You Might Be Gender Biased If…

Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to work with many amazing women who have been both outstanding professionals and close friends.  In fact, the company I work for, Concannon Business Consulting, is a majority-female consultancy. Working with many women in a professional capacity over the last decade demonstrated to me the importance of gender-balanced workplaces and the notion that women and men are equally capable of being stellar employees, executives, and leaders.  However, the rise of the #MeToo movement and a variety of experiences at client sites have made it clear that while some men are actively biased against women in the workplace, many more don’t even realize they are acting in biased ways.

Based on my own observations and conversations with female friends, coworkers and leaders, at several different companies, I put together this list of red flags to look out for when it comes to identifying and mitigating gender biases to foster a more inclusive work setting for your team members.  I encourage men everywhere, and especially male managers, to seriously consider each of these items and whether or not they exist in your workplace. Without further ado,

You Might Be Gender Biased If…

1. You often interrupt female coworkers in meetings

Example: Sarah responds to an open question posed to the team during a meeting, and Dave interrupts her without apologizing to steamroll his point over whatever Sarah was saying.  Dave rarely interrupts Steve in meetings, though.

How You Can Tell: Keep two counts whenever you interrupt someone in a meeting - one for women and one for men.  If you’re a manager, pay attention to who is interrupting whom on a regular basis. Look at your counts at the end of a week and draw your own conclusions.  

I see this one happen all the time at all levels within organizations.  Constantly interrupting people is a sign that you don’t respect or care about what they’re saying enough to let them finish.  It’s ok to interrupt people who are speaking if you have an important point or rebuttal to make, but it’s not ok to frequently interrupt people just because you think your opinion is more important.  Managers running meetings should be especially cognizant of this red flag and take a simple action to curtail it: if you notice a female employee is frequently being interrupted, say firmly “I’d like to hear the rest of what [female employee] was saying”.

2. You only go out for happy hour with your male colleagues

Example: Bill is setting up a happy hour for Friday and invites Ted, Brian, Carl, and Wei, but not Maria because “she’s always got family stuff to take care of”.

How You Can Tell: Look at happy hour and after-hours event invites and participation rates for the last couple months.  Is the ratio of male to female invitees in line with the ratio of your work group? If not, ask yourself why not.  If women are being invited, but not showing up, ask yourself if it’s because they don’t want to participate or if the events you’re scheduling aren’t very inclusive.

Activities outside work hours are a common way that gender biases can get reinforced even if everyone thinks they are being fair and accommodating during work hours.  Strong career tracks come from strong relationships and if you’re excluding one gender from working relationship building activities, you’re hamstringing them. Look for ways to create events that are appealing to and accommodating of both genders.

3. You disagree with your female coworkers more often than your male ones

Example: In meetings and hallway conversations, Christina always seems to have an opinion on the topic at hand.  But it seems like some part of whatever she says is just wrong all the time and Ivan doesn’t hesitate to let her know it.  And of course, he doesn’t apologize when it turns out she was right.

How You Can Tell: Start paying attention to the number of times you question the statements of female coworkers or disagree on opinion-based discussion points.  Are you disagreeing with male coworkers the same amount? If you’re a manager, pay special attention in meetings to the level of team disagreement to proposals and statements from female team members vs. male ones.  Unless you somehow hired sub-par people of one gender, merited disagreements should be even.

Disagreement is healthy, especially in business settings where groupthink can lead to bad decisions for customers, investors, and stakeholders.  But when disagreement is lopsided, one side tends to feel unwanted and won’t speak up as often. That side tends to be women in a lot of organizations and that’s a bad thing for companies that want not just diverse employees, but diverse opinions and shared experiences to drive innovation.

4. You assume that the best person for a new project is a man

Example: Steve needs to find a technical lead for a new app integration he wants to build this year.  He immediately thinks of Mike and Peter, two engineers on his team who seem like they would do a good job.  He completely forgets that Joanne did a great job as API lead last year and doesn’t even consider her.

