Recognizing and Managing Implicit Bias

The culture war clash over diversity, equity, and inclusion will continue forever unless we can bring it from 10,000 ft in the air back down to earth. "Commitment to an inclusive culture for all?" "Marxist philosophy?" "Policies for achieving belonging?" "Wokeism?" Buzzwords against buzzwords against buzzwords, with no one the wiser as to what's actually being discussed. Rachel needs a lactation room, so we're converting a meeting room into one. Steven's going to be a dad and wants to spend time with his newborn kid, so we're expanding "maternal leave benefits" into "parental leave benefits." Andrew's a customer who has shared feedback about our product being inaccessible, so we're having him talk to the product team. Bianca helped us realize that our company's meetings are chaotic and don't make space for everyone's voice, so we're setting meeting norms. Sam worked on debiasing the hiring process at a previous role and we could benefit from that, so we're looking at standardizing our own process. Arjun shared helpful feedback about the difficulty managers face in managing their distributed teams, so we're building out more resources and structure. There is only one "ideology" present in DEI work done right, and it's shared by pretty much every pluralistic democratic society in our world: that everyone deserves dignity, respect, and opportunity regardless of the beliefs, values, needs, circumstances, experiences and perspectives we hold. That's it. The remaining 99.9% of the work is operational. How do we remove barriers to opportunity and fairness in the workplace? How do we meet people's many needs so we can bring out their potential? How do we create an environment where different people can come together and build something bigger than themselves? A great deal of that operational work ought to be done better. Diversity, equity, and inclusion work has a lot of room for improvement, and it'll take everyone's feedback and active involvement — yes, even from skeptics — to ensure that work succeeds. But to get there, we have to get our heads out of the clouds and bring the conversation back down to earth. Flowery abstractions, even if they make us feel righteous and good, will not save us. It's the mundane pragmaticism of speaking in real terms, with real people, to solve real problems, that will break through the misinformation and polarization that keeps us stuck in the status quo.

I am (not) your mother, Luke.   Or your sister. Or girlfriend. Or your wife.   I am your boss.   And yet, as a female leader, I often found that my team members unconsciously placed me in a caregiving role. Which triggered in me a need to nurture them, which undermined my authority, and was no good for any of us.   I’m not alone in this. Many of the women leaders I work with in my role as mentor say the same thing. That when they have to make tough decisions, they get reactions that their male equivalents simply don’t have to face.   👩👦 The ‘mother’ role. You’re expected to be nurturing, to provide emotional support and protection. And any criticism may be taken as harsh, like being told off by mummy. 👩 The ‘sister’ role: You’re expected to be friendly, collaborative and fun. Assertiveness can be misread as aggression. 👰♀️ The ‘girlfriend / wife’ role: You’re expected to take on emotional labour, be a supportive ear, or even hand conflict in a soothing manner. These roles are a trap for women in business, where they feel that they have to balance warmth with authority, competence with compassion. And it’s exhausting!   The struggle is real ❌ Women may struggle to progress if they don’t conform to caregiving expectations ❌ Feedback from women leaders is more likely to be taken personally, rather than as professional guidance ❌ Women leaders may try to do it all, fulfilling both emotional and professional expectations – leading to burnout   To avoid this trap, women often try to take on what they perceive as a male archetype – becoming cold and harsh. But that’s not the best way forward. The answer is authenticity. How to be just you ✅ Educate your team and yourself about these biases – knowing about them is the first step to avoiding them ✅ Set boundaries – be clear about professional expectations versus personal involvement ✅ Communicate honestly – don’t feel you have to soften your message, be direct and clear ✅ Support other women – advocate for structures that allow women to lead without having to take on caregiving expectations. It’s time women stopped trying to be everything to everyone and focused on being just the very best version of themselves.   What about you? Are you a female leader who finds herself being put in these boxes? Are you a man working with women who expects them to be the caregivers? Let me know! ⬇️

