We are all bias - Let's #choosetochallenge ourselves this International Women's Day

What does #choosetochallenge mean? It means we can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. I think this is more important during this pandemic than ever before.

According to McKinsey 2020 research, Women’s jobs are 1.8 times more vulnerable to this crisis than men’s jobs. Women make up 39 percent of global employment but account for 54 percent of overall job losses. One reason for this greater effect on women is that the virus is significantly increasing the burden of unpaid care, which is disproportionately carried by women. This, among other factors, means that women’s employment is dropping faster than average, even accounting for the fact that women and men work in different sectors. 

Although this is predominately US based research, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world all women are subject to gender bias, leading to job instability or just day to day fear, even in the most enlightened workplaces. (Read the full article and others here)

It takes courage to challenge, even amongst those of us willing to #choosetochallenge

All my career I have worked in consulting. For the first 15 years of this I was in technology consulting, working on large scale transformations supporting the people, culture and behavioural aspects of change. It was very male dominated, with not many female role models, but lots of great female peers to be supported by. I have a long list of things I wish my 20 & 30 year old self would have challenged. I thought my 43 year old self was pretty courageous until a small moment made me stop in my tracks a year or so ago and made me wonder if I really was prepared to challenge.

My moment of finding my courage

I was working on a project for a Financial Service client alongside a strategy consultancy. I was invited by my client to attend a briefing presentation to provide my input to the strategy. I walked into a boardroom, full of men, they were all chatting and waiting for the clients to arrive. Nobody said hello, nobody acknowledged my arrival or even knew who I was. I thought this was quite odd and a bit rude or maybe they hadn't noticed me and was just considering how to handle it, when one minute later one of the male client team walked in. 

Everyone stood up and started shaking hands with him, handing out their business cards. Still no acknowledgment of me. What did I want to do? Honestly, I wanted to sit down quietly and get my iPad out and fade into the background and wait for others to arrive.

What did my challenging self do? – I stayed standing, mustered all my courage and walked round to every person at the table and stood by each of them until they stood up again to shake hands, (pre-COVID 19 handshakes remember them) I gave them my business card (still very customary in Asia) looked each one in the eye, introduced myself and then took my seat at the table. Honestly inside, I was mad, sad, shocked and shaking quietly because I haven’t been in that situation for a very long time where I had to so extremely go out of my way to challenge this moment of bias.

When the CEO then walked in and looked round the table the first thing he said was Hi Carla, so great that you can be here to hear this, really interested in your perspectives and challenge on this presentation today, has everyone introduced themselves to you? (I’m still the only woman in the room) and all the men looked deadly embarrassed. 

You are not alone

Every woman I know in the corporate world has a story similar and many stories much worse than this. Very senior women tell me that they are asked by male peers to make the tea, take the notes, run the slides, clean up after the meetings and we all say yes because we don’t want to make a fuss and challenge the status quo.

So women (and men) everywhere… I know it's hard but be courageous, challenge those biases and behaviours you experience. Reflect...how would I handle this situation if I wasn’t afraid? How could I challenge this moment of bias, not just for myself but for all women who come after me?

Bias is actual a natural phenomenon that our brains use to fast track our decision making. So we are all naturally bias. What we need to do to check ourselves against our biases is we need to slow down, become aware of what bias we might be holding or acting out and also help others if we see they might be exhibiting a bias.

It’s not just men who exhibit bias against women, women exhibit exactly the same bias against women no one is immune from bias and we all have work to do.

Awareness isn’t enough, we need to learn how to counter act these biases when we see them and speak up and challenge when we see bias behaviour. Here are six biases women experience in the workplace everyday taken from 50 ways to fight bias LEAN IN programme

Here is a great video you can share with your teams around challenging these biases. Which of these have you experienced or do you see other experiencing in your organisations?

So we have two choices this International Women's Day. We can #choosetochallenge bias or we can pretend it isn’t happening. Let's challenge, because if we keep letting micro behaviours slide those behaviours become the culture that we have created by our silence and then have to adapt ourselves to conform with.

When women rise we all rise, so let’s all play our part to challenge these gender biases even more in 2021 and let's celebrate all the women who are juggling and achieving during this crisis

Love to hear your thoughts, please do get in touch Carla x