Bias in Recruitment Processes

Although technology has become an integral part of our lives and has come to define who we are and how we live (Wajcman, 2004), most scholars agree that women and men are not on equal footing when it comes to technology. This holds true for both its development and use (Cech and Blair Loy, 2019; Young, D’Iganzio and Klein, 2023, Wajcman and Sprejer, 2023). At the conference we will introduce our results from our research on the topic of gender and the use of AI in management across Europe. We have analyzes the perception and experience of women and men of discrimination related to the use of AI applications, We have also investigated whether AI developers and human resource (HR) specialists in Europe believe that using AI algorithms in management creates diversity biases, and whether they have identified any strategies to mitigate potential gender bias.

For the purpose of analyzing perceptions towards and experiences with the use of AI in management, we analyzed quantitative and qualitative cross-country datasets collected in 2023, first a survey dataset of almost 5000 answers from across Europe, and secondly expert interviews AI developers and HR managers in eight European countries that were asked about possible bias connected to AI in recruitment and management.

Our results shine a light on gender patterns in the survey data and on how AI developers and HR managers address gender and diversity in relation to the use of AI in recruitment and management as well their experience of potential mitigating strategies to improve diversity in workplaces.