Unconscious Bias

I have found the idea of unconscious bias popping up a lot lately in work on why professional women’s progress has stalled– have you?  I read about it here in this piece from INSEAD talking about the work on second-generation gender bias done by Herminia Ibarra (who I love!). Ibarra explains that second generation gender bias is not the outright sexism of decades ago, but the more subtle assumption that happens when, “people look at who’s currently in charge, and extrapolate that the style of the people in leadership positions is the style of leadership. If you don’t look like them and don’t talk like them, you don’t look like a leader, or at least look like you have potential…”

Then I read about it here in this more superficial article about why even women prefer male bosses. The article quotes Alice Eagly of Northwestern University as saying, “The leader stereotype is still masculine, which puts women at a disadvantage. When women do get into those roles and act assertive and take charge there’s backlash.”

And then one of the amazing women in our DC community sent me this article from the Washington Post talking about the work Sylvia Ann Hewlett and the Center for Talent and Innovation are doing on sponsorship and how it can help to combat these unspoken assumptions.  Hewlett says the transfer of power has traditionally come through an old-boy’s network, “built on relationships among people with strongly similar backgrounds and perspectives, usually white men,” and that having a sponsor who actively speaks out on their behalf can raise the profile of those who fall outside the assumptions of what power and leadership look like.

There was something that really rang a bell with me in this article, as it will with many of you.  The Washington Post piece says that, according to Hewlett:

“Unconscious bias is simply the way the brain works, quickly and automatically sorting people into categories.”

And that goes right back to the mental models Dana Galin of Defineum has talked with us about in New York on more than one occasion. Here’s her cheat sheet to understanding mental models:

• Mental shortcuts that allow us to process vast amounts of information
• Created from past experiences
• Act as a filter or “guide to the world” and help shape future behavior
• Can be limiting or you can identify and recast them

So it seems that one of the barriers to women making it to the top spheres of their profession are often hindered by the idea that a leader is male, and white.  What’s more, women’s own biases may limit their ability to progress even more than men’s – according to the Post article 83% of women associate men more with careers, compared to 77% of men.  Let’s not kid ourselves though – those are awfully high percentages in any case.  So it looks like we all need to work on changing our own mental models if we want to make real change for professional women.