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Why Gender Bias Still Occurs And What We Can Do About It

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POST WRITTEN BY
Connson Locke
This article is more than 4 years old.

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Ginni Rometty is current chair, president and CEO of IBM, an empire worth $113.9 billion, with over 350,000 employees. After seven years in the role, she seemingly stands testament to the fact that gender is no barrier to executive success. But what if I told you the role was only ever within her grasp because she had already spent 32 years at the company? And that research has shown women are most successful in CEO roles only after they have proven themselves with a long history of demonstrated loyalty and relationship building?

For decades we’ve seen headlines discussing gender bias in the workplace. We know mixed gender leadership teams boost companies’ profitability – so why is bias still an issue? Positive discrimination schemes and equality laws have been brought in to alleviate the problem with some degree of success, but barriers to female leadership remain. While the U.K.’s Equality Act of 2010 means both a man and a woman must be paid equally if they are doing the same job, data from the Office of National Statistics shows that the gender pay gap in the U.K. stands at 8.6% for full-time employees across all industries – due to the fact that more men make it to senior leadership roles.

The stubbornness of this problem lies in the fact that it is rooted in our societal beliefs about men, women and leadership. We believe men should be ‘agentic’ (assertive, decisive, strong) and women should be ‘communal’ (warm, caring, sympathetic). These gender stereotypes clash with the leadership prototype, i.e. the societal view of what a prototypical leader should be. The leader prototype shares characteristics with the male stereotype: self-reliant, assertive, dominant and competitive. This prototype is widely shared and, if I asked you to close your eyes and picture a leader, most people would automatically picture a tall, white, middle class man. Conversely, women are seen as caring, sympathetic and sensitive to the needs of others.

The problem arises when women are considered for leadership positions. Leaders are expected to behave in an agentic manner, which means women in leadership positions must behave counter-stereotypically. Yet behaving counter-stereotypically runs the risk of ‘backlash’ – the idea that people who behave counter to gender stereotypes are deemed less likeable and therefore less hireable.

One solution is for women to display both agentic and communal traits, a balancing act that helps female leaders garner the respect of their colleagues. Successful senior women are demanding and caring; for example, setting high standards while also providing support to achieve those standards. They are authoritative and participative, showing that they are in charge while also encouraging others to have a voice. But this is a difficult tightrope to walk and we cannot expect individual women to solve a problem that is a societal issue.

Below are four steps to overcoming gender bias that address the wider system rather than expecting individual women to solve this problem:

Awareness. Decision makers, both male and female, must increase awareness of their own biases and try to recognize when these views are affecting their hiring and promotion processes. If you want to gauge your own level of bias, try taking the Implicit Association Test, available for free on the internet (hosted by Harvard University) where you can test gender bias, racial bias and other types of biases. But awareness is not enough! These biases occur subconsciously, which means we cannot correct them through conscious effort alone.

Attitude. We need to accept both men and women in counter-stereotypical roles. The expectation that women should be communal makes it difficult for them to ascend to leadership roles. The expectation that men should be agentic makes it difficult for them to choose caregiving roles. Breaking gender stereotypes means that we need to allow all members of society the freedom to choose the roles most suited to them.

Analysis. Collect data on your organization to reveal the true picture. Find out the gender balance among all applicants compared to successful applicants. Look at the gender balance in your short lists. Examine performance reviews by gender and role to see if there is gender bias occurring at that level (e.g. a finance company found that women were receiving systematically lower performance reviews in male-dominated roles). The data will help you figure out where to concentrate your efforts.

Systemic change. The only way we will create meaningful change is to create systems designed to eliminate bias. For example, ensuring there is gender balance when shortlisting candidates. Or assessing candidates in a gender-blind way (assuming, of course, that the pool of applicants is gender-balanced – if it is not, then removing gender from CVs might only exacerbate the existing imbalance). Governmental policy is one of the most powerful systemic ways of creating change. Canada’s Quebec province instituted a paternity leave policy that gave men five weeks of ‘use it or lose it’ paid leave after their baby was born. The percentage of fathers taking paternity leave more than doubled, from 32% before the policy change to 76% afterwards. Those men became more involved fathers and equal partners, thus challenging gender stereotypes.

But you do not have to be a government policy maker to make a difference. One of my personal favorite examples of overcoming gender bias in the workplace comes from a manager who noticed that, on her male-dominated team, the women never spoke up during team meetings. To solve the problem, she introduced a rule that every time a man speaks, another man cannot speak again until a woman has spoken. At first the meetings were awkward, with men bursting to interrupt and women wondering what to say. But with time, the female employees began to attend the meetings having prepared contributions. In turn, the male employees grew more respectful and less inclined to speak over their female colleagues.

Changing the systems – whether they are government policies, hiring and promotion systems, or simply the way you run your meetings – are the key to creating real change. We focus too much on the role of the individual in perpetuating or solving these issues, blaming men and burdening women. While it is important for us to take individual responsibility, we must also acknowledge that these issues are rooted in the way we view the leader prototype and gender stereotypes. Thus, change will only happen with a combination of systemic change and individual behavioral and attitudinal change.

We are all part of the problem: female decision makers are just as biased as men. And we are all part of the solution: men are in positions of power where they can (and do) help the women in their organizations rise to the top. The more we can work together to create positive change, the faster that change will happen.