Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett
A Google image search can turn up all manner of things, from last year’s meme to today’s headline, and researchers at the University of Washington wanted to find out if search results for certain occupations affect our perceptions of women in the workplace.
In a new study, UW researchers saw that for certain jobs, such as CEO, women were significantly under-represented in Google image search results. The study team also saw that image search results can have a short-term impact on perceptions.
“You need to know whether gender stereotyping in search image results actually shifts people’s perceptions before you can say whether this is a problem. And, in fact, it does — at least in the short term,” said study author Sean Munson, UW assistant professor of human centered design and engineering.
“Girls don’t write books!” -Google
The study looked at the first 100 images that popped up in a July 2013 Google image search for 45 different occupations, from bartender to welder. The various search results were then compared to job statistics from the US Bureau of Labor for 2012.
The researchers saw that for some jobs, the discrepancy between search results and women’s employment in a job was pretty high. Only 11 percent of women are CEOs, according to Google results – yet labor statistics show that 27 percent of CEOs in the US are female. Image search results also showed that 25 percent of US authors are women, while labor stats showed 56 percent.
The team did find that for about half the jobs they investigated, the results and statistics were within five percentage points of each other.
“I was actually surprised at how good the image search results were, just in terms of numbers,” said study author Matt Kay, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. “They might slightly under-represent women and they might slightly exaggerate gender stereotypes, but it’s not going to be totally divorced from reality.”
Operating a jack hammer in a bikini
In another part of the study, researchers found that a top image matching the majority gender for a profession tended to be ranked by participants as more competent and trustworthy. Conversely, the images that didn’t match the stereotype were not only considered less trustworthy, but in some cases they were considered provocative or even inappropriate.
“A number of the top hits depicting women as construction workers are models in skimpy little costumes with a hard hat posing suggestively on a jackhammer. You get things that nobody would take as professional,” said study author Cynthia Matuszek, currently an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at University of Maryland.
To determine if these search results can impact participants’ perceptions, the team had volunteers answer a series of questions about a particular occupation, including questions about gender. Two weeks later, the team showed participants sham image search results and then asked the same questions.
The team found that the fake search results were able to skew responses by about 7 percent.
They should look at Thinkstock, next
The researchers said their results don’t say anything about the long-term impact of skewed search results, but they do put forward serious questions about search algorithms.
“Our hope is that this will become a question that designers of search engines might actually ask,” Munson said. “They may come to a range of conclusions, but I would feel better if people are at least aware of the consequences and are making conscious choices around them.”
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