Transcript of How to Spot and Snuff Out Gender Bias
Cathy: Welcome to Parity, a podcast for everyone ready for a workplace of true gender parity with equal numbers of women and men at all levels of organizations including the coveted top positions. Women have had the right to vote for 100 years, but experts believe that we will not achieve workplace parity for another 135 years! 135 years is a long time, friends, to wait for equality. The goal of this podcast is to accelerate this change by being a coach, mentor, and trusted friend for all of you who are ready now.
I’m Cathy Nestrick. Waiting for 135 years until we achieve workplace parity is not ok with me, and that is why I was motivated to start this Podcast with my good friend Deborah.
Deborah: I am your co-host Deborah Pollack-Milgate. I am committed to a workplace where everyone can thrive. Until we collectively address the obstacles in women’s way, we won’t have this workplace you and I dream of. Cathy, I’m so happy to be with you today to address a really critical issue standing in the way of parity - gender bias.
Cathy: Friends, we have talked about gender bias before and no doubt we will talk about it more in the future. It’s that important of a topic. The International Women’s Day theme for this year is break the bias and we had a special episode to discuss the topic and launch our Season 2.
Deborah: Yes, and we also talked about unconscious bias against women in Episode 2 of our 2021 season.
Cathy: We are picking this topic up again because Deborah and I both firmly believe that unconscious bias is a major stumbling block that prevents many women from achieving their career goals. To tackle unconscious bias, we have to become gender bias sleuths - mystery solvers. Deborah, I think I’m up to the task. I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty sure I read every Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon ever published, so I learned from the best.
Deborah: I have no doubt you’re up to the task! Listeners, the reason we call it gender sleuthing is because we have so many behaviors ingrained in us resulting from a lifetime of messages that because we’re women, we need to behave in certain ways. Another way to think about this is to consider the stereotypes that we learn and see about women. We learn to smile, defer to others, and not be too assertive. Sometimes our gender assumptions aren’t harmful, but until we uncover them, there is the danger we will fall prey to these assumptions and inadvertently sideline women.
Cathy: Listeners, these stereotypes also work against us by silencing our authenticity. If being bold and brash is really how we are, we shouldn’t be required to be gentle and smile a lot. Men face similar pressures, but the difference is that stereotypes about men are more accepted and celebrated in the workplace. This puts women at a disadvantage. These gender stereotypes inform and activate unconscious bias. Until we figure out how to knock out this unconscious bias, we won’t accomplish our goal, Deborah, of achieving parity.
Deborah: I remember a very long time ago being stuck on a major highway with no pathway to get where I needed to go. A man ahead of us announced, “Road closed.” I tried for several minutes to find out why, but he wouldn’t answer. He just kept repeating “road closed.” This is how I think about bias - If I can’t figure out what’s going on, why the road is closed, I have no recourse in response. I never made it to Chicago that weekend, which was my goal.
Cathy: That’s a great metaphor, but with some sleuthing, we can figure out why the road is closed. And Deborah, I think this is what the international women’s day theme is all about. International Women’s Day has asked for a commitment that we maintain a gender equal mindset, challenge gender stereotypes and bias, call out gendered action and assumptions, and forge positive visibility of women.
Deborah: But how do we do all that?
Cathy: This is where the sleuthing comes into play. Today listeners, we will give you a roadmap to recognize and then combat bias.
Deborah: I love the concept of sleuthing. Gender sleuthing means looking for the role gender stereotypes play in isolating women or men to particular roles and looking for the role that stereotypes play in our own behavior and decision making process. And today we are really talking about sleuthing as it relates to implicit bias. We have to sleuth, because the gender bias doesn’t always come out and hit us on the head.
Explicit bias, which doesn’t usually require sleuthing, is a topic that we will have to save for another day.
Cathy: Yes, that’s a topic on its own, but let’s walk through what the difference is, so we know what we’re talking about. Implicit bias is a bias that is out of the realm of consciousness and may even contradict someone’s conscious beliefs. If I unwittingly defer to a man in a business meeting, over and above the woman in the room, that could be the result of unconscious bias, even though that behavior would clearly contradict my beliefs - and even my own interests! To recognize my own actions and better control my behavior I need to do some sleuthing.
Deborah: Explicit bias, on the other hand, is expressed with knowledge of the bias and intent. I used to encounter this a lot when I was a younger lawyer. An older, male attorney would bully me in a deposition - talk back to me, insult my intelligence, talk about the looks of other women in the room. This explicit bias, in my view, is a power play. This is someone who believes he should have the upper hand, or in fact does have the upper hand. He’s exerting his power because he can.
