The unconscious bias

Gender inequality at work and added domestic responsibilities amid the pandemic have collectively made women's jobs more vulnerable, writes S Muralidhar

Gender equality for women might have improved over the years but India’s working women still face bias. A majority of working women claim to have missed out on promotions or work offers because of their gender. According to the LinkedIn Opportunity Survey 2021, working women in India have experienced gender bias slowing their career progress. Gender inequality at work and added domestic responsibilities amid the pandemic have collectively made women’s jobs more vulnerable. They are affected in terms of retrenchment, pay cuts and reduced working hours, with expectations to juggle home and work life preventing their career advancement. 73% of working women faced discrimination at work due to household responsibilities. The survey highlighted the disparities in perception around equal pay for equal work, particularly in the unorganised sector.

Gender parity

Although there has been a rise in women employed, gender parity is lacking in senior positions. Many organisations have no women on the board level. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its research note ‘Women in business and Management Gaining Momentum’ observed that globally women encounter many barriers to advancement into corporate leadership. Although many companies have gender equality policies, unconscious gender bias continues to affect the advancement of women into leadership roles. The ILO has listed four barriers affecting women advancement into leadership roles:

Masculine corporate culture.

Discrimination and unconscious gender bias.

Social roles of men and women management is a man’s job.

The stereotype gender bias in recruitment/promotion.

Bias against women engineers

The HRD ministry’s survey of higher education institutions in India in 2019 found that 31% of engineering degrees were earned by women. This shows that there is increasing awareness among women that they can get employed in engineering fields. But the problems they face really begin after university. As per The Economist journal report in 2020, only 15% of working engineers were women. At the national level, the unemployment rate of women engineers is 40%. It is observed that a few women engineers get promoted in the private sector which shows that there is unconscious gender bias. Psychologist Joan C Williams identified four patterns of unconscious bias:

Prove it again: Although women engineers have required expertise and hard work, they have to prove themselves over and over again. This unconscious bias has shown that women often have to work twice as hard to be seen as equally competent to their male colleagues.

Tightrope: Women engineers need to walk the tightrope and are normally asked to perform administrative tasks. They are expected to be submissive, not to express certain emotions that could inhibit them from becoming leaders.

Maternal wall: Married women engineers with children face this bias. In a few cases, not only their commitment and competence are questioned, but they are also denied opportunities. The societal expectation is that women take on family/children/ elders care and men be the breadwinners.

Tug of war: There exists competition among women in organisations. The survey reports that women engineers feel that they do not support them mutually in the workplace. The junior women engineers observed that though senior women engineers have assimilated the ways of doing work like men, they do not encourage young women engineers to learn the ways to succeed.

Mitigate gender bias

The ILO has suggested some steps to reduce gender bias as follows:

Objective talent management: Many companies have equal opportunity policies, lacking effective implementation. HR practices in a project assignment, performance evaluation, leadership development based on unconscious bias prevent career advancement. Unconscious bias against women can be accessed through perception surveys and gender gap analysis.

Structured interviews & performance evaluation: Structured interviews ensure all candidates are evaluated on the relevant, predetermined criteria on job performance to reduce bias.

Transparency & accountability: The career advancement process shall be transparent and accountable with candidates’ self-analysis of their talent, experience, progress and action plan to develop themselves for promotion. This will lead to objective evaluation irrespective of gender.

Training: Companies offer anti-harassment/discrimination training. Managers are to be trained to remove gender bias in training evaluation.

(The writer is an educationist based in Bengaluru.)