Summary: Interview with Professor Mabel Abraham

This is a conversation between Anita McGahan and Professor Mabel Abraham (Columbia Business School), whose research focuses on how organizational systems and networks produce gender and racial inequality.

Why Equity Is Hard to Achieve

Abraham argues the problem isn't just individual bias, but how systems designed to be objective end up producing inequality anyway. For example, when a single evaluator screens 500 candidates, they fall back on mental shortcuts — like assuming men are stronger in technical roles — without actively intending to discriminate.

How Evaluation Systems Fail

She outlines several structural issues:

• Pool composition — Female-skewed candidate pools tend to amplify inequities
• Multi-stage filtering — Less expert evaluators handle the early, high-volume screening, potentially introducing bias before experts even see the shortlist
• Evaluator demographics — Whether an evaluator is demographically similar to a candidate can cut either way, helping or hurting depending on whether they feel threatened

The "Misrecognition" Effect

In a key paper, Abraham finds that evaluators reproduce their own past experiences. Those who were previously under-recognized tend to withhold recognition from others, while those who were over-recognized tend to be overly generous. Providing objective criteria can reduce over-recognition, but notably cannot counteract under-recognition, which is driven by deep feelings of unfairness.

Networks and Triadic Closure

Abraham moves beyond one-on-one dynamics to examine how networks perpetuate inequality. A key finding: even unbiased connectors are less likely to introduce female or Black contacts to others in their network, partly out of uncertainty about third parties' biases. In a professional services firm study, she finds no racial gap when Black employees network directly, but a significant gap when a shared contact is involved — meaning the process of triadic closure (referrals through mutual connections) is itself a major driver of racial disparity.

Practical Implications for Leaders

Abraham recommends moving away from network-based staffing — which feels efficient but produces racialized outcomes — toward intentional staffing practices that ensure equal access to key projects and influential people. This was validated by a consulting firm partner who had independently made the same shift based on intuition alone.

What Gives Her Optimism

Despite a challenging policy environment, Abraham draws energy from seeing researchers and practitioners remain committed to this work, and from recognizing that while progress feels slow in the short term, looking back over 20 years shows meaningful advancement.