Reducing STEM gender bias with VIDS (video interventions for diversity in STEM).

Abstract

Gender biases contribute to the underrepresentation of women in STEM. In response, the scientific community has called for methods to reduce bias, but few validated interventions exist. Thus, an interdisciplinary group of researchers and filmmakers partnered to create VIDS (Video Interventions for Diversity in STEM), which are short videos that expose participants to empirical findings from published gender bias research in 1 of 3 conditions. One condition illustrated findings using narratives (compelling stories), and the second condition presented the same results using expert interviews (straightforward facts). A hybrid condition included both narrative and expert interview videos. Results of two experiments revealed that relative to controls, VIDS successfully reduced gender bias and increased awareness of gender bias, positive attitudes toward women in STEM, anger, empathy, and intentions to engage in behaviors that promote gender parity in STEM. The narratives were particularly impactful for emotions, while the expert interviews most strongly impacted awareness and attitudes. The hybrid condition reflected the strengths of both the narratives and expert interviews (though effects were sometimes slightly weaker than the other conditions). VIDS produced substantial immediate effects among both men and women in the general population and STEM faculty, and effects largely persisted at follow-up. (PsycINFO Database Record

Gender in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: Issues, Causes, Solutions

“…Partly to address scalability, the Video Interventions for Diversity in STEM (https://academics.skidmore.edu/ blogs/vids/) adopt similar approaches to the "habit-breaking" interventions by promoting gender bias literacy through freely available videos consisting of six 5 min presentations, each discussing the results of a peer-reviewed study on gender bias. Video Interventions for Diversity in STEM have been found to successfully reduce explicit gender biases, increase awareness of everyday bias, and increase self-efficacy to confront bias among both general public and academic faculty participants (Pietri et al, 2017;Hennes et al, 2018;Moss-Racusin et al, 2018), and may be applicable for many organizations.…”

Socioeconomic Mobility and Talent Utilization of Workers from Poorer Backgrounds: The Overlooked Importance of Within-Organization Dynamics

“…This line of work is dedicated to explaining why women select themselves out of STEM careers (Ceci & Williams, 2011;Ceci, Williams, & Barnett, 2009). The underrepresentation of women in such careers is seen as unfair and researchers and policy makers are trying to uncover and counter processes contributing to the problem (e.g., Moss-Racusin, Pietri, Hennes, Dovidio, Brescoll, Roussos et al, 2018;Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, & McManus, 2011). In a similar vein, future research is needed to understand factors driving underrepresentation of workers from poorer backgrounds in certain jobs, types of organizations, and professions.…”

Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

“…Much of the persuasion literature focuses on ways to influence consumer or political preferences. Closer to our work are studies on attitude change about intimate partner violence (Gupta et al, 2013;Abramsky et al, 2014;Pulerwitz et al, 2015;Green et al, 2020), racial minorities (Donovan and Leivers, 1993), immigrants (Hopkins et al, 2019;Grigorieff et al, 2020), and women in STEM (Moss-Racusin et al, 2018), as well as studies that shift people's perceptions of social norms about gender or about ethnic discrimination and violence (Bursztyn et al, 2020;Aloud et al, 2020;Paluck, 2009).…”