Cathy: There’s not always a clean line between the two, but I agree that unconscious bias is unintended, while explicit bias is really an intentional assertion of power over someone who is a member of an underrepresented group.
Deborah: Yes, power is really the key in that relationship. Against that backdrop, today we are going to discuss:
The pervasiveness of gender bias against women
How to sleuth for bias
Four actions steps we can all take to combat bias
And by the way, Listeners, IWD - International Women’s Day - also has a host of resources available to you and your organization on the topic of bias. We’ll post a link in our show notes. So, Cathy, let’s begin with a discussion of what women are up against when it comes to implicit gender bias, because there are so many ways, some subtle and not, that women are told we don’t belong, especially when we try to enter a space dominated by men.
Cathy: Study after study has shown that men are preferred to women as candidates for employment when it comes to the most competitive professions and highest paid jobs such as medicine and business leadership roles. Studies also show that women are penalized for being parents when men are not. And significantly so. How do we know this is really the case? Because these studies have controlled for everything but gender and tested out these hypotheses with employers. Women are at a disadvantage.
Deborah: You and I have talked about this before, but the extent of the research showing that this happens again and again is really disheartening. What’s more, this research has also shown that women are less likely to be chosen for careers that employers think require expertise in decision-making and being in charge. Why? Because even if people think women are great leaders (and we are)…
Cathy: Definitely!
[laughter]
Deborah: Unfortunately, women are generally not praised for making tough decisions or taking charge of difficult situations.
Cathy: In fact, it is the opposite. This is where it’s a double bind - we need these skills because they are valued in the workplace but as women, we’re not supposed to be assertive or want to be in charge because these behaviors do not align with female stereotypes.
Deborah: Yep. So there’s bias just because you are who you are - a woman who is not supposed to be assertive - and then a compounding bias, too, when you enter into spaces where women haven’t been traditionally, say in science or technology. But there is also something else going on. It turns out that people’s skills - what they are actually capable of doing – are directly influenced by cultural assumptions with regard to gender.
Cathy: What do you mean? Does that mean that I won’t be as good in math because I’ve been told over and over again that men are better at math than women?
Deborah: Well, I’ve been reading Delusions of Gender by Cornelia Fine. And what she documents is that even the slightest suggestion to girls or women that they won’t perform well on a math test and, indeed, they won’t perform well - or at least not as well. In other words, the self-fulfilling prophecy is a real thing.
Cathy: Listeners, this is fascinating. When women and girls are given signals that we don’t belong somewhere or aren’t capable of succeeding, then there is a greater chance we won’t succeed. This reminds me of the phenomenon that we don’t work as well when someone is looking over our shoulder. I hate it when someone is looking over my shoulder - I have trouble doing the simplest of tasks when that happens!
Deborah: Yes, perhaps it’s that simple - or maybe it’s like having the backseat driver that makes you so nervous that you end up taking wrong turns. I know I will make mistakes when someone starts questioning my driving and I feel powerless to even correct for it!
But there is something else that happens, too - which is equally disturbing. And that is that we get these messages even when we don’t suggest out loud to women that they are no good at math. Walk into a math class filled with boys, and I as a girl will understand that I am not supposed to be doing math. These messages are powerful and overwhelming. And the higher up a woman goes in an area traditionally dominated by men, the more she is swimming upstream against all those messages she receives on a daily basis - and the fewer women to combat the feeling of not belonging.
Cathy: So women in these situations clearly understand they don’t belong just by being in the minority. When women are in college or even when we have entry level positions, women may be well represented or at least more equal, as compared to our experiences as we move up the ladder. We’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There are more CEOs named John than all the women CEOs combined. Women who are near the tops of these organizations - especially when there are a small percentage of women at the top levels - are at significant disadvantage.
Deborah: Exactly! Cornelia Fine has an illuminating discussion of this phenomenon in a chapter aptly named “I don’t belong here.” So if I am in a position that challenges the status quo, I have the daily stress of being the other. Let’s face it - a lot of us cave under this stress, at least from time to time. Full disclosure - I often get stomach aches when I am in a room filled with only men, especially only white men. And I have to really push myself to speak up because I don’t feel like I am supposed to be there.
Cathy: I’ve had the same experience. In fact, later in my career, I was most often in rooms with only men - it was an extremely unusual situation for me to be in a room full of other women. Sometimes I felt like I belonged, but most often, I felt like I didn’t. So what do you do in those situations?
Deborah: I straighten my spine and speak up, but it’s very draining.
Cathy: The good news, listeners, is that our expectations are malleable - they can change over time. When we become used to seeing women in a particular role, then the bias falls away. So if there is a math department with an equal number of women, that group of people will no longer view women as inferior in math.
