Academic hiring committees should include independent observers to avoid bias against female applicants, a report from some of Europe¡¯s biggest research universities has recommended.

The analysis, released by the League of European Research Universities (Leru), sifts through a mountain of evidence that female academics face bias in everything from student evaluations to perceptions of their research quality and offered starting salaries.

One of its most eye-catching ideas is that universities should bring in ¡°trained observers¡± when recruiting new staff, something already done at the University of Geneva and KU Leuven.

¡°They should be members of different faculties or departments and report on any potential bias in the selection process,¡± says the paper?Implicit bias in academia: a challenge to the meritocratic principle and to women¡¯s careers ¨C and what to do about it, released on 18 January.

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This is one of the responses to what the report calls ¡°a large body of available experimental and observational research showing that women are, on average, considered less fit for scholarly positions than men¡±, which means that ¡°women usually have to perform better to be judged as equally qualified to men¡±.

This implicit bias is a cause ¨C possibly even the main cause ¨C of female under-representation in multiple levels of academia, it says.

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Other recommendations include briefing hiring committee members on potential sources of bias; deciding on ¡°clear selection criteria¡± from the beginning; anonymising CVs in the first round of selection; carrying out ¡°structured¡± interviews; and implementing a ¡°data-driven¡± review process.

Female evaluators have been found to be just as biased as men, the report says, meaning that a gender-balanced selection committee ¡°does not guarantee a bias-free procedure¡±.

¡°What is needed is informed evaluators capable of avoiding the bias trap,¡± it says.

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Leru members include some of the biggest universities in Europe, such as the Sorbonne University, LMU Munich and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

david.matthews@timeshighereducation.com