You can't fix what you won't measure. Most gender equity conversations stop at headcount. "We have X% women on staff." Great. Now what? Because headcount doesn't tell you why she earns less for the same role. Here's what the organisations serious about change are tracking instead: ✅ Who actually gets to participate (and who gets overlooked). It's not enough to open the door. Are women enrolling in leadership programs at the same rate? Are they dropping out halfway through? Representation at the top starts with access at the bottom. ✅Health outcomes by gender.. Not just headcount in the wellness program. Maternal mortality. Access to reproductive health. Rates of gender-based violence. These aren't just societal statistics. They show up in absenteeism, attrition, and performance. They're your problem too. ✅Who's actually learning (and who's being left behind). Literacy gaps. Dropout rates by gender in your training programs. Enrollment in continuing education. ✅Who's in the room when it matters. Voter turnout is a civic metric. Boardroom turnout is yours. What percentage of women are in your decision-making meetings? What percentage are leading them? ✅What people actually believe about gender, including your managers. Attitudes don't announce themselves. They show up in performance reviews, in who gets the benefit of the doubt, in whose ideas get credited. Culture surveys that skip this question are measuring the furniture, not the house. ✅Who's doing the unpaid work (at home and at work). Who takes notes in meetings nobody asked them to take? Who schedules the team lunch? Who goes part-time after a baby and never quite comes back from it? Time use data makes the invisible visible. Most organisations measure what's comfortable. Gender equity data is only uncomfortable until you look at it long enough to do something about it. The question isn't whether these gaps exist in your organisation and programmes. They do. The question is whether you're willing to find out exactly where. ---- Want insights like this directly in your inbox? Sign up for my mailing list. It's FREE! 👉 https://lnkd.in/ec8mqV2M

Why is it that even in industries dominated by women employees, men rise to the top of the most prestigious and influential organizations? One answer is career escalators. “Career escalators” points to the practices, structures and norms that move a person upward in their careers. However, as research by many, including Prof. Christine Williams shows in her research, “glass elevators” are hidden advantages for men to advance in women-dominated fields. As Cathleen Clerkin, PhD reveals, a broad look at nonprofit workers reveals a slight advantage for men in leadership. Women represent about 70% of employees yet only 62% of leaders. The real gap, however, shows up when you look at size of the non-profit, as measured by revenues. Men nonprofit CEOs oversee nearly twice the revenues as women (~$11M vs. ~$6M). And men CEOs earn on average +27% more than women CEOs. Having worked with many nonprofit boards on their hiring practices, bias is a concern in recruiting CEOs and board directors. Preference for the “think leader, think male” can give an implicit advantage to White men, resulting in disadvantages or de-accelerators for women and BIPOC men. Often those concerns are expressed in donor networks, strategic thinking, vision and public persona -- all of which are important and yet the evaluation of who can do them can be fraught with biases. What can you do? The author suggests many important strategies. ✔ Check for biased language and treatment in the hiring process.  ✔ Track demographic data.  ✔ Be transparent about pay.  ✔ Create clear career matrices.  ✔ Have explicit conversations about career goals.  ✔ Sponsor women and give them challenging opportunities. When we make these often invisible accelerators visible--and work towards creating clear, equitable and transparent access to them--we can come closer to achieving our intention of creating remarkable and inclusive organizations.  Research by Candid. Article published in Harvard Business Review.

Women in the Workplace: The Subtle Gender Bias (Ever caught yourself expecting a female colleague to “take the notes”?) Studies reveal that many offices practice subtle forms of gender bias—even unconsciously. What does it look like? • Asking only women to plan office parties and celebrations • Delegating extra “unimportant” tasks exclusively to female employees • Overlooking women for challenging projects and tasks • Judging women’s communication styles more harshly than men’s Why does this matter? → Women are often skipped for high-visibility projects. → This directly impacts career advancement. → Fewer women make it to leadership positions. Why does this happen? • Cultural conditioning: Women are viewed as nurturers from a young age. • Reinforcement of the bias: Well-meaning colleagues might unknowingly assign tasks based on gender. • Denial: Because these biases are subtle, workplaces may not even acknowledge them. How can we fix this? For Teams: • Provide equal opportunities to prove themselves • Rotate duties—everyone should take turns writing meeting notes, answering calls, etc. For Leaders: • Hold training sessions to recognize and correct biases. • Monitor task distribution; if there’s an imbalance, address it. • If bias is suspected, investigate—ask questions, demand answers. For Organizations: • Address pay gaps for the same role • Encourage open feedback channels so concerns can be heard. While paying women less for the same work is an obvious form of discrimination, these subtler practices can be just as damaging over time. Taking small steps now can create an environment where all employees thrive. What do you think? Have you witnessed or experienced these subtle biases? P.S. Sometimes it’s the little changes in task distribution that leave the biggest impact. #GenderBiasAtWork #BreakTheBias #WomenInLeadership

