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Technology and keeping gender bias out of the workplace

On Behalf of | Aug 8, 2016 | Workplace Discrimination |

Concerns about possible gender discrimination and bias come up in connection to workplaces in all different kinds of industries. Take the tech industry for example. This industry has come under criticism lately for the relatively low numbers of female workers in it. Statistics suggest that women make up a smaller portion of the workers in this field than they did a couple decades ago.

Sadly, gender bias/discrimination has the potential to creep into all different stages of the employment process: from hiring, to pay decisions, to performance review/management, to promotion decisions, to layoff/termination determinations. When a tech worker or a worker in any other field suspects that they have been subjected to gender bias/discrimination by an employer when it comes to any type of employment-related action, they may promptly want an employment lawyer’s guidance on what possible legal remedies they may have available.

Being put at an unfair disadvantage by an employer because of their gender is harmful for a worker at any stage of the employment process. Thus, keeping gender discrimination/bias out of all their employment decisions is a critical goal for companies in all industries, including the tech industry, to have.

Might technology be able to provide a big assist when it comes to gender bias prevention in the tech industry and other industries? In recent times, various software programs have come up or are under development for helping employers with managing the various stages of the employment process, including hiring and performance management. Some of these programs are aimed at things such as promoting diverse hiring, detecting possible warning signs of gender bias in employment processes and warning employers of the potential presence of bias. It will be interesting to see if utilizing software programs to try to prevent gender bias and promote diversity in their workforce becomes a more and more common approach among employers.

One hopes that if technology solutions are increasingly turned to when it comes to the problem of workplace gender bias, companies that provide such technology solutions make sure to exercise great care with what algorithms they utilize. For, while technology could have the potential to help root out gender bias, it could also have the potential to perpetuate/preserve such bias in employment practices if the wrong algorithms are used.

Source: TechRepublic, “Can these tech tools fight gender bias and increase workplace diversity?,” Alison DeNisco, Aug. 8, 2016

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