Unconscious biases are where our personal history and our society’s meet to create our understanding of the world. These biases are shortcuts or assumptions that enable us to get through the day as smoothly as possible.
Imagine that you have two people with very different personal histories, but come from the same society – they should have all the same cultural understandings, right? But they won’t: our experience of society will differ based on our gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, age, social class – amongst many other factors.
And how many of you with siblings have had the feeling that despite growing up in the same household, your experience of childhood was very different to that of your sisters or brothers?
So at any time, when two people meet, each person is confronted with a complex set of experiences and understandings of the world.
Here's an example from my own experience.
Until I did my PhD, I thought that my mother experienced gender in exactly the same way I did. When I went to graduate school, I interviewed a woman named Helen Gee, who had run a photography café in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. Gee was single, very young, had a child and worked – a set of experiences that, taken together, were not considered acceptable at the time. When I told my mum this story, she told me that she had used to go this café – and that she had gone with a female friend, not accompanied by a man, which was frowned upon at the time. I also found out that my mother wore trousers to work (shocking!), didn’t quit her job when she became pregnant (unbelievable!) and planned to return to work after becoming a mother (which she did).
The age difference between us meant that despite living in exactly the same place, we experienced very different cities and very different understandings of what it means to be a woman. And yet, I had no idea about how different our experiences were, until I asked her. Imagine all the assumptions I made!
In our