Why Care About Bias on IWD?
Dear friends -
As you may know, March 8 of each year is designated as International Women's Day (IWD). In fact, March is Women's History Month. What most people don't know is that the first gathering of IWD was in 1911 (111 year ago)!
IWD is one of the most important days of the year to:
celebrate women's achievements
raise awareness about women's equality
lobby for accelerated gender parity
fundraise for female-focused charities
Each year has a different theme, and this year's theme is #BreakTheBias. The woman in the image is striking the #BreakTheBias pose. To help celebrate this day, I gave two bias presentations to approximately 500 people!
Bias is one of the biggest barriers for women in their careers, and it affects every one of us at both work and in our personal lives. It's important to acknowledge that we all have biases based on our upbringing, background, religion, influences, etc.
So, why are we biased?
First, our brains are wired towards bias. When we see a person (or a bear, for example), we make general assumptions with lightening fast responses. This is great for fight-or-flight instincts to help protect us, but not so great when it comes to people because we dismiss the subtle, more important distinctions.
Second, our old caveman brain is wired to favor people who look like us for safety reasons. Due to overwhelming amounts of diversity data, we now know that we do not need to be surrounded by people who look like us to be safe. In fact, teams that are more diverse outperform those that are not on a whole host of measures.
Bias is habitual, but it's not inevitable. There are things we can do to minimize bias in both ourselves and our organizations.
Here are some strategies.
First, use mindfulness to question your first impression. When you are feeling or thinking biased thoughts, ask yourself if these are consistent with your personal values. By doing this, you can interrupt this lighting fast response, and help make the unconscious bias conscious. Recent neuroscience studies show that we can mitigate the effect of bias with deliberate thinking about our perceptions and experiences.
Second, make a conscious effort to seek others different from you. You may need to try something new or disrupt your normal process to do this. This is important because of the familiarity-trust-opportunity correlation. When we have a personal connection to someone (another race, gender, religion, LGBTQ, etc.) we become familiar, that familiarity breeds trust. When we trust someone, we provide opportunities (referrals, advice, interviews, mentoring, sponsorship, etc.) Thus, seeking out others who are different from us helps minimize bias.
Third, remove phrases like “The way we’ve done things in the past” or “Maintain the status quo” or “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This is exclusionary language and signals to others that you are not open hearing or learning from individuals with diverse perspectives.
I hope these tips are helpful to you in your bias journey. We can absolutely minimize bias if we're intentional, mindful, and committed to being more inclusive.
Dr. Shawn Andrews https://www.drshawnandrews.com/
