A few years ago, Astrid Linder, a Swedish engineer, developed the first car crash test dummy based on a woman’s body. Her goal was, in her own words, “to make everyone in cars as well protected as possible.” And to truly include everyone, only male dummies won’t do.
Our Spring 2025 virtual seminar “Make Work Fair” will build on Linder’s inclusionary aspirations and explore what workplaces that work for everyone might look like. We start by analyzing some of the common approaches aimed at advancing fairness at work, including diversity training programs, and explore why fairness cannot be a program but instead must be a way of doing things. The seminar sessions will then focus on embedding equity into everything we do, drawing from the three-part framework in Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi’s book Make Work Fair. We will first focus on “making fairness count,” investigating the role of data, goals, incentives, transparency, and accountability. Then, we’ll examine how to “make fairness stick” by looking at the design of hiring, performance management, and promotion procedures. Lastly, we’ll ask the hardest question: how to “make fairness normal” by investigating the role of workplace arrangements such as flexibility, social norms, and culture. The seminars will feature researchers presenting their work, often based on randomized controlled trials in the field, followed by Q&A with the virtual audience.
This seminar series is co-sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and is chaired by Iris Bohnet, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and co-director of WAPPP, Faculty Director of the Social Sciences at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and co-author, together with Siri Chilazi, of Make Work Fair (January 2025).