliefs that personality can be deduced from facial features or skull shape.

They say it is a dangerous example of 'technosolutionism': turning to technology to provide quick fixes for deep-rooted discrimination issues that require investment and changes to company culture.

In fact, the researchers have worked with a team of Cambridge computer science undergraduates to debunk these new hiring techniques by building an AI tool modelled on the technology, available online.

̽��ֱ��‘Personality Machine’ demonstrates how arbitrary changes in facial expression, clothing, lighting and background can give radically different personality readings – and so could make the difference between rejection and progression for a generation of job seekers vying for graduate positions.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team say that use of AI to narrow candidate pools may ultimately increase uniformity rather than diversity in the workforce, as the technology is calibrated to search for the employer’s fantasy 'ideal candidate'.

This could see those with the right training and background "win over the algorithms" by replicating behaviours the AI is programmed to identify, and taking those attitudes into the workplace, say the researchers.

Additionally, as algorithms are honed using past data, they argue that candidates considered the best fit are likely to end up those that most closely resembling the current workforce.

“We are concerned that some vendors are wrapping ‘snake oil’ products in a shiny package and selling them to unsuspecting customers,” said co-author Dr Eleanor Drage.

“By claiming that racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination can be stripped away from the hiring process using artificial intelligence, these companies reduce race and gender down to insignificant data points, rather than systems of power that shape how we move through the world.”

̽��ֱ��researchers point out that these AI recruitment tools are often proprietary – or 'black box' – so how they work is a mystery.

“While companies may not be acting in bad faith, there is little accountability for how these products are built or tested,” said Drage. “As such, this technology, and the way it is marketed, could end up as dangerous sources of misinformation about how recruitment can be ‘de-biased’ and made fairer.”

Despite some pushback – the EU’s proposed AI Act classifies AI-powered hiring software as 'high risk', for example – researchers say that tools made by companies such as Retorio and myInterview are deployed with little regulation, and point to surveys suggesting use of AI in hiring is snowballing.

A 2020 study of 500 organisations across various industries in five countries found 24% of businesses have implemented AI for recruitment purposes and 56% of hiring managers planned to adopt it in the next year.

Another poll of 334 leaders in human resources, conducted in April 2020, as the pandemic took hold, found that 86% of organisations were incorporating new virtual technology into hiring practices.

“This trend was in already in place as the pandemic began, and the accelerated shift to online working caused by COVID-19 is likely to see greater deployment of AI tools by HR departments in future,” said co-author Dr Kerry Mackereth, who presents the Good Robot podcast with Drage, in which the duo explore the ethics of technology.

COVID-19 is not the only factor, according to HR operatives the researchers have interviewed. “Volume recruitment is increasingly untenable for human resources teams that are desperate for software to cut costs as well as numbers of applicants needing personal attention,” said Mackereth.

Drage and Mackereth say many companies now use AI to analyse videos of candidates, interpreting personality by assessing regions of a face – similar to lie-detection AI – and scoring for the 'big five' personality tropes: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

̽��ֱ��undergraduates behind the ‘Personality Machine’, which uses a similar technique to expose its flaws, say that while their tool may not help users beat the algorithm, it will give job seekers a flavour of the kinds of AI scrutiny they might be under – perhaps even without their knowledge.

“All too often, the hiring process is oblique and confusing,” said Euan Ong, one of the student developers. “We want to give people a visceral demonstration of the sorts of judgements that are now being made about them automatically".

“These tools are trained to predict personality based on common patterns in images of people they’ve previously seen, and often end up finding spurious correlations between personality and apparently unrelated properties of the image, like brightness. We made a toy version of the sorts of models we believe are used in practice, in order to experiment with it ourselves,” Ong said.

Research highlights growing market in AI-powered recruitment tools that claim to bypass human bias to remove discrimination from hiring.

While companies may not be acting in bad faith, there is little accountability for how these products are built or tested

Eleanor Drage

Co-author Dr Eleanor Drage testing the 'personality machine' built by Cambridge undergraduates.

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Making the numbers count: supporting and engaging women at every career stage

ed515 — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Glass ceilings, glass cliffs, glass escalators… much has been written about the metaphorical glass barrier that stands invisibly yet solidly between women and high-level success across the economy.

It’s a description that exasperates Professor Sucheta Nadkarni from Cambridge Judge Business School.