How You Can Tell: When you have a new project that needs a person on it, make a list of the requirements for the role and then for each requirement list who the strongest person on your team is.  If your gut reaction was to think a male employee was the best overall, but on individual merits a female employee is better, you’re probably not giving out equal opportunities.

Implicit bias of this type is extremely common across all kinds of organizations and decisions, from orchestra auditions to coding interviews.  Many strategies have been proposed for counteracting this problem (ex. Blind auditions), but a lot of them are impractical to implement in day-to-day decision making.  A better approach is to take an implicit bias test and then practice mindfulness about evaluating people for opportunities based on their merits rather than their gender.  Asking, “who has the best combination of leadership skills and technical expertise?” is a much better approach than asking, “who would be the best technical lead?”.

5. You make excuses for assholes only if they’re men

Example: Everyone knows Jack is an asshole.  He manages to piss off everyone at one time or another, but he’s just such a great software developer that no one ever really says anything.  Sally, though... She rubs everyone the wrong way and just needs to go, no matter how good of a technical writer she is.

How You Can Tell: You say things like “Yeah, but” whenever people criticize a male coworker, but not a female one.  If you’re excusing bad behavior from only one gender, you’re encouraging a toxic environment for the other.

In Western culture the idea of the capable asshole has gained an almost cult-like following, especially in technical and sales-related fields.  However, that following is largely limited to the male gender, with women who are personally unpleasant, but still capable often getting punished rather than applauded.  Companies in general should not be rewarding capable assholes since they often destroy team morale and leave legal landmines everywhere, but companies especially should not be rewarding (or putting up with) capable assholes only when they are men.

6. You use different adjectives to review each gender

Example: It’s performance review time and Eduardo is busy writing reviews for his team.  When he gets to commenting on strengths, he uses a lot of words like, “confident”, “leader”, or “rockstar” for the men that report to him.  But strangely for his female direct reports he uses more words like, “helpful”, “supportive”, and “team-oriented”.

How You Can Tell: This one is easy.  Go back and read some reviews you’ve written for direct reports (or co-workers if your company does 360 reviews)  in the past. Look at the adjectives you use for each gender. If you notice trends that don’t match actual performance, you might want to address that at the next review cycle.

Performance reviews, while often tedious, are an important part of career development for employees of all levels within an organization.  They are also a subtle way that bias creeps into the workplace. In western culture, we want leaders to be strong, confident, knowledgeable go-getters.  But women exhibiting these very qualities might be described as people-oriented, supportive team players because of traditional gender roles seeping into today’s language and culture.  If someone is a go-getter, use the same word to describe them regardless of their gender and you’ll be a step closer to evaluating everyone solely on their merits. Note: Biased performance reviews are particularly bad since they can also lead to legal pitfalls that all companies want to avoid.

7. You expect different skills from men than from women

Example: Dave wants to have an office party for his team next week and needs help planning it.  He shoots a quick email to Karen, an engineer on his team, asking her to help. It makes sense because she’s a woman and women are good at parties and social stuff, right?

How You Can Tell: Next time you need something done at the office, pay attention to the gender of the person you think of first.  If your expectations for whom would be the most capable person line up with stereotypical gender roles regardless of actual expertise, you should probably reevaluate your assumptions.

Skill expectations are a pervasive way in which gender norms are perpetuated and both genders end up on unfair footing.  This pitfall leads to hiring managers subconsciously penalizing candidates with female names for technical positions, men having a hard time as nurses, and a slew of other issues.  In the workplace, I most often see this in task assignments where managers will sometimes give male employees the opportunity to become a new software tool expert even if a female employee would be a better fit.  The converse is often true as well with female employees being expected to be naturally good at social activities even if a man on the team is a social rockstar.

8. You only compliment women on their appearance

Example: Paul is grabbing coffee in the break room when Jessica and Stan walk in to grab a bagel.  Paul notices Jessica’s hair is different and compliments her on the new style. Later in the day, he lets Stan know that he did a good job on the last steering committee presentation, which Jessica also worked on.