Deborah: Yes, our expectations change - which means our bias can fall away! Having women as leaders means that women - and those around them – start to envision us in those roles. The other good news is that even our abilities are malleable. Fine shows for example, that as a human being, we all have a range of intelligence and emotion that we can draw on. Women can perform in areas traditionally occupied by men and, importantly, vice versa!
Cathy: So does the data show that men are inherently one way and women inherently another? The reason I ask is that I sometimes have trolls comment on my posts about gender equality and they say that women are born a certain way and men are born a different way. One guy keeps saying that women don’t want to be scientists so the Parity Podcast should just stop making women want to become scientists - which of course is funny because we aren’t trying to make women do anything at all - we just want women to have more opportunities.
Deborah: Trolls are really such a nuisance and I don’t know who gave them the right to tell me what I want as a woman. But Cornelia Fine’s analysis of the studies and available data regarding hormone levels and whether our brains are “feminine” or “masculine” show that there is no difference in our capacity to learn and enjoy different kinds of work. It really does call into question whether anyone has ever recognized a male brain or a female brain or that there are any recognizable differences in behavior based on gender.
Cathy: So how do you explain Women are from Mars and Men are from Venus?
Deborah: I think that book is a missed opportunity. It’s great in that it describes how human beings are different and that we need to realize and accept different perspectives. That is a great message. But I can’t embrace it: because it talks about women and men in such absolute terms. “Men go to their caves and women talk”. To me, this is a classic example of a book that may be useful but ends up spouting biases. And in my family, by the way, I am the more likely one to head for the cave!
Cathy: Me too! In fact in my family, we’ll all head to the cave except for my daughter. So, let’s get back to this discussion about our brains. So our brains are the same but our behaviors are often different, and that is because of gender stereotypes?
Deborah: The short answer is we don’t know for sure because we don’t live in circumstances that allow us to detect what innate gender differences exist without the pressure of gender stereotypes. We don’t have a clean room - one free of stereotypes. What Fine shows is that the studies showing innate gender differences based on biology are flawed and incorrect in their conclusions. But clearly there are assumptions that run deep and these assumptions are dangerous to women’s well-being in the workplace.
Cathy: Until we started this work, I didn’t think too much about the pressure I was receiving to conform based on my gender, but the more we dig, the more clearly I do see that a lot of my behaviors are due to society’s views of how women are supposed to behave.
So let’s talk about detecting bias - the sleuthing process. Deborah, you and I have done a good deal of this work already in our episodes together, when we play the switch it up game. For example, it’s common to say that a woman “found her voice,” but awkward to say the same about a man.
Deborah: Yes, exactly. So let’s talk about that in detail, because I do think that switching it up is one of the most effective ways of exposing bias through sleuthing. Now I go a little crazy with this game, but I am going to defend myself, because I think if we are really going to be serious about the problem, we have to question this at a deep level. For example, my children listened to Winnie the Pooh on tape a lot and no one was a bigger fan than I. But how did I feel about the fact that there was only one female character, and that she was a mother? Not great. There is Owl, Rabbit, Baby Roo, Eeyore, Tigger, and then Kanga, the only female. And when I switch that up, and consider whether Winnie the Pooh could exist in reverse, where Winnie the Pooh would be a girl and all the characters female, with Roo’s father being the only boy, well it sounds ludicrous.
Cathy: If the story had been about girls, it makes you wonder whether the story would have been as successful and long-lasting as it has been. I doubt that it would have seen the same success. When we tell these stories to our children - and most of the characters are boys or the heroes are the boys and the girls need to be saved like in Cinderella - I wonder how does that impact our daughters who don’t see themselves in the story or see themselves as weaker characters, needing the help of a prince charming? And how does this impact our sons who may see boys as more exalted and entitled than they should be because they are too often the main characters and the heroes in our society’s favorite stories.
Deborah: And there are so many examples of this. And when my children refer to all the animals we see outside as “he” this and “he that” I can’t help myself but ask them why? Why are all the squirrels “he”? My son and I watched a movie called Barnyard and even all the cows in that movie were male, and though physically impossible, complete with udders!
[laughter]
Cathy: Too funny! So these things really do show us how deep the pro-male bias runs that they made the cows - complete with udders - into boys. Let’s talk about how this looks in the workplace. If a manager is dealing with an employee with young children at home, is the manager overly concerned about the woman’s ability to do her job because he is trying to save her? Does the manager say the same thing about a new dad?
Deborah: Yes, it’s really important that we ask these questions. And the “protection” thing is real. I do want people to have my back, but if I have decided to take a risk in a new role, or take on a new project, that is truly up to me.