Prof. Claudia Goldin made history by becoming the first woman to win a solo Nobel Prize in Economics. She was recognized for her ground-breaking work on the key drivers behind gender differences in the labour market. Goldin’s work shows that although historical factors such as disparities in education have narrowed in modern times, the earnings gap between men and women remains.   One reason for this is a lack of opportunities. This is where behavioural science may be able to help by identifying implicit biases and engineering a choice architecture to help tackle them.   Acknowledging the difficulty in proving that discrimination on the basis of gender in the workforce exists, Goldin and her colleagues at Harvard University turned their attention to one occupation which attempted to combat gender-biased hiring – musicians.   Before 1980, none of the “Big 5” symphony orchestras in the U.S. contained more than 12% female musicians due to both implicit and explicit biases in the hiring process. To combat these, orchestras began implementing “blind” auditions – that is, the candidate performed behind a screen so that the committee could not identify them as male or female.   This helped a little, but less than expected until they added a carpet.   What?   It turned out that the committee could hear the click of women’s shoes as they walked on stage and even that was sufficient to bias their decisions!   Analyzing data from 11 orchestras who implemented these changes revealed some shocking statistics. By hiding the identity of the musician in the audition, there was a 50% increased likelihood of a female musician progressing to the next round of auditions.   Goldin further estimated that blind auditions accounted for about 25% of the increase in the number of female orchestra musicians from 1970 to 1996. (Other factors like training more female musicians also contributed to this growth).   So, what does this teach us? 👉 Being blind to the #gender (as well as to other things like race) can improve impartiality in #hiring 👉 Biases are persistent and creep into decision making through the smallest of gaps (e.g. no carpet!) 👉 A carefully designed choice architecture can help to mitigate hiring biases and enhance #equity in the workplace Do you know of other innovative ways organisations are changing hiring processes to be as unbiased as possible?   #DiversityAndInclusion

There is an invisible tax we pay for being the 'only woman in the room'. I’ve spent years in finance and startup boardrooms but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m also the woman who has tried to calculate:  - If I should wear a blazer (too formal?) or skip it (not serious enough? - Whether my voice will be heard if I speak first or dismissed if I speak last. Research from Harvard Business Review found that women speak 25% less than men in meetings where they’re outnumbered, even when they’re experts in the room. But the study also tracked their prep time. Women in male-dominated settings spent 30% more time preparing for the same meetings. This isn’t about confidence. It’s about the cognitive load of constant calculation. When I’m the only woman in a room full of men, I’m running parallel processing: → Is my idea good enough? → Am I being too aggressive or not aggressive enough? → Did that interruption happen because my point wasn’t clear, or because…? → Should I laugh at that joke that made me uncomfortable? A 2023 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research tracked startup founders and found that women founders were asked an average of 67% more follow-up questions about their credentials and team composition than male founders with identical backgrounds. Same credentials but different scrutiny. The exhausting part isn’t being the only woman. It’s the invisible work of managing everyone else’s comfort with you being there. It’s code-switching, over-preparing, and second-guessing whether your legitimate frustration will be labeled as “emotional.” At EduFund, I made a deliberate choice: hire for diversity early, not later. Not because it’s the right thing to do (though it is), but because homogeneous teams have homogeneous blindspots and in a market as complex as India, blindspots are expensive. The tax isn’t just on the women in the room. It’s on: - the companies that never get their perspective - the solutions that never get built - the markets that never get served. What invisible work do you find yourself doing in professional spaces?

