Gender Bias in Hiring2018
Amazon scrapped AI recruiter that penalised 'women's' (2018)
Amazon scrapped an internal AI recruiting tool in 2018 after it learned to penalise resumes containing 'women's' (e.g. 'women's chess club captain') and downgraded graduates of two all-women's colleges.
Primary source
Reuters, Oct 2018
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/insight-amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK0AG/Published 2018 — compiled by JobCannon Research.
Why this stat matters
This figure belongs to the gender bias in hiringvertical of JobCannon's ongoing review of hiring, AI, and career-outcome research. We track it because it is one of the few primary-source estimates with a published sample, methodology, or legal record. Cite the original source first; this page exists to make the figure easy to find and link to.
Related stats
- LLMs preferred male names 52% vs 11% female (n>3M)Wilson & Caliskan, AIES 2024 — 2024
- LLMs over-favoured female names by 1-3pp in scoring (n~361K)Armstrong, Liu, Tessler & Caliskan, PNAS Nexus 4(3) — 2025
- Blind auditions: +50pp female advance rate in symphony orchestras (Goldin & Rouse, AER 2000)Goldin & Rouse, American Economic Review 90(4) — 2000
- Child earnings penalty: 20-30%+ for mothers, near-zero for fathers (NBER WP 25545)Kleven, Landais & Sogaard, NBER WP 25545 — 2019
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