Cathy: From my experience Deborah, I have frequently heard comments about protecting new moms from added responsibilities or questioning whether she is up to the task, but I have never heard the same about a new dad.
Deborah: And “up to the task” is another phrase you hear often in reference to a woman, but not a man.
Cathy: Right, we assume that men are up to the task but as women, we have to prove ourselves over and over. The challenge is that these messages are subtle and most people are not going to own up to the fact - or even realize - that they were driven by bias. So how do we know if it is bias or not?
Deborah: We don’t always know, but asking the question - if we could just get everybody to ask themselves these questions – in their mind’s eye replacing the woman with a man and inquiring as to whether they would react the same way were the roles reversed – that would be so powerful. For example, if I ask myself is a particular woman “up to the task”, I might ask myself whether I asked myself the same thing when a man was given a similarly challenging task
Cathy: I agree that if we could train ourselves to engage in this practice, it would be eye-opening. Imagine if HR trained managers to use this tool. That could be very impactful.
Deborah: And this leads to our next point, which is to know thyself, because none of us are immune to this problem, so by sleuthing and switching it up constantly, we learn where our own biases are, and we begin to do better.
Cathy: What have you learned by doing this?
Deborah: I’ve learned so many things. But to give a concrete example, I think I still more easily can picture men in leadership roles than I can women. I can take any one of my male colleagues and picture him as leader of a practice group, or team leader, or whatever. I struggle to do the same with women. So I have begun to go a level deeper and if I have as high an opinion of her as I do of him in how they work in teams, manage projects, etc., then there should be no reason I picture him leadership roles, other than my own bias.
Deborah: What about you?
Cathy: I’m helping my parents with some home repairs. Their home was in a tornado and they need to hire an engineer to make sure there wasn’t any structural damage. Before we had even hired an engineer, I heard myself referring to the engineer as a male. “He can tell us what’s wrong. He will know what to do.” I did catch myself in this mistake and then started referring to the engineer as him or her, but I outed my own unconscious bias by starting with an assumption that the engineer would be a man.
This takes us to another point. Drawing on the metaphor of the closed road, we have to be good defensive drivers and I think that I was a decent defensive driver in this situation.
Deborah: I remember from drivers’ training we were supposed to always be looking out for other drivers who were driving poorly. When I lived in New York City for a little while, wow did I work on those skills. People were always randomly opening car doors into my path, swerving into my path, and so on.
Cathy: Here, it is the same thing. You have to be the defensive driver on the lookout - sleuthing – for bias where you see it so you can catch yourself and others, and then correct it, like I did in the engineer example.
Deborah: Yes, we need to be vigilant about our own biases and those of others. Until we see it, we can’t disrupt it.
Cathy: And of course, we aren’t just talking about gender bias. Intersectionality plays a role and there are additional biases for women who are a race other than White or a member of the LGBTQA community, for example. As we discussed with Aisha and Lillian in our first episode, there are other biases relating to race, socio-economic background, status as LGBTQA or otherwise.
Deborah: Yes, and these biases sneak in whether we are well-intentioned or not. You can play the switch it up game on these fronts, too, by switching up race, LGBTQA status and anything else you want to. It’s an enlightening tool.
Cathy: So Deborah, we have talked about how to sleuth and find the bias. Now let’s discuss what to do about it. It’s one thing to recognize the bias in yourself and correct. If we could get everyone to do that, well, that would be amazing. But we aren’t there now. So then the question is what can we do to clear the path for people, or find them a way around the road that’s closed?
Deborah: Self-correction is so important, so that is a really big thing and work that never ends. You absolutely have the power yourself to correct for your own bias. So the first thing you can do is to self-correct. I guarantee you that if you do this, your teams, your expectations, how you interact with those around you, everything will change. So that is the first action.
Cathy: Absolutely! Another tip is to ask yourself where in your organization women are not part of the organization’s DNA. Think about your work culture. Are you hosting golf outings, or other activities that women would be less likely to participate in or even feel excluded from?
Deborah: You know I always love this point. My group recently held a team-building exercise which I thought was great because it was absolutely gender-neutral and really allowed for exchanges far and wide that were not cordoned off as between the genders.
Cathy: You are not going to believe this but at one of my former jobs, there was a Man Day where the men were free to take off work to play golf. They held it on the first day of spring when the weather was warm enough for golf. Man Day is definitely something you should snuff out from your culture.
And I would say I don’t agree with spa days and the like focused on women. Women often need their own spaces to support each other - especially when they are working in a male-dominated environment – but having a separate place for women reinforces these gender divisions.
