“People started studying gender and racial bias intensively in the 1970s. The style of discrimination has changed a lot since 1970, but one of the things that I realized is that it’s changed less in some STEM fields,” said Dr. Joan C. Williams, distinguished professor of law at UC Hastings and director of the Center for WorkLife Law.
Law and academic medicine are two areas Dr. Williams identified as maintaining retrograde attitudes toward women.
“One of these women [in the study] recounted—keep in mind that this is a Ph.D. scientist—that a colleague of hers threw her an eraser in a faculty seminar and said, ‘now maybe you’ll understand,’” Williams said.
While most women, happily, did not report being attacked in such a bizarre and hostile fashion, the study did find that many women experience subtler forms of bias.
Williams’ prior work closely focuses on the challenges women face in the workplace. Last year, she co-authored “What Works for Women at Work,” which offers methods women can use to circumvent subtle biases they may encounter in the workplace.
The new study, published on January 21, identifies four patterns in which gender bias manifests itself:
