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2 ways quotas for women raise quality: The Video!

The previous entry on this blog now has a video! It’s about quotas and the written version begins as follows.

Quotas, it is said, inevitably lower quality. Quotas lead to hiring a person who otherwise wouldn’t get hired. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that if she were good enough, she would get the job on her own? Quotas take situations that are fair — tough, sure, but fair nonetheless — and make them unfair. Surely you don’t think sex makes a difference in how well you do your work!

Those are the attitudes I bump into when I talk about quotas — the most extreme form of intervention in hiring processes. Those attitudes, however, fly in the face of recent research. It turns out that there are good reasons to think quotas actually do the opposite: they raise quality.

That entry is based on a speech I recently held in Brussels at Gender Summit 4, and I have become aware that there is a video of it available online.

So, you can either read the argument in 2 ways quotas for women raise quality, or you can watch it here. The chit-chat ends at 2:00.

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My interest in moving universities towards balance encompasses gender equality, the communication of scientific results, promoting research-based education and leadership development more generally. Read more

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