“ ̽��ֱ��challenges faced by women in business are well documented and fiercely debated, and there’s a tendency for most of this talk to be negative. I call this the doom and gloom narrative – it’s about the barriers that women face and why women fail. Let’s change the conversation about gender equality to focus on the factors that help women
to succeed.”

Nadkarni is the lead academic on a major global research project that reported in the European Business Review last year on the factors that help women to succeed in corporate environments. ̽��ֱ��project gathered data from 1,071 companies in 42 countries, covering 56 industries. ̽��ֱ��information spanned a ten-year period, during which the average percentage of women on executive teams in sampled firms rose from 7.6% to just 11.7%.

̽��ֱ��study highlighted the many benefits that women in senior roles bring to companies. “It’s not just that hiring more women into senior positions is the right thing to do for gender equality, it’s also the smart thing to do from a business perspective,” says Nadkarni.

“We found that bringing more women to top roles can make a business function better, attract new customers and improve the bottom line. Women bring in diverse capabilities, diverse knowledge and new ways of thinking, which organisations need.”

With revelations about the gender pay gap making current headlines – three quarters of the 10,000 firms that have provided information pay men more than women – the inequality problems women continue to face in the labour market are gaining increasing attention.

However, Nadkarni is keen to focus on the future. “ ̽��ֱ��question we need to ask now is: what can we do about this situation of unequal pay and unequal representation, and how can we create a more optimistic, promising picture for our students and for the women who are just starting to rise up?”

Her study considered the economic, political, legislative and cultural forces that determine the number of women in the boardroom in different countries. ̽��ֱ��findings showed that the strongest drivers are ‘female economic power’ and a requirement for gender diversity in a country’s corporate governance code. Maternity provisions and female politicians providing a championing voice for women are also important factors.

Female economic power was measured by the expected years of schooling for women, and the percentage of women in the labour force. ̽��ֱ��results suggest that as women become more highly educated, and gain increasing levels of employment, they play a greater role in the marketplace. This then provides a powerful incentive for companies to hire more women onto the board, to reflect the market they cater for.

Corporate governance codes are a set of best practice recommendations, including gender diversity requirements. In the past decade, codes have been created in 64 countries. Among countries sampled in Nadkarni’s study, Colombia had the highest percentage of women in executive teams, at 28.5%, and Japan ranked bottom with 0.57%.

These codes, says Nadkarni, are one example of a ‘soft’ measure that has been shown to be effective in helping women to gain top roles in executive teams or on management boards. In comparison, ‘hard’ targets – such as the mandatory quotas enforced on companies by several countries to give a percentage of seats on the board to women – do little to support gender diversity, and can also have a negative effect on company cohesion.

“Although quotas can help to improve the representation of women on corporate boards, they do little to help women stay in senior positions long enough to make a real impact, and can have both positive and negative effects on turnover rates,” says Nadkarni. “They can also create a hostile environment, by conveying a sense of ‘preferential treatment’ rather than recognition of hard work, skills and capabilities.”

̽��ֱ��research also uncovered some of the loopholes that companies exploit to meet quota requirements. For example, in countries where family businesses are common, quotas are sometimes fulfilled by appointing female relatives to the board. In one case, an 86-year-old, the daughter of the founder of a company in Turkey, had been on the board since 1964.

Dr Jude Browne, the Jessica and Peter Frankopan Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, has constructed a different approach to addressing gender equality that focuses on encouraging diversity at all levels of an organisation rather than simply quota requirements for senior roles.

Browne suggests that “each organisation with significant pay gaps and other segregation patterns needs to begin by building a detailed picture of what it thinks its data ought to look like and, crucially, publish its goals.

“Too many organisations simply collect data, compile aggregate figures that don’t tell us that much and then look to other organisations to see how they compare. Given that a great many are failing to pick up real pace in addressing these patterns, the ‘comparison with competitors approach’ tends to generate a complacent comfort zone around what ought to be, in many cases, unacceptable.”

As Browne set out at the European Commission recently, the ‘Critical Mass Marker’ approach focuses on skilled women who are not advancing to the next level as quickly as one might expect – that is, where critical mass is not having the desired flow effect.

