If There’s Only One Woman in Your Candidate Pool, There’s Statistically No Chance She’ll Be Hired

by Stefanie K. Johnson, David R. Hekman and Elsa T. Chan

April 26, 2016

There are more CEOs of large U.S. companies who are named David (4.5%) than there are CEOs who are women (4.1%) — and David isn’t even the most common first name among CEOs. (That would be John, at 5.3%.)

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Stefanie K. Johnson is an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business and author of Inclusify. Dr. Johnson studies the intersection of leadership and diversity, focusing on how unconscious bias affects the evaluation of leaders, and strategies that leaders can use to mitigate bias. She is a member of the MG 100 Coaches and the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar List.

David R. Hekman is an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. His work has been published in Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science, and he is focused on improving organizational health by examining remedies for pervasive workplace racial and gender biases, sources of professional workers’ motivation, and sources and outcomes of virtuous leadership. He earned his Ph.D at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

Elsa T. Chan is a PhD candidate in management and entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests include virtuous behaviors, biases, leadership and entrepreneurship.