Your performance assessment process is being assessed by your regional HR manager. She tells you that your last three years' performance assessments have consistently ranked female employees as having lower performance than their male counterparts in the same jobs. This has resulted in a drift in relative salaries to the point where on a job-by-job basis there are now no female employees paid as much as the lowest paid male employee and that this is an indicator of strong gender bias.

You respond that you have assessed performance systematically on evidence gathered from agreed KPIs and that any apparent gender bias arises coincidentally from the fact that your female employees are simply not performing up to the same level as the male employees. She replies that the KPIs themselves might be inducing bias.

a. Discuss whether statistical analysis of performance that indicates potential gender bias is a reliable indicator of true bias with consideration of national and state anti-discrimination, diversity and equal opportunity legislation?