̽��ֱ��approach requires an organisation to undertake a detailed analysis of its workforce and mark out goals that proportionately relate each level to the next, taking critical mass failures into particular account. Organisations would then be required to analyse and explain their continued segregation patterns against their published goals. This might include analysing the different career profiles that various intersectional groups tend to have and the impact of dependant-related responsibilities, reassessing the benchmark criteria for promotion, and comparing those who have worked within the organisation for long periods to newcomers with very different workloads.

“ ̽��ֱ��Critical Mass Marker approach is not going to solve all the segregation problems that organisations tend to have,” she adds. “But it puts a greater onus on them to ensure those equipped with the relevant talents are able to move up and across institutional structures in a more effective and proportionate way than blanket quotas aimed solely at the top layers of management where we often only see the same few women.”

Nadkarni is also keen to see more women supported at every level, and would like to see action to increase the number of women in executive teams, not just on corporate boards.

“Corporate boards are important, but they only play an indirect role in influencing company strategies and performance, because they mainly have an advisory capacity,” she says. “ ̽��ֱ��decisions are made by the executive team. So, if we want companies to benefit, if we want women to really make an impact, then it’s the executive teams that matter.

“In this context, a quote that comes to mind is it’s not about ‘counting the numbers’, it’s about ‘making the numbers count’. In other words, it’s not merely the quantity of women in top positions that matters, but also whether policies are in place at various levels – company, government and corporate governance codes – to ensure that women can make
a true impact in such roles.

“Hopefully in the future we will watch the doom and gloom ebb away as the true benefits of gender equality become crystal clear to everyone.”

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Researchers call for gender equality and career support for women in the workplace, and an end to “the doom and gloom narrative” over their limited numbers.

Hiring more women into senior positions is the right thing to do for gender equality. It’s also the smart thing to do from a business perspective

Sucheta Nadkarni

WOCinTech Chat

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When gender roles are reversed: equality and intimacy at home and in the workplace

sjr81 — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 16:05:11 +0000

̽��ֱ��workplace of the 21st century is marked by fast change and diversity. Baby boomers, generations X and Y all working together under one roof. Or under no roof, thanks to new technologies. In the Western world, women’s increasing levels of human capital and participation in the workforce has moved the plight of gender equality to a new level: upwards for women who try to climb the corporate ladder and sideways for men who try to carve more time with their families. Yet, for the few couples breaking away from conventional gender roles an even more complex picture seems to be emerging.

During my recent study into the gendered process of leadership selection a new model – still rare but with distinctive characteristics – emerged as worthy of scrutiny: that in which the woman was in a high-flying position at whereas her male partner took over the role of primary carer in the family.

Despite recent moves towards more flexible and unconventional arrangements, rather than leading to more equality, workplace cultures and intimate relationships are still deeply embedded in traditional gendered schemas. These are as much at the foundation of the man as leader bias, which blocks women’s ascendance through the corporate ladder, as they are to men’s attempts to take a more participative role at home:

“When I speak to my colleagues at work it never ceases to amaze me how clueless they are about the complexity of running a household. Things are getting better with the younger generations, you see much more cooperation. But among my peer group attitudes have not changed much. Men especially. […] They probably talk behind my back, although they would not dare to say anything to my face. But I can see how they look down at Mark for having put his career on hold when mine was taking off. Almost as if he was a loser. […] If I were a man, I am not sure I could have done that. It’s easier for women. (Female executive director, 45-55 years of age)

Describing their life trajectories as “unchartered waters”, couples deviating from traditional gender roles find themselves at the margins. Limited legal support still makes it harder for men to take the step towards being an equal carer. ̽��ֱ��shared parental leave being introduced in the UK in 2015 is a step in the direction of normalising gender balance.

Out-dated corporate policies and cultures still stigmatise those who do not demonstrate full commitment (measured in availability); men seeking flexible work arrangements are seen in even harsher terms than their female counterparts. Outside of work, isolation marks men’s experiences, in the shape of older family members’ lack of acceptance, (ex-)work colleagues’ silent contempt, or stay-at-home mothers’ veiled suspicion at school gates or playgrounds. Home life is none the easier. Women feel divided between guilt for their absence and ambiguity towards their partner.

̽��ֱ��latter varies from an over-elaboration of the importance and complexity of their partners’ job (often accompanied by a depreciation of their own) to a difficulty to deal with a position of perceived emasculation in their or others’ eyes. Whereas less vocal of the difficulties faced, men who were staying at home did nonetheless remark how “the world was lagging behind”.