Deborah: I so agree - and I think there is an enormous opportunity within an organization to think about the type of activities to ensure that they encourage maximum interaction, instead of more gender separation. So I like this concept of examining your organization's DNA.
The third action you can take is to speak up. It is so important to speak up.
Cathy: Male allies, this is where you can add value. We need you to lean in and speak up to support women and others who are underrepresented in your organization. Don’t leave it to the woman to have to speak up for herself. When you see something and say something, your voice can be powerful.
Deborah: Yes, because sometimes when we say something, our listener thinks we are being overly-sensitive. When someone who is supposedly “unbiased” speaks up, it can make a big difference.
Cathy: I appreciate the man who tells me he sees bias when he does, but it would be so much more powerful if he spoke up publicly. And male allies, you can detect gender bias in yourself and others by using the switch up game too.
Deborah: Yes. Obviously, it can be hard to speak up when you are in a position of lesser power, but if you can, do, and if you don’t feel like you have enough power, find someone you trust who is in a position of power who can speak up.
The fourth action step is to ask questions. Asking questions avoids confrontation, especially when you know that someone is not ill-intentioned. After all, we are all learning here and what I am doing in a lot of cases is just asking myself a question - did I give her fewer opportunities to excel than I would have a man?
Cathy: So you can ask the question, rather than make an accusation, as we all learn together. Shame and blame is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. There will be mistakes but if we’re all committed to better workplace equality, we can make progress together.
So to recap Listeners, today we’ve talked about how deep the gender biases go, to understand more clearly what women are up against in their careers as a result of gender stereotypes, and particularly when they enter into fields such as STEM, where men dominate. We talked about sleuthing for gender bias, and using the switch it up game to consider where we default to men. We provided 4 tips to snuff out gender bias and they are:
First, engage in self-correction, which becomes easier once you’ve developed your sleuthing skills
Second, engage in culture correction within your organization, to the extent you can
Third, take action especially male allies when you see bias - now that you’ve developed your sleuthing skills
Fourth, ask questions to prod others to be more self-reflective, without shaming or blaming
Deborah: So Cathy, I’d like to stay with this theme today for our Parity in Play segment. I’d like to talk about an incident from several years back when a woman had carried out a mass murder. The lead from one article that was written about the incident -was something like “why are so few women mass murderers.” The way this was formulated made me very angry - angry enough to fire off a note to the author, who was a woman. My question to her: why wasn’t your headline “why are so many men mass murderers?”
Cathy: Ha! What a crazy headline! The fact that women were portrayed as the outliers and were compared to men, and not the other way around, really shows us that men are the norm we use to compare ourselves against.
Deborah: Yes, and not in a good way in this instance. I did see other coverage at the time that used the opportunity to highlight gender differences in those who commit mass shootings. Apparently, about 96% of mass shootings are carried out by men, and overwhelmingly by White men.
Cathy: It’s important to have that discussion about gender differences when it comes to this issue. But I can’t help but think that if we start with men and compare women to them, that men get a pass on this issue. Because instead of focusing on the bad behavior of men, are we focused on why women aren’t also behaving badly?
Deborah: Yes! We’re taking bad behavior as our baseline. We are neglecting to study the issue as a deeper, societal problem that creates circumstances in which men have a greater propensity for violence. And where we all suffer as a result of that.
Cathy: Particularly women who are often the victims of violence. To me, this is clearly an unconscious bias and I wonder if the notion that boys will be boys is playing a role.
Deborah: And that’s the point. I think we would all agree that less violence is better, so why aren’t we looking at why men aren’t emulating women and being less violent? When we start with men as our baseline, we lose out on this important perspective.
Cathy: All of this is not to say that men are by nature violent, but when men are violent, we should focus on stopping the violence.
Deborah: Yes, and I hate even bringing up this topic because this is a very unflattering topic – and I appreciate all of our male allies so very much.
Cathy: As always, Deborah, the questions are vast and there is no shortage of things for us to talk about.
So Listeners that’s it for now. We’re so happy to be back with you during Season 2. During our next Episode, we’ll be speaking to Karen Catlin, author of Better Allies: Everyday Actions to create inclusive engaging Workplaces, now in its second edition. If you’ve been listening in, you know we’ve relied on her sound advice on allies, culture, and more. We’re so excited to have a direct conversation with her.
Deborah: Please know that we are here to help you. Tune in while you are doing home repairs, on your way to the gym, or supervising the male ally who’s doing your spring cleaning.
We now have time-stamped show notes. You can find links to resources that we mentioned in today’s episodes, as well as links to find us on social media and our webpage.
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