We all have gender bias

- If your brain is working, you have bias. Now, I know, I know, we think of this as a dirty four letter word. But it doesn't have to be. And we can't hide from it. If you're interested in gender equality, you must understand bias. The good news is you can literally retrain your brain to reduce your bias. Your brain isn't a muscle but it functions like one in some ways. Retraining it requires understanding your bias and regular self-reflection. There are multiple types of bias. The two I want to focus on are unconscious bias and confirmation bias. Let's start with unconscious bias, which has a significant effect on women and minorities in workplaces around the globe. Unconscious bias, or implicit associations, can be defined as subconscious attitudes, favorable or unfavorable, about groups of people based on identify characteristics. This ties to traditional gender roles. An unconscious bias found in both men and women equates men with careers and women with family. In an Implicit Associations Test, conducted of roughly 850,000 people over the course of a decade, the results indicated that 74% of participants, both men and women, were more likely to associate men with careers and women with family. You heard that correctly, both men and women have gender bias that can disadvantage women in the workplace. Think about it, if the overwhelming majority of us, both men and women, mostly see men as prioritizing their careers, it can skew our thinking. This distorted thinking gets compounded by confirmation bias, which is the tendency to look for evidence that supports what we already believe. This is also thought of as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I believe X, I'm most likely to find and remember evidence that supports X. So, if a manager unconsciously believes that Xiao Mei will prioritize having a family over her career, he or she may overlook her when it comes to challenging assignments. In turn, she will likely grow frustrated by the lack of opportunities and then decide to leave the role all together. The manager's original bias is then confirmed. Do you see how this snowballs? These tiny little errors are confounding and can have significant consequences. Now that you understand what unconscious bias is, it's important to become aware of yours through regular self-reflection. Start by paying attention to the first thoughts you have in different situations when you encounter people. Remember, bias can be positive and negative. It's important to get a sense of it either way. If you work on commission, do you treat all of your perspective clients the same? Chances are, you size up each person you meet and you make snap judgements about whether or not you can convert them into paying customers. Next time you catch one of these first thoughts, acknowledge it and then act as you would if it didn't exist. This means you treat the perspective client as though you're confident they'll be a big spender regardless of how the person looks. The more you pay attention to your first thoughts and adjust your behavior, the easier this process will become. Soon, you'll notice it happens less often and that's the goal. To reduce your unconscious bias and treat people as we would if we didn't have them. This will help make you a better and more fair leader.