Defying convention requires a series of intricate negotiations at an intimate level. What on the surface appears to be a balanced and progressive relationship often rests on a thin veneer of equality. Being gender a-prototypical is as difficult for a woman struggling to be seen as “board material” as for a man out in the playground with his children. For the professional-managerial classes legitimation of the self derives almost solely from the public sphere.

Whereas the challenge for women is to successfully combine career, the management of family life and the care of the self, the margin for manoeuvre for men leaves little scope for a full life outside of their work personas. Even if at first sight taking part in family life might mark men as progressive, the presupposition nonetheless is that they should be, first and foremost, successful in their careers. ̽��ֱ��price for not doing gender adequately is not to be trusted or respected, as well as, implicitly, have their masculinity questioned.

In a final analysis, despite all the rhetoric about work-life balance, the pull towards the public sphere is disproportionally higher than towards family life. For this social group, the implicit assumption is of a family with two husbands: two incomes, paid work coming before private time, as well as the outsourcing of logistical and often emotional needs of their family.

Couples who deviate from expected gender roles pay a high price both in terms of individual identity and in managing their intimate lives. At the forefront of social change, these couples are pushing boundaries and exploring new frontiers. Much rests on the work of social researchers to help them chart this new territory.

In a paper prepared for the workshop “Gender, Equality and Intimacy: (Un)comfortable Bedfellows?” at the Institute of Education today – Cambridge scholar Monica Wirz explores how couples, whose gender roles have been reversed, deal with work-life balance, equality, intimacy and their sense of identity.

̽��ֱ��implicit assumption is of a family with two husbands: two incomes, paid work coming before private time.

Monica Wirz

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Gender’s many faces

bjb42 — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:00:35 +0000

Over the past two years, Cambridge’s Centre for Gender Studies (UCCGS) has brought together scholars from across the ̽��ֱ�� into a vibrant teaching and research community focused on the understanding of gender. Today, academics from 23 different departments – from the social sciences, humanities and arts, right through to the physical sciences, technology and biomedical sciences – are actively engaged with the Centre, as are an impressive series of visiting international scholars.

Although the Centre has existed for over a decade as a successful public events and postgraduate training resource, an endowment two years ago from Jessica and Peter Frankopan of the Staples Trust enabled it to begin a new and exciting process of development, launching an MPhil course and its own research programme.

Now, with academics from such a broad range of fields contributing to its intellectual landscape, the Centre demonstrates a remarkable and in many ways unique multidisciplinary approach to research and teaching, as Dr Jude Browne, the Centre’s Frankopan Director of Gender Studies, attests: ‘ ̽��ֱ��study of gender at the Centre benefits immensely from having evolved from an engagement with diverse front-line research topics rather than from any one particular discipline, political view or methodology… Gender at the Centre is about all humans whatever their identities, condition or experiences.’

Issues tackled at the Centre encompass this holistic approach and range from what the latest advances in biomedical sciences tell us about gender, to how gender is used in conflict, to what we can learn about gender from antiquity, to how we could combat sexed-based inequalities in the labour markets. ̽��ֱ��result, as Dr Browne describes, is a ‘different, and sometimes clashing, research perspective that gives us a wonderfully encompassing view of the implications of gender.’

From head-hunting to HIV transmission

̽��ֱ��two most recently funded research projects at UCCGS exemplify the extraordinary breadth of gender research.

Dr Browne, whose research was featured at the Hay Festival this year, is a specialist on sex segregation and inequality in the modern labour market. A three-year project she is directing will evaluate gender bias in the assessment and selection of top executives for recruitment (with Monica Wirz, PhD candidate in the Centre). Egon Zehnder International, the largest privately owned executive search firm, has funded the project following their recent finding that the proportion of women on the boards of UK FTSE companies is only 12.6%. ‘It’s dismal how little diversity there is in chief national and international posts,’ comments Dr Browne. ‘We need to link up the thinking behind selection processes at the very highest recruitment levels with that of the latest critical thinking in gender studies.’

Dr Andrew Tucker, Assistant Director of UCCGS, leads a Centre project focusing on HIV transmission in South Africa, which continues to exhibit one of the worst epidemics of HIV. ̽��ֱ��United States Agency for International Development is funding this groundbreaking two-year project through the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. ̽��ֱ��study is aimed at reducing transmission in marginalised at-risk communities in South Africa – specifically men who have sex with men (MSM). What little work has been done on addressing this group’s health needs has focused overwhelmingly on measures such as condom distribution; this project instead plans to examine the benefits of reducing social and economic discrimination, and an endemic sense of fatalism, which affect MSM in township environments.

