Teaching and educational notes
An instructional exercise in gender bias

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2020.100710Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Classroom exercise to demonstrate gender bias in hiring or promotion activities.

  • The exercise generates vigorous discussion about implicit bias in decision-making.

  • Gained students’ attention and became a memorable learning experience.

  • Participants achieved better end of semester recognition of bias than others.

  • After engaging, 89% reported being somewhat comfortable discussing issues of bias.

Abstract

Both men and women pursue careers in accounting equally, but the percentage of women that remain in the public accounting profession dwindles among the higher-tier and lead positions of larger firms (Association of International Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) 2019). While there are many variables that could affect this trend, one factor might be fewer advancement opportunities for women due to implicit bias within the profession. Since decisions about what positions to pursue, who to hire, and who to promote will be important choices in a student’s future accounting career, we thought it would be essential to teach awareness of gender bias in the profession and to prepare students with techniques to recognize and decode implicit gender biases. For this instructional exercise, our students participated in a simple experiment, attended a lecture with discussion on gender bias and occupational stereotypes, and reviewed and discussed the compiled data from their responses. We found that sharing the data comparisons by gender helped to spark lively discussions and create memorable learning experiences. We explore the topics of gender bias and gender coded words in an activity that was developed to test for bias and to be used to build awareness of potential gender bias in hiring or promotion activities. As the profession seeks to understand more about creating an inclusive environment to retain employees, this timely experiment to explore how implicit bias could occur in hiring and promotion is an intervention itself.

Introduction

Gender bias is making the news quite often, but are we preparing accounting students to recognize and reduce bias in the accounting workplace? A 2019 Reuters survey found that more than 70% of women in accounting firms report that their firms officially view eliminating gender bias as a high priority and have put in place measures such as parental leave and training on sexual harassment (Thompson Reuters, 2019). In the month of June 2020, the Big Four accounting firms all highlight the topic of diversity on the front page or within one click of the front page of their websites. However, 56% of the Reuters survey respondents reported that taking parental leave negatively affects women’s careers, only 44% of the respondents agreed that their firm’s culture supports the elimination of gender bias and only one third of the women surveyed said that gender bias is not an issue for career advancement and promotion. A similarly small fraction (a third) report that their firms do a good job in bringing female leads into key client relationships.

As students enter the profession of accounting, it is important for them to be aware of bias, unconscious bias and specifically gender bias. The first recommendation of the Reuters survey conclusions is to “Require ongoing implicit bias training and experiential workshops.” About half of survey respondents reported that unconscious bias training is available for employees in senior roles, but only 38% reported that such training is required. The research of Cohen, Dalton, Holder-Webb, and McMillan (2018), “An Analysis of Glass Ceiling Perceptions in the Accounting Profession,” also concludes that training on bias is needed inside firms. Tim Ryan (2017), US Chairman and Senior Partner, PwC shared why his firm was offering training in bias:

At PwC, we are committed to creating leaders who act with integrity and make a difference in the world. Investing in tools to help us be introspective and mindful of our unconscious biases is one step we are taking to support our people in working better with others and to achieve their full potential. (Going Beyond the Science section, para. 1.)

We propose that the research findings above, as well as the thoughts from PwC, a Big 4 firm, affirm the effects of unconscious bias on the culture within accounting firms and indicate a need for training on bias for students before they join firms as well. Additional support for covering this topic in the accounting curriculum comes from students themselves. In Weisenfeld and Robinson-Backmon (2001), minority student respondents indicated that educational institutions should conduct seminars on various topics including diversity issues, handling discrimination, the transition from college to work, and corporate politics and culture to support the successful transition of minority candidates into the accounting profession. In separate research in her senior honors thesis, Sarah Keiran (2017) wrote

As a female, I am graduating with a degree in accounting come May. I will be entering the public accounting profession with plans to become a certified public accountant (CPA) for PricewaterhouseCoopers. I feel personally connected to this issue and I am very interested in learning more about the possible reasons why women are underrepresented in upper level management and other leadership positions in public accounting firms. (p.1)

We describe an experiment and debrief session designed to expose students to the concepts of implicit and explicit bias through a familiar work occurrence, the reviewing of a job description, a resume and the selection of a qualified candidate. The session highlights how bias may impact decision making within the context of hiring and promotion within the accounting profession. The review of candidates is work that accounting professionals perform to hire or promote individuals as individual contributors or managers. Anecdotal evidence from accounting program alumni from the last five years and from faculty indicate that associates and senior associates in the firm are called upon to participate in career fairs, in recruiting efforts and in the review of candidates. This experiment highlights one example of many where implicit bias can impact decision making and ultimately impact the corporate culture.

Section snippets

Literature review

A recent literature review characterized accounting firms as a “gendered environment” (Atena & Tiron-Tudor, 2019). They found that the following issues remained fairly constant over the years 1988 to 2017: pay gaps associated with gender stratification, double standards that affect women’s career advancement, visibility for women, invisible barriers, and views of motherhood as a drawback.

It may be helpful to step back from the topic of gendered bias and provide a broader view of diversity and

The rationale

In this class intervention students participate in a simulated selection exercise designed to test for three conjectures: “(1) whether the research-based gendered words evoked bias in the students’ selection of candidates, (2) whether the students exhibited gender bias in selecting candidates, and (3) whether the students’ responses differed by gender”. As the research team approached the design of this session we wanted to test if the perceived gender of candidates or the gendered wording of

Experimental design

Each student received all three scenarios. For each of the first two scenarios (Accountant and Business Intelligence Analyst), each student was randomly assigned one of the three resumes. The three resumes were identical except for the gender of the applicant’s name. These two scenarios were designed to test whether the students exhibit unconscious gender bias based on the applicant name and whether the students’ own gender affects their responses to the candidates. For the last scenario (Sales

Classroom use of the experiment as a learning exercise

The intervention as an in-class learning exercise was effective to support all five learning objectives. Students will (1) gain an understanding of bias and (2) be able to identify common forms of unconscious bias, as well as (3) be informed of a scientifically-backed strategy to reduce bias. The session provides a typical business activity of reviewing a resume so that students can learn about (4) research-based gender-coded wording and activities that can be impacted by it and (5) learn about

Implementation guidance and conclusion

In this experiment we engaged students in a typical selection exercise designed to measure bias and gender differences in selection. It was our experience that the actual act of making the selections in our experiment coupled with the sharing of the data comparisons by gender helped to gain the attention of students and became a memorable learning experience. It made the topics accessible to the students. In a four-part session we achieved the following learning objectives. Students learned

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgment

The authors want to thank Rich Podurgal for allowing us access to his classroom for this exercise and also the reviewers who provided their expertise to make this paper better.

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      The 13 articles (12%) classified as instructional resources are listed in Appendix B by content area. An example of an instructional resource is a classroom exercise in gender bias (Ritter, Bynum, Gumpertz, & Butler, 2021). Three of the five journals had special themes during 2021 as summarized in Table 10.

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