Difficult Dialogues: Negotiating Faculty Responses to a Gender Bias Literacy Training Program.

Diversity training is challenging and can evoke strong emotional responses from participants including resistance, shame, confusion, powerlessness, defensiveness, and anger. These responses create complex situations for both presenters and other learners. We observed 3 experienced presenters as they implemented 41 gender bias literacy workshops for 376 faculty from 42 STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) departments at one Midwestern university. We recorded questions and answers as well as participants' non-verbal activity during each 2.5-hour workshop. Employing content analysis and critical incident technique, we identified content that elicited heightened activity and challenging dialogues among presenters and faculty. Results from analysis of this observational data found three important findings: (1) presenters continually reinforced the idea that implicit bias is ordinary and pervasive, thus avoiding participant alienation by allowing participants to protect their self-worth and integrity; (2) difficult dialogues were managed calmly without verbal sparring or relinquishing control; (3) the presenters created an environment where individuals were more likely to accept threatening information.

Searching for excellence & diversity: increasing the hiring of women faculty at one academic medical center.

One opportunity to realize the diversity goals of academic health centers comes at the time of hiring new faculty. To improve the effectiveness of search committees in increasing the gender diversity of faculty hires, the authors created and implemented a training workshop for faculty search committees designed to improve the hiring process and increase the diversity of faculty hires at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They describe the workshops, which they presented in the School of Medicine and Public Health between 2004 and 2007, and they compare the subsequent hiring of women faculty in participating and nonparticipating departments and the self-reported experience of new faculty within the hiring process. Attendance at the workshop correlates with improved hiring of women faculty and with a better hiring experience for faculty recruits, especially women. The authors articulate successful elements of workshop implementation for other medical schools seeking to increase gender diversity on their faculties.