“Unconscious bias” and “inclusive leadership” have become diversity buzzwords. This makes sense given recent research highlighting how related trainings — when facilitated and implemented properly — are key ingredients for cultivating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. But what should companies do about leaders who continue to display unquestionably conscious bias?
These are the conscious “excluders,” who despite various corporate interventions, continue to treat some folks differently due to their social group membership. These few often highly influential people may help explain the recent stagnation in progress toward gender equality in organizational leadership. In fact, our latest study of 90 companies and more than 320,000 employees in Switzerland showed that the share of women in leadership positions only increased 1% over the last five years. But this trend is not specific to Switzerland; it’s echoed in statistics across the globe. New research specifically pinpoints bias and exclusion as stalling mechanisms in our progress toward greater gender diversity in STEM.
Maybe you know someone like this: The professor who refuses to hire any female doctoral students or invite other women from the department to after-work drinks “because his wife gets jealous [or dishonored].” It could be the finance guy who — despite having no women on his team — complains that there’s no chance he’ll get promoted now because “they all go to women.” Perhaps it’s the business owner who refuses to hire young women because “they all get pregnant and leave,” causing an inconvenience for employers. Or it’s the board member who insists that women still perform the lion’s share of caregiving “because that’s how it’s always been” and “they’re just better at it.”
The article above was published on November 8th 2021 in the Harvard Business Review by Jamie L. Gloor, Gudrun Sander, and Alyson Meister to continue reading, please click here.
