A recent study found that while men’s earnings increased more than 6% when they had children (if they lived with them), women’s wages decreased 4% for each child they had. The so-called parental pay gap persisted even when controlling for factors like experience, education, hours worked, and spousal incomes.

New hires at Vice also sign a “Non-Traditional Workplace Agreement,” an infamous internal document that requires employees with no experience at Vice to agree as a condition of employment to not be generally offended by anything that goes on there. It reads in part: “Although it is possible that some of the text, images and information I will be exposed to the course of my employment with Vice may be considered by some to be offensive, indecent, violent or disturbing, I do not find such text, images or information or the workplace environment at Vice to be offensive, indecent, violent or disturbing.”

The study found the rate of promotion for black women is 4.9%, compared with 5.8% for Asian women, 6.0% for Hispanic women, and 7.4% for white women. Women of color are the most underrepresented group in the pipeline. They make up 19% of the U.S. population but just 6% of vice presidents, 4% of senior vice presidents, and 3% of C-suite roles. And the attrition rate—the reduction in workforce, primarily due to resignations—is higher for black women than any other group of women.

“There was some evidence that males received better research mentoring from faculty, and that family responsibilities were more of a hindrance for women than men,” Lubienski wrote in an email. “The data point toward other possible explanations, including greater teaching responsibilities for women and possible career goal differences between women and men.” She said although she feels confident that this gender gap applies to other institutions, the study requires replication in order to generalize its findings to other universities.

Boroditsky's research has found that the way people often describe objects correlates with the object's given gender in a language. In German, for instance, "bridge" carries a feminine pronoun, and Boroditsky said Germans are more likely to refer to bridges as "beautiful" or "elegant," both typically feminine traits. Spanish-speakers, meanwhile, will refer to bridges as "strong" or "sturdy," as the Spanish word is masculine.

“The most important thing we did was normalize acknowledging that everyone has biases, whether they recognize them or not,” Debra Weissman, a senior vice president at the company, told the Times. “We had to make it O.K. for people to say, ‘I think I’m being unintentionally unfair.’”

Harbouring such strong biases can cloud one’s judgments about oneself, especially about one’s abilities. Multiple studies have found that such implicit stereotypes, held by both men and women, can predict a participant’s math engagement, performance and achievement, intentions to pursue science-related majors, academic programs and careers. Among women, stronger implicit stereotypes predict worse math performance and achievement and weaker identification with math and science. Pervasive stereotypes associated science with men emerge early in development and exist across cultures.

“AI tech is a direct reflection of the people who are engineering it, so any bias by these individuals will be reflected in the products they create,” Montoya tells OZY — something she’s seen many times with “tech bros” in Silicon Valley. Looking for examples? In 2009 HP’s imaging software couldn’t recognize Asian faces, and Harvard’s Project Implicit discovered that people automatically assign positive or negative behavior to different skin tones. That’s the impetus behind Accel.AI: to make sure that diverse people have a say in tech of the future.

In her 2016 book, What Works: Gender Equality by Design, Bohnet proposes fixes to existing systems based on scientifically tested evidence. For example, she says, job postings should be scrutinized for gendered language that might discourage potential applicants, and interviews should be structured, with all prospective hires asked the same questions, so personal connections or shared experiences don’t favor any candidates.

Black women, in particular, are most likely to report that managers do not advocate for them, support them in navigating organizational politics, providing advice, nor give them stretch assignments. Moreover, black women tend to think that the workplace is unfair in terms of growth opportunities and the awarding of promotions. This data mirrors Fairygodboss data where black women report the lowest average job satisfaction levels compared to Caucasian women and other women of color.

While sport and media were the places where girls felt most inequality, the report also found 86% of the girls said they were just as good at sport as boys. While 95% of 10 to 14 year-old girls and 96% of 15-17 year-old girls said they were just as good at being leaders as boys, 40% of them believed gender inequality was the biggest barrier to them becoming a leader.