Why breaking the bias is for everyone

Last week, I had the chance to spend some time with an amazing group of women from Insight and Avnet. We gathered to learn about how we can use our experience as VP's and SVP's of some of the worlds largest companies to serve on Corporate Boards. Supported by the fantastic Women in the Boardroom | Corporate Boardroom Diversity team we started our journey by learning how to secure our first Board Service position. Whilst initially I was somewhat wary about women focused learning programmes (believing that they indicate there is something wrong with Women!). How wrong I was, I learnt so much about why women often talk themselves out of applying for positions, how the language and descriptions we use in our documents may rule us out and how we need to challenge our own internal bias to be successful.

Whilst flying back to home I sat beside a wonderful young lady. Never one to miss an opportunity to connect, I started up a conversation. You know the usual conversation starter... how has your journey been etc etc..... She shared that she had flown in from Miami and had spoken to the crew that was on my flight back from San Francisco in the staff lounge. I opened my mouth and started to say "oh are you an air..." and something stopped me. ... Something shifted from unconscious to conscious… I changed my question to….."Oh do you work for BA? What do you do ?". To which she replied “yes I am a pilot”. This made me smile and I shared with her the events in my head and that I was going to ask if she was an Air Hostess. She then shared with me that she gets it all the time. She was the only female pilot on her training course and deals with men so often that she regularly uses the wrong pro-noun having to correct from "He" to "She" when the pilot is female (Raymonde de Laroche became the world’s first licensed female pilot 110 years ago on 8 March 1910, YET in 2020 a mere 5% of pilots were women, and a tiny 1.42% of all captains were female. 79% of Cabin Crew are Female….).

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart

This short story highlights why the key theme of "Breaking the Bias" is something that EVERYONE should care about. The reason I stopped myself in the above conversation wasn't because I don't have unconscious bias, in fact its the exact opposite. A few years ago I took a test during some Implicit Bias training, (Select a Test (harvard.edu) ) the result of this training was that I have unconscious positive bias towards Men. This might come as a surprise to some and they might feel bad sharing this learning about themselves. However, there is no right or wrong about unconscious reactions. They are a result of years of influence (some good, some bad), of experiences we have had and have roots way back in our childhood. Upon reflection despite being brought up in a family where my parents jointly ran a business, my mother was the primary carer and my dad would often express "interesting" perspectives on everything from female drivers to the quality of female sports, despite having two very strong willed daughters!! Some of this became reflected in my unconscious. For example for many years I was scared of flying, if the pilot was female I would get even more panicked and butterflies would start immediately. Crazy I know but a real life example of my unconscious working right there.

Knowing I have these implicit bias is a good thing, my brain can connect before my gut and over ride. Our brains are funny old places and breaking the bias involves it looking deeply into why and how we make decisions.  All day every day our brains are making sense of the world using unconscious bias, even when we don't know it we prejudge people, we make assumptions, we make decisions.

"We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change" - Sheryl Sandberg

During my 20's and early 30's I was blind to issues of gender equality, I dominated my peer groups leading from the front and just getting on with the job of building a life and building a career. During my later years however, I became very aware that there were less females around, less participation in the senior exec teams. A pivotal moment happened when I was asked to join a Women in leadership group and I was shocked about what I learnt. Here are some facts you might want to consider....

• In 2020, more than 9.5 million people held a managerial position in the EU: 6.2 million men and 3.3 million women. Although women represent almost half of all employed persons in the EU (46%), they are under-represented amongst managers (34%).
• Out of the top 668 companies women represent only: 34% of all board members, 19% have one C Suite, 6% have a female CEOs.
• 90%* of Nurses globally are female, yet they hold fewer than 20 percent of key leadership roles*
• In the UK Teacher 62%* are female but just 36% of Headteachers are women.
• 94.2%* of Secretaries & Executive Assistance are female
• At the current rate of progress, it will take another 108 years to reach gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap
• For every female film character, there are 2.24 men

The important question is why despite a 50:50 population and years of advocating equality do such scenarios exist in 2022. If we are going to start to address the gap faster than 108 years we each need to stop, look and listen.

• Stop - Take time to learn about your own unconscious bias, hey yes you have them! There are lots of ways of doing this but seek first to understand
• Look - Look around, are you personally doing enough? Do you watch for gender bias language in your job descriptions, What would happen if you did "blind CV reviews" to challenge yourself in your next recruitment wave ? Do you recruit in the likeness of you?
• Listen - To how we communicate, listen within our own language for the small micro-behaviours. The words we use, the messages we portray with our actions are we really doing enough?

Breaking Bias isnt easy, but the first step is talking about it. Lets get Talking!  Find out more by clicking the links below.

Implicit Bias | Teaching + Learning Lab (mit.edu)

Micro-behaviours: what they are and how they impact inclusion | HRZone