Why do parents in India want to know the gender of the child during pregnancy? During my 28 years of founding and leading a diagnostics company, one of the challenges I faced was following the PCPNDT Act. This is an act that prevents gender identification during pregnancy by the radiologist or the gynaecologist. But who asks for this? The parents! The PCPNDT Act is so irrational that it attempts to curb the medical fraternity, but nothing is done to the society that actually seeks and acts on this information. Even in today’s world, why do families in India prefer boys over girls? Despite the “apparent progress” being shown in our society, women continue to be discriminated against. Gender inequality in India remains a pressing issue. ◼️Education: → Despite improvements, female literacy rates lag behind male literacy rates. → Female literacy stands at 70%, while male literacy is 84.7%. → Rural areas face significant challenges, with traditional norms often limiting girls' education. ◼️Employment: → Female participation in the workforce is alarmingly low at around 21%. → Barriers include societal expectations, lack of childcare facilities, and discrimination in hiring and promotions. ◼️Health and Nutrition: → Gender inequality in healthcare leads to sex-selective abortions and neglect of girl children. → Women face disparities in accessing healthcare, especially reproductive health services. → Women often suffer from malnutrition due to unequal food distribution within families. ◼️Political Representation: → Women are underrepresented in political positions at both national and local levels. → Despite initiatives like reserved seats in local governments, the overall representation in national parliament and state legislatures remains low. ◼️Violence and Safety: → Violence against women - domestic violence, sexual harassment, and honour killings - is a severe issue. → Weakly enforced legal protections and societal attitudes normalise such violence. ◼️Social Norms and Cultural Practices: → Deep-rooted patriarchal norms influence gender roles and expectations. → Dowry, child marriage, and restrictions on women's mobility limit opportunities for personal and professional growth. 🔶How can we address these issues head-on?  → Encourage girls' education, especially in rural areas. → Promote policies that support women in the workforce. → Ensure equal access to healthcare for women. → Increase women's representation in politics. → Strengthen enforcement of laws protecting women from violence. → Challenge and change patriarchal norms and cultural practices. This Women's Equality Day, I urge everyone to -  - look beyond gender and seek only capabilities.  - give women an equal opportunity.  - give “half our population” equal rights. An outstretched hand can push people down or lift them up. The choice is yours! ✅What do you think we can do to uplift women?

"Can she really be a leader if she’s acting so … girly?" 💄 The question stopped me in my tracks. It came up during a recent 1-1 coaching session with a male executive. It wasn’t meant to offend — it was an honest observation. But it revealed a much deeper issue about how we view leadership and the narrow expectations we place on women in those roles.  The executive shared his struggle to reconcile this team member’s strong leadership aspirations with behaviors he perceived as “girly.” That word — so loaded with societal biases 🌶️ — became the gateway to an important conversation about gender, stereotypes, and leadership.  Through our discussion, a few key insights surfaced:  🧩🌀 Leadership isn’t about fitting a mold: True leadership combines a spectrum of qualities. Assertiveness and decisiveness are just as important as empathy and collaboration. These traits aren’t “masculine” or “feminine” — they’re human. Their value lies in how they’re applied.  ⚡️🧠 Bias influences how we see behavior: The term “girly” often reflects our own unconscious expectations rather than the individual’s ability. Are we unfairly expecting women to embody “masculine” traits? Is "acting like a man" needed to be seen as a credible leader? 👩🏻🎤🧑🏻🎤 Supporting authenticity over conformity: The executive began to recognize the importance of supporting his team member’s authentic leadership style rather than pressuring her to conform to outdated archetypes.  This conversation reinforced a crucial truth: the problem isn’t women’s behavior. It’s the unrealistic expectations we place on them. When we judge leaders by narrow stereotypes, we limit not only their growth but also the potential of our teams. But transformation takes time and reflection. The seed is often planted in trainings, but it’s in the trusted, reflective, and safer space of 1-1 coaching where these biases and assumptions can be safely explored. As this executive began to shift his perceptions and actions, it reminded me: Leaders, especially those in positions of influence, have the power to challenge biases and foster environments where the courage to embrace authenticity breaks through the crust of stereotypes. What assumptions are you holding about what leadership “should” look like? Are they serving you — or holding your team back?