Gender and Racial Bias in Hiring

This memo reviews the literature on gender and racial biases in hiring and other workplace evaluations and proposes remedies to reduce these biases. It contains sections that provide: 1. background data on the underrepresentation of minorities and women among American faculty; 2. empirical evidence that cognitive biases in the evaluation of women and minority candidates contribute to their underrepresentation; 3. a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms that produce biased evaluations; and 4. a series of proposed remedies derived from empirically supported theoretical accounts of how and why biases emerge and how they lead to disadvantages for women and minorities.