Gender Bias in Recruiting: Developing a Social Practice Perspective

Unconscious bias training has become a popular intervention for eliminating discrimination in the workplace. Particularly recruitment processes are said to become fairer and more objective if gender biases are eliminated through training of personnel. However, the concept of gender bias, and particularly the idea that it can be trained away, has also been critiqued as too limited in its focus on individual mental processes, thereby neglecting effects of context, interaction and power. Taking this critique as our starting point, we argue that gender bias needs to be theorised in relation to a specific interaction and normative context. Building on cognitive social psychology, critical social psychology and on gender as a social practice we show that gender bias is not only an individual, but a fundamentally social activity that is embedded within organisational norms and power relations and reproduced in interaction. By theorising gender bias as a social practice, we expand the concept of genderbias beyond individual cognition. This perspective not only opens up the scope of explanation but is also a vital concept for exploring and combatting bias in recruiting.Purpose: Unconscious bias training has become a popular intervention for eliminating discrimination in the workplace. Particularly recruitment processes are said to become fairer and more objective if gender biases are eliminated through training of personnel. However, the concept of gender bias, and particularly the idea that it can be trained away, has also been critiqued as too limited in its focus on individual mental processes, thereby neglecting effects of context, interaction and power. Taking this critique as our starting point, we argue that gender bias needs to be theorised in relation to a specific interaction and normative context. This article aims at expanding the concept of gender bias beyond individual cognition. Developing a social practice perspective on gender bias in recruiting allows to widen the scope of explanation as well as intervention. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper that contributes new insights into how to tackle (unconscious) gender bias by integrating relevant psychological literature and empirical findings. We build on cognitive social psychology, critical social psychology and on gender as a social practice to show that gender bias is not only an individual, but a fundamentally social activity that is embedded within organisational norms and power relations and reproduced in interaction. Findings: In this paper we carve out the potential for understanding gender bias as more than individual cognition and show how theorising gender bias as a social practice can become a vital concept for exploring and combatting bias in recruiting