William Bielby, University of Illinois at Chicago: Interventions That Work: Alternative Paths to Minimizing Workplace Gender Bias

The following are my notes from Bielby's presentation at the HBS Gender & Work Conference, March 1, 2013.

HR Magazine article on detecting hidden bias, Wall Street Journal article suggesting a fix for gender bias by evaluating people in enough numbers (select groups of employees, rather than individual employees) -- these solutions are way too simplistic, one cannot remedy the habits of the mind so easily.

Ten years ago [2003 Dukes v. Wal-Mart Expert Witness Report]: Counterstereotypic images, habits of mind do not change easily and bounce back.

Is it all about cognitive mistakes of well-intentioned folks? Diversity training doesn't really work. Making end-runs to bypass stereotypes. Even if it's in our heads, remedies are organizational.

Cotter, Hermsen & Vanneman (2012): Occupational gender desegregation stalled out in the 1980s & 90s [tables such as this and this displayed]

Simple tinkering with gender-neutral fixes will not necessarily help; this is an intransigent problem. The representation of women in executive positions does not affect the representation of women in lower ranks of organizations, but the representation of women on boards of directors did [similar to Rose & Bielby, 2011?].

The problem is not all in our heads and is not solved by fixing errors of clueless supervisors. It's even about more than accountability and structures. It's about discussions and definitions of organizations and work, about blueprints and organizational logic.

Dukes v. Wal-Mart case and effects [NYT interview]. Beyond structure and cognition: Organizational logics and the new economy, collaboration, compliance and culture.

[My laptop battery ran out before his talk, so the notes above were taken by hand and were not terribly complete.]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Tale of Two Women -- Who Exercised Their Professional Independence

Image
May 2018, Vancouver BC Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story has triggered memories of professional trauma for me, like watching Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony last fall triggered memories of sexual trauma for many women. The way Wilson-Raybould has been treated represents a pattern of pressure applied to women who dare assert their professional independence, voice, and decision-making power. Most cases just aren’t made public. Wilson-Raybould and I were each welcomed to our professional appointments (as Attorney General of Canada and as Montalbano Professor of Leadership Studies: Gender and Diversity at UBC’s Sauder School of Business , respectively) with publicity and fanfare that celebrated diversity and the goodness of the White men who put us there. But when those men realized they couldn’t control how we carried out our professional duties, everything came crashing down. Each of us got in trouble for exercising our right to make independent judgments in our professional capaci
Read more

Jack Dovidio, Yale: Included but Invisible? The Benefits and Costs of Inclusion

Image
The following are my notes from Dovidio's talk at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , February 28, 2013. Social inclusion is essential to equality. Discrimination is systematic exclusion. Exclusion is painful. But superficial inclusion cloaks injustice and takes the form of subtle contemporary bias. Contemporary bias: there are explicit attitudes about racism and sexism and there are implicit attitudes. Explicit and implicit attitudes are only weakly correlated. Most Americans (80%) say they're not racist or sexist [explicit attitudes], but 60-70% of the population is racist/sexist according to implicit measures of bias. Most people will rely on explicit attitudes when a situation is unambiguous, and when what needs to be done is absolutely clear. Most discrimination occurs when a situation is ambiguous (i.e., what is right and wrong behavior is not defined) or justifications are possible for racism and sexism (such as "merit"). Devine (1989) study of Black and
Read more

Peter Glick, Lawrence University: BS at Work: How Benevolent Sexism Undermines Women and Justifies Backlash

Image
The following are my notes from Glick 's  HBS Gender & Work Conference  presentation, February 28, 2013. “The battle of the sexes will never end -- there's too much fraternizing with the enemy” - Henry Kissinger Paradox: The interdependence of the sexes -- male dominance coexists with intimate dependence on women. Ambivalent sexism theory ( Glick & Fiske, 1996 ): Dominance & intimate interdependence lead to hostile sexism (HS, directed toward women who threaten male power) and benevolent sexism (BS, directed at women who conform to feminine ideals, serve men’s needs), respectively. Sample items of HS and BS . BS is a pedestal: A narrow and confined space, difficult to stay up on, especially in high heels. BS justifies HS, fosters unrecognized, patronizing discrimination, elicits backlash when resisted, saps women’s career ambitions, makes inequality more palatable. For men, BS protects self image, they can see themselves as not an oppressor, but rather as a provider
Read more