The DOI matches its Crossref record; 26 of the 26 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Algorithmic Bias? An Empirical Study of Apparent Gender-Based Discrimination in the Display of STEM Career Ads
Open accessAbstract
We explore data from a field test of how an algorithm delivered ads promoting job opportunities in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. This ad was explicitly intended to be gender neutral in its delivery. Empirically, however, fewer women saw the ad than men. This happened because younger women are a prized demographic and are more expensive to show ads to. An algorithm that simply optimizes cost-effectiveness in ad delivery will deliver ads that were intended to be gender neutral in an apparently discriminatory way, because of crowding out. We show that this empirical regularity extends to other major digital platforms. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.
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“Researchers have also shown that gender bias can occur without any conscious (or unconscious) attempt to produce a biased outcome -using only an unbiased algorithm (Lambrecht and Tucker 2019).”
From A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing (2021) · cites this paper as Lambrecht and Tucker 2019
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“However, this approach can be problematic in terms of fairness and privacy [13-15, 18, 19].”
From A Deep Dive into Fairness, Bias, Threats, and Privacy in Recommender Systems: Insights and Future Research (2024) · cites this paper as [19]
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“Even after eliminating all bias from the data, an algorithm's results may still vary across different data groups due to algorithmic bias [19, 82].”
From A Deep Dive into Fairness, Bias, Threats, and Privacy in Recommender Systems: Insights and Future Research (2024) · cites this paper as [19]
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“Lambrecht and Tucker (2019), for example, discovered fewer women than men were shown ads about STEM careers even though the ads were gender neutral by design.”
From Algorithmic management in a work context (2021) · cites this paper as Lambrecht and Tucker, 2019
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“Proposition 6e. The greater the algorithm bias , the lower the probability of building trust in AI algorithms over time.”
From Why do users trust algorithms? A review and conceptualization of initial trust and trust over time (2022) · cites this paper as Lambrecht & Tucker, 2019
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“Bias has also been reported in algorithmic advertisement, with opportunities for higherpaying jobs and jobs within the field of science and technology advertised to men more often than to women (Datta et al. 2015;Lambrecht and Tucker 2019).”
From The ethics of algorithms: key problems and solutions (2022) · cites this paper as Lambrecht and Tucker 2019
In the citing paper
“Increasing amounts of empirical evidence confirm this risk (Obermeyer et al. 2019;Datta et al. 2015;Lambrecht and Tucker 2019).”
From Artificial intelligence and work: a critical review of recent research from the social sciences (2024) · cites this paper as Lambrecht and Tucker 2019
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“An additional system that incorporated post-hoc explainability was designed by Lamy et al. [123] and provided local explanations of the preference model using rainbow boxes [56].”
From Current Challenges and Future Opportunities for XAI in Machine Learning-Based Clinical Decision Support Systems: A Systematic Review (2021) · cites this paper as [56]
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“Some identities (and not others) are recognized as a pedestrian,44 or fit for an STEM career,69 or in need of medical care.1 Some are ignored and made invisible altogether.”
From Algorithmic injustice: A relational ethics approach (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
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“an advertisement model that underpromoted ads for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers to young women (Lambrecht & Tucker, 2019).”
From Diminished diversity-of-thought in a standard large language model (2024) · cites this paper as Lambrecht & Tucker, 2019
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Citations
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Sorted by citations
A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning
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A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing
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“Researchers have also shown that gender bias can occur without any conscious (or unconscious) attempt to produce a biased outcome — using only an unbiased algorithm (Lambrecht and Tucker 2019).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Lambrecht, A., & Tucker, C.
- Affiliations
- Boston College (US)
- Venue
- Management Science
- Published
- 2019-07
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 2966-2981
- ISSN
- 0025-1909 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5501
- OpenAlex
- W2550925836
- Cited by
- 854
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 108 · 2025: 128 · 2024: 139 · 2023: 163 · 2022: 109 · 2021: 120 · 2020: 73 · 2019: 12
- FWCI
- 137.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Locations
- Management Science (publishedVersion)
- London Business School Research Online (London Business School) (submittedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Media, Gender, and Advertising
- Keywords
- algorithmic bias, gender discrimination, online advertising, STEM careers, crowding out, demographic targeting, digital platforms, women in STEM
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