Alarm at NUIG’s €700k bill to tackle ‘unconscious’ gender bias

Alarm was expressed at a Governing Body meeting of NUI Galway about the ongoing cost of providing training that helps to stop staff giving advantage to men over women.

‘Unconscious bias training’ was one of the initiatives NUIG agreed to implement in order to eliminate gender inequality at the city campus.

The roll-out of continuous unconscious bias training was one of the tasks for the Vice President of Equality and Diversity, which was established to focus initially on “the elimination of gender inequality” at NUIG.

At the November meeting of the Governing Body, the cost of the training came under the spotlight.

The Vice-President, Professor Anne Scott, told members of the Governing Body that she had “no definitive figure in respect of overall costs” of her office.

However, the three “most expensive” items of expenditure to redress the gender balance, included €120,000 additional funding for the provision of enhanced maternity cover to colleges, schools and support units. A further €90,000 was given for research for academic staff returning from academic leave and carers leave.

The third was: “Approximately €500,000 for the cost of her office, inclusive of an identified number of initiatives and rollout and continuation of unconscious bias training costs,” according to the minutes of the meeting, which were released to the Galway City Tribune under Freedom of Information.

The minutes said that: “One member was extremely surprised at the cost of the unconscious bias training and would like to be convinced in respect of the impact of such training.”

The Vice President told members that “there is very good evidence of implicit gender bias being present in society”.

There is “well-founded evidence” within the academic environment that “male CVs tend to get preferential treatment in appointment processes as a result of unconscious bias”.

She said that women are also expected to produce more research outputs in order to maintain equality of assessment with male colleagues.

“She did acknowledge that there is no evidence on the lasting effect of unconscious bias training and noted that the current cost of unconscious bias training was one-third more expensive last year than would be anticipated this year – as all inputs were developed, from scratch, at the request of NUIG,” the minutes record.

The taskforce set up by NUIG after it became embroiled in a gender equality scandal, recommended that staff at the university including heads of schools, chairs of committees and interview boards, should engage in compulsory “unconscious bias training” with annual refresher courses.

According to the taskforce progress report: “Unconscious bias is widespread throughout academia and its effect is to advantage men over women”

The training “helps participants to recognise their own biases helping them to make better and more rational decisions.”