Gender Bias

This post is a result of a discussion with a friend of mine. My friend persuaded me to write a post on this topic, so here is my attempt to define and understand the prevalence of Gender Bias in the corporate world.

According to Wikipedia, Gender Bias or sexism is commonly considered to be discrimination and/or hatred against people based on their individual merits, but can also refer to any and all systemic differentiations based on the sex of the individuals.

Sexism can refer to subtly different beliefs or attitudes:

• The belief that one gender or sex is inferior to or more valuable than the other;
• Female or male chauvinism
• The attitude of misogyny (hatred of females) or misandry (hatred of males); as well as
• The attitude of imposing a limited and/or false notion of masculinity on males and a limited and/or false notion of femininity on females, or vice versa.
• A feeling of distrust towards the opposite or same sex, most frequently operating at unconscious level.

Bias against women is the most common form of Gender Bias. This bias has been acknowledged and tackled by organisations everywhere. There are rules and policies in place, to prevent any kind of bias, based on the sex of the individual. They try to ensure that success or progression of an employee is sex agnostic, and will be based on merits rather than prejudices. But, unfortunately there is no way of enforcing these policies at an individual level across an organisation.

There could be couple of male chauvinists, who’d rather be happy to see female colleagues miserable, or it could be the other way round. It is quite possible to come across a feminist who’d treat males like garden pests. But then, I’m talking about two extremes here. In the real world, sexism is often subtle, and more exacting than we would like to imagine.

I’d take two examples here, first we will imagine a scenario involving a female gender bias. Mr. X and Miss Y both work hard on a project, and complete it before the deadline. X gets a promotion, but Y is placated with a small raise. Reason, big boss is sexist, he abhors women taking charge of corporate desks. So, he unabashedly favors X over Y.

Another example, again Mr. X and Miss Y toil day and night to meet a mission critical project deadline. This time Miss Y is promoted, and Mr. X is given a small award to shut him up. This time, big boss is a female who is feminist to the core. These are again obvious cause and effect scenarios. Sometimes, the discrimination is subtle, like being excluded from group activities in a male dominant group. Assigning the complex technical project to your male colleague, just because the PM assumes that males are more competent at solving complex problems. These are few examples, which portray sexist attitudes. I’m sure there are many more.

At the risk of making a very general statement, I think that female bias is more rampant than male bias. The cause can be easily traced back to our thinking in a male dominant society, that men are superior than women. But attitudes are changing for the better now, we’ve come a long way in terms of our views about womens place in society. Our society rightfully treats a women an equal to men. They are encouraged to take up careers which were predominantly male oriented : military, marines, police force. Even the business world is crowned with female high achievers.

I’d be interested to know if this will increase male bias in the future. What are your views ?