Many public settings involve discussions – committees, town meetings, conflict resolution groups, hearings, voluntary associations (clubs, residential associations, churches), etc. Do women exercise their voices to the same extent, and as influentially, as men do? Do women succeed as well as men at speaking, mentioning the topics of distinctive concern to their gender, articulating their own pre-discussion preferences, affecting the group decision, and gaining influence in the eyes of others? Our answer is no. We find a pervasive gender gap in women’s substantive and symbolic representation. But this gender gap shrinks and even closes entirely under the right institutional designs. Speaker: Tali Mendelberg, Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University

The Olympic and Paralympic Games represent a once in a lifetime opportunity to achieve paradigm change in policymaking.  As Head of Diversity and Inclusion for the London Organizing Committee 2007-2012, Stephen worked with the CEO, HR Director and other directors and colleagues to achieve systemic change in recruitment, procurement and customer service delivery mechanisms.  Using a range of incentives, London managed to achieve unprecedented diversity in the workforce through demand and supply interventions in recruitment, as well as significant strides in supplier diversity through an assertive procurement program.  Stephen will talk through some of the methods they used to achieve this result, hailed by the International Paralympic Committee as the “Best Games ever”. Speaker: Stephen Frost, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, London Olympics Committee

Ethnic diversity can have negative effects, increasing the potential for perceived inequities, negative conflict, and communication difficulties in groups and organizations that can lead to negative performance outcomes. Consistent with these findings, political economists have also shown that ethnic fractionalization, essentially a measure of country-level diversity, undermines GDP growth of a country. At this tealk, we use a multi-methods research approach to examine the perceived and actual influence of male and female national leaders in countries characterized by more or less ethnic fractionalization. We will examine people’s perceptions of male and female country leaders and how well they might fit as leaders of ethnically fractionalized countries. While causation is not possible to prove, the results suggest countries that have high ethnic fractionalization and difficulty to lead scores stand to uniquely benefit from female leadership. Implications for understanding the intersection of gender and ethnic diversity in complex environments are discussed. Speaker: Katherine Phillips, Professor of Management, Columbia Business School

How do people justify their regrettable behavior to themselves – such as

discriminating against others on the basis of gender and race? We suggest that

a common strategy used to avoid the appearance of bias when making such

decisions is to cloak decision-making in more acceptable terms: when people

make decisions based on questionable criteria – such as gender – they scan

the environment for other less controversial attributes that can be recruited to justify their decisions. We demonstrate this general process in domains

ranging from racism in the legal system (Blacks being disproportionately

excluded from juries in trials with Black defendants) to gender discrimination

(women being passed over for traditionally “male” jobs), showing that in each

case, decision-makers are careful to find other mundane attributes to mask the

true reasons underlying their biased decision making.