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Summary.
Research has shown that gender diversity promotes scientific creativity and innovation. Furthermore, lower success rates for women in science represent a shortcoming in social justice and reduce role models for young women, perpetuating the lack of women in the pipeline. Blinding applications is a relatively simple step forward in curbing these inefficiencies and injustices, but many scientific institutions have not yet implemented it in their processes. The authors’ research demonstrates that anonymizing applications can improve the rates at which women are accepted into prestigious research programs.As the existence of gender, race, and other biases becomes more widely acknowledged, many organizations are “blinding” their talent selection systems. Whether in a hiring process or an application for funding or other opportunities, there is some suggestions that anonymizing details about the applicant — removing their name, for example — leads to the selection of more candidates from underrepresented groups.