Influence of gender bias in academia - a small experimental study on implicit association

Abstract

Gender inequality is to some extent depending on subconscious gender bias, that is, automatic associations that might mis-favour women in academia. The extent to which gender bias in relation to career choices is present in the population has been investigated during many years in an American-based web project but have not yet been investigated among teachers at LTH. In this study, we let 56 teachers at LTH partake in a survey and in the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT), and we then analysed their results on their test in relation to their survey answers and in relation to the answers collected by Project Implicit for many years. The scores obtained on LTH was, on average, a little bit less biased than the Project Implicit scores, however the difference was not statistically significant. Furthermore, we could conclude that role models within different fields of academia did not affect the result significantly in our test, making female representation, as highlighted in previous studies, an aspect to work on, although not the only one.