How You Can Tell:  Ask yourself four questions: “When was the last time I complimented a male employee on his appearance?  When was the last time I complimented a female employee on her appearance? When was the last time I complimented a male employee on his work?  When was the last time I complimented a female employee on her work?” If you notice significant imbalances in your answers, you might want to start evening out your compliments or limiting them to work skills and outputs.

This one is often tricky because 1) men are often told from a very young age that complimenting women on their appearance is a gentlemanly thing to do, and 2) doing the same for men is a “gay” thing to do.  The issue is that praising women only for their appearance implies you value their appearance more than their skills and reinforces the notion that women need to look attractive to get ahead. I don’t recommend complimenting appearance at work in general, but people of all levels should be complimenting employees of both genders equally for their work.  And remember that if you do want to compliment people on appearance, men often do like to be told that they look good since it is something we rarely hear.

9. Your performance standards are different for men than for women

Example: It’s performance review time again and Phil is reviewing his team’s work on the big product launch that was completed last month. His team of four is comprised of three men and a woman, Stacy.  Stacy’s work actually wasn’t quite as good as that of the three men on the team, but Phil still ends up giving her the same overall score because, hey, she’s a woman and needs a little extra boost.

How You Can Tell: Any time you evaluate the work of a subordinate or coworker, whether for an impromptu project or a year’s worth of performance, ask yourself if your evaluation would be accurate by adding the words “because she’s a woman” or “because he’s a man”.  For example, “I’m giving Elena a 7 rating on this… because she’s a woman.” If those words don’t make you immediately uncomfortable, your assessment likely isn’t fair.

Uneven standards can easily cut both ways in a work setting.  On one hand they might give unfair advantages while at the same time creating animosity on a team, but on the other hand they might punish employees unfairly or limit opportunities for growth that come from even-handed assessments.  As a coworker or manager it’s your job to set performance standards and then hold everyone to them equally, regardless of background or gender. A decent way to combat uneven standards is to always solicit multiple opinions and to look at your assessments of a male employee and ask if your praise and criticisms would apply equally to a female employee.  If they would, but your scoring ends up different, there’s a problem.

10. You pay more attention to men than to women when they are talking

Example: There’s a big team meeting going on to discuss department direction for the next quarter.  Colin, the department head, has asked for comments from the team. Brad speaks up and Colin eagerly listens to his suggestions, nodding and taking a few notes.  Mary speaks up next, and half-way through her comments, Colin checks email on his phone.

How You Can Tell: This one might require the help of a colleague to track your attention since it can be difficult to do yourself.  Count the number of times you check your email, messages, etc. while coworkers of each gender are speaking. If there’s a difference, you’ve got a problem.  Alternatively, try to do basic recall of what your male and female coworkers said after conversations with them. Again, if you don’t recall equally between genders, there’s a problem.

Attention is a type of currency in the workplace and if you only give it to one gender, the other will not only feel unappreciated, but will also be punished when it comes time to remember accomplishments and contributions for promotions and raises.  Unfortunately, attention imbalance is something I see all the time in companies, especially in meetings. As a consultant I am often called on to provide opinions and guidance and it is often painfully clear that clients pay more attention to me in meetings than to some of my female colleagues of equal experience.  This is almost always a subconscious bias that is difficult to break, but it is important to be mindful and try give equal attention and focus to all employees.

Honorable mention:  You flirt with / try to date your female coworkers

I won’t even provide an example for this one.  If you flirt with or try to date your female coworkers or subordinates, you’re sending the message that you see them as relationship targets instead of as valued members of your team.  Just don’t do it.

What To Do About It

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you are gender biased in at least some way (that applies to women also).  The number one thing you can do is to understand the common sources of bias in the workplace and be mindful of times when you or others around you might be acting in a biased way, then work to change that bias over time.  If you are a manager, it is especially important that you also monitor your team for signs of bias and take corrective action early and often to prevent issues from snowballing and creating an environment adverse to either gender.  Combating bias usually needs to start at the top, and leaders who don’t curtail bad behavior when they see it are implicitly encouraging it. Do your best, and make sure you and your team are moving in the right direction.