Gender equitable recruitment and promotion: Leading practice guide

Abstract

Gender bias is pervasive at work and in organisations, creating inequalities at every stage of the employment cycle. Gender- based stereotypes affect which candidates get recruited for certain roles and which do not, which candidates get selected for those roles and why, how salaries are negotiated, how managers provide feedback to their employees, and which employees receive career development opportunities and career encouragement and which do not. Each of these factors compounds across women’s careers, producing and sustaining gender inequality from recruitment to selection to promotion. Decades of research has made one thing clear: gender biases are nearly always present in employment decisions, subtly influencing our assessments about who is the ‘right’ or ‘best’ person for the job. This insight paper highlights some of the research examining how gender bias operates at work and provides evidence- based suggestions for creating more equitable recruitment and promotion systems.