---
id: "pisquared:interview/abraham-mabel"
type: "Pi-Squared interview"
title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Mabel Abraham"
url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/abraham-mabel"
date: "2026-03-17"
people: ["Anita McGahan","Mabel Abraham"]
summary: "Mabel Abraham is the Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Sanford C..."
recording: "https://vimeo.com/1175319310"
source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Anita McGahan in conversation with Mabel Abraham

Mabel Abraham, Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business, Columbia University · 17 March 2026

## About the guest

Mabel Abraham is the Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics. She teaches the MBA elective course on Power, Influence, and Networks and PhD seminars on Organizational Theory. She earned her PhD and MS in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Before earning her PhD, Professor Abraham worked in defined benefits consulting and risk management at Fidelity Investments. Her research examines how organizational and network processes contribute to gender differences in economic outcomes. In published and ongoing research, she examines what drives men and women to apply to jobs at different employers; how peer evaluation processes disadvantage women; and how educational status shapes gender pay inequality. Professor Abraham’s research has been published in leading academic journals, cited in major media outlets, and recognized by leading scholarly associations.

## Reflections from the interview

**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.

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**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.

## Related resources

- [Mabel’s website](https://mabelabraham.com/)
- [Mabel’s website at Columbia](https://business.columbia.edu/faculty/people/mabel-abraham)
- [Google Scholar on Mabel](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0THPUIgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
- [Mabel’s recent paper on the reproduction of misrecognition](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224251318051)
- [Mabel’s paper on gender-role incongruity and bias](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839219832813)

## Recording

Video: https://vimeo.com/1175319310

## Category

[Where Do We Go From Here?](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/where-next)

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Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/abraham-mabel · Licence: none stated