Unconscious bias

Ladyleftfieldlover

Women aren’t in a minority! There have always been more of us.

Women are a minority in many ways. It’s not simply a matter of population.

There has been progress, I agree.

But most of the higher positions in business, government, healthcare, education (and on and on) are not proportionally representative of gender, ethnicity, class etc.

And until they are representative, we need positive discrimination to even things up. We are a long way from being at the point where the best person gets the job regardless of gender, ethnicity etc.

GagaJo

Example. An older woman, a man of colour and a youngish white man go for promotion. The woman has the most experience, the man of colour is the best qualified, the youngish white man has neither the experience or the extra qualification. He gets the promotion. I've had that experience (I was more qualified AND had more experience) than the Black guy OR the young white bloke. It isn't right, fair and didn't get the best person for the job.

I am hoping that this was some time ago? Things have changed dramatically in the HR world over the last 2 decades. I too was overlooked for promotion as a newly married women I was told that they thought I would go off soon and get pregnant, in fact the women who was promoted then got pregnant! Discrimination happens in all sorts of situations, not just race or age at that time.

Things are not all sweetness and light in the more
progressive countries which is a fact that some on here would not want you to believe.

www.cato.org/policy-analysis/nordic-glass-ceiling

It was less than 10 years ago Mattsmum2. I don't believe things have changed that much. In an environment that is mostly white and male, white males are favoured.

I have a couple of Black female friends that are so astoundingly good at their jobs that they have seen off male competition. But they are the exception, rather than the rule.

Yes I have seen some analysis of the 'nordic situation' with regard to equality for women, it's interesting.

I agree Callistemon. DD did an OU degree in STEM subjects in her late 30s/early 40s. Found her first STEM job in a research centre in a fortnight, a year before she completed her degree, and last summer, at the age of 48, when she went looking for her second STEM job, had employers tumbling over each other to employ her.

She joined a top consultancy firm as a technical consultant on a higher tax rate pay scale and a plan for her further advancement. She will be 50 next year. She is in a job where neither sex or age comes into it. There are women at every level in the company.

I keep remembering that when I was made redundant into early retirement at 53. Despite a long career at management level, the only kind of work I stood any chance of getting was at shop floor level. Any application for work at any other level was turned down by return of post, clearly one sight of my date of birth, and I was in the reject pile.

I am glad things have changed so much that DD at rising 50 and with newly acquired technical quaalifications can make a complete change of career in her late 40s and be confident of further advancement.

Things have come a long way in the last 25 years.

Garajo your comments are your take on things.
If employers need a particular type of person and experience for a job, he is paying the wages, taking the chances with that person,,he should choose whom he thinks will meet with his requirements, a person who will fit in with the team, and as an employer you choose who that is.

Kirkcubbin, soon the way things are going we will have to apologise.

Allsorts

Garajo your comments are your take on things.
If employers need a particular type of person and experience for a job, he is paying the wages, taking the chances with that person,,he should choose whom he thinks will meet with his requirements, a person who will fit in with the team, and as an employer you choose who that is.

He?

Omg do you sit there looking for faults Volver? I put he so I should have said they should I? According to you. He is a figure of speech not a personal assault. Does that make me guilty of unconscious bias, a load of rubbish.

Just he or she will do fine, Allsorts.
After reading the positive posts above about how things are getting better for women, it does stand out, and not over critical, its a gentle reminder of a slip of the tongue.

Allsorts
It’s obviously your turn today 😥
Still, it lets a couple of other posters off the hook.😄

I must be tough. Worked all my life until retirement. Came across a bit of sexual harrassment,soon sorted. I never felt compromised being a woman, many times it was in my favour.. I think if you're good at your job, can speak out,when necessary,.take no nonsense and be fair,.you earn respect who ever you are. Now ageism,,that's difficult,,a whole new scenario.

Allsorts This has been my experience

Perhaps you would have been even better at your job if you hadnt had to spend time dealing with sexual harassment. I get uneasy about the whole 'tough' thing, some people arent tough, women arent like a herd of wildebeast where it's ok if the 'weaker' ones are brought down.

I dont particularly buy in to the whole weak/tough narrative but the idea of it makes me uncomfortable.

Unconscious bias isn’t just confined to race/gender/age. Obviously bullying may be unconscious…..or not.

Allsorts

Garajo your comments are your take on things.
If employers need a particular type of person and experience for a job, he is paying the wages, taking the chances with that person,,he should choose whom he thinks will meet with his requirements, a person who will fit in with the team, and as an employer you choose who that is.