Bequest to ‘spark young minds’

Thanks to a recent substantial bequest from Professor Carl Djerassi (inventor of the first oral contraceptive pill) in memory of his late wife Diane Middlebrook, the community of Cambridge researchers working on gender is being extended by the launch of the Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting Professorship in Gender Studies, bringing internationally renowned scholars to the Centre. ̽��ֱ��first to visit is Professor Marcia Inhorn, a leading medical anthropologist from Yale ̽��ֱ�� whose research focuses on ‘reproductive tourism’ – the search for assisted reproductive technologies and human eggs, sperm and embryos across national and international borders.

During their research period at UCCGS, each Visiting Professor will explore opportunities for continuing collaborative research with the Centre and offer guidance and intellectual leadership to junior researchers and students. As Professor Djerassi remarks: ‘What better way of honoring the memory of my wife than bringing great teachers from all over the world to spark younger minds.’

For more information, please contact Dr Jude Browne (jmb63@cam.ac.uk) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies (www.gender.cam.ac.uk/) in the Department of Geography.

New funding and a generous bequest are helping researchers in Cambridge to explore the complexities of how gender works in the world.

Gender at the Centre is about all humans whatever their identities, condition or experiences.

Dr Jude Browne

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All things being equal

bjb42 — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:47:07 +0000

British employment legislation is anachronistic and out of sync with 21^st century parenting, says Jude Browne, Frankopan Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies.

She is interested in how philosophical principles of inequality which underpin our laws translate into legislative practice, with a particular focus on gender equality.

Her talk at the Guardian Hay Festival will focus on the principle of equal treatment, which is a bedrock of EU equality policies. Investigating the principle throws up several interesting practicalities, such as how to think about the ways in which people should be treated more equally. Browne is interested in how current UK law seems to act against equality by forcing men and women into particular roles and denying them a full range of choice over how they conduct their family life.

She highlights legislation around maternity and paternity leave as a case in point. ̽��ֱ��inequality between women having months off work and men only having two weeks out of the workplace “herds people into traditional roles,” she says. “People have no choice unless they are very rich.”

This leads to all sorts of inequalities and potential discrimination in the workplace, with women of childbearing age viewed by some employers as a risky, expensive option, compared with men.

Browne says that the law should be about giving people the choice over how they wish to operate as a family unit, adding that the majority of households are now dual-earning. In many cases, both couples work full time and men want to be more involved in parenting.

She has little time for people who use generalisations to defend conservative legislation: “There is no single minded category,” she says. “I am very sceptical of assuming what people want. Men and women make decisions based on all sorts of factors. There are a whole range of scenarios.”

“ ̽��ֱ��law at present is very prescriptive about what men and women should be doing as parents and traps people into social norms despite the fact that attitudes have changed so much.”

Maternity legislation has undergone several changes in recent years; for instance, it was recently extended to one year in length. Browne says this is all very well and good if women want to take a year out, but in the absence of legislation allowing men to take similar time out for parenting duties, it might make a return to work for women more difficult and hence increase inequality in the workplace.

“There has to be a holistic approach to this issue,” says Browne. “ ̽��ֱ��legislation has to be properly thought through as it has a huge impact on the way people are able to organise their lives.”

Her talk fits with the multidisciplinary ethos of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. ̽��ֱ��idea is to bring together research and innovation on everything from law and philosophy to reproductive science and literature. One way the Centre is doing this is through a collaboration with the Guardian newspaper at the beginning of next term. They will jointly play host to three lectures on gender and the biomedical advances in the 21st century at the Guardian's offices in King's Place, London.

̽��ֱ��talks, which will be given by leading researchers aim to provide an open dialogue with the public so that they can understand the potential impact of scientific advances on society and their implications for gender.

Dr. Jude Browne will be speaking at the Hay Festival on June 6^th at 1pm.

UK law is different for men and women on issues such as maternity or paternity leave. Dr. Jude Browne’s research asks about whether our gender roles are being prescribed for us, and what needs to change in the interests of a more balanced and fair society.

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