The problem with this approach is people have a strong tendency to pick people who are like themselves. So if you have a mainly male team, then they will tend towards choosing another male, if it's a mainly white team then there is a strong tendency to pick someone who is white. This is what unconscious bias is all about. It's not a vile deliberate action with the intention of disadvantaging others but it is, in fact, what happens. If you take a different group eg the over 50's, people in that age group often don't get past the short listing stage but if you take out any information that gives a clue to their age, they are often well represented. We are all guilty of unconscious bias, you only have to read through posts on any social forum to see how we all operate to some degree with a stereotypical view of the world.

Discrimination (which is, as has been said, different from prejudice) is illegal, but can be difficult to prove as screening out other reasons for choosing one candidate over another is all but impossible.

However, prejudice can (not always though) explain why particular assumptions are made about one candidate over the other. Many people think that people like them are going to fit in better with other people like them, and if most of the team are middle aged middle class white men, a young black woman has a harder job to convince an interviewer that she could fit in too.

However, white privilege is not just about discrimination. It's often about what doesn't happen, such as not being stopped and searched, or followed round a supermarket by a store detective, stopped in airport security more often, or asked where you are from all the time. It can be small things like being able to find the right shampoo for your hair without travelling to a particular part of town, or being able to find your child toys that represent her and her family. They are the things that many people do subconsciously, because our lives have always been like that, and it's more difficult to spot things that we don't experience. People can do things like looking nervous when someone with a backpack and brown skin gets on the train, assuming that you or a loved one didn't get a job because of a quota, or that a person of colour must have got theirs for the same reason, believing that there is such a thing as 'playing the race card' and so on without even realising they do it and that it is hurtful to those on the receiving end.

I second Wyllow's suggestion of reading the 'White Supremacy' book. The title is maybe not the best, but it is explained early on why that was chosen other than 'white privilege'. White privilege is also, IMO, an unfortunate choice of words for the concept, as a lot of people assume that it means a refusal to believe that white people can be poor, exploited or passed over (now or historically). It doesn't mean that at all. We can be all of those things, and many are, or our ancestors have been. What we don't have is constantly to have to prove ourselves in all sorts of ways (eg that we are not muggers, terrorists etc) and not having small but relentless snubs and micro-aggressions to deal with on a regular basis.

I wasn't tough. I was bullied by a man at work including hm saying quite personal things. It was a "knives in the back" environment. I went to our manager and he did nothing. I decided to leave, but before I went I happened to talk to my male managers colleague, (she looked after next area to mine) and she was lovely, but had no power in my area. My, she had a lot of info on those men (people having affairs in work time, et al, manager doing nothing)

I left, because the woman manger was moving on and therefore felt totally isolated, and it put me off being able to re-apply for equivalent work.

Hats off if you are tough, but it isn't all of us.

It DOES matter that we are inclusive and say he or she.

Cross posted foxie, not ignoring your post which says many of the same things .

And I am not sure it is being tough is it? Accepting that sexual harassment is just one of those things that tough women have to deal with. That doesnt sound that tough to me.

Galaxy

Perhaps you would have been even better at your job if you hadnt had to spend time dealing with sexual harassment. I get uneasy about the whole 'tough' thing, some people arent tough, women arent like a herd of wildebeast where it's ok if the 'weaker' ones are brought down.

Absolutely.

And it is not helped when assertive women are called 'strident', or 'hysterical', and if you have a strong opinion about something you are 'paranoid' or 'over-reacting'. That narrative makes it very difficult for women to get on, particularly when other women buy into it, as it gives the discriminators an excuse (which they see as a reason) to feel as they do.

Some women find it more difficult to have other women in positions of authority. They can take orders from a man, as (consciously or not) they see that as a natural state of affairs. A lot of men feel the same. A woman breaking bad news or asking people to do something unpopular (or having to take them to task for underperforming) gets called a 'bitch' or the fact she is a woman is used as the reason for her behaviour, even when the same behaviour in a man would be seen as acceptable.

Also, everyone's experience is different, and what seems like being 'tough' to one person is just normal to another, so people mean different things by it. I could tell you that I'd been tough because I spoke out in a meeting, whilst you might have a much higher bar. As advice goes, telling people to toughen up is pretty useless, really.

Allsorts

Garajo your comments are your take on things.
If employers need a particular type of person and experience for a job, he is paying the wages, taking the chances with that person,,he should choose whom he thinks will meet with his requirements, a person who will fit in with the team, and as an employer you choose who that is.

So it's OK to keep the boys club going, because 'he' fits in the white, male group?

No. It's wrong. I'm not saying I should have got the job. But picking the least qualified or experienced is wrong. I had no issue with my friend. He's a nice guy. In fact, once he had the job, he and I worked together on it.

But it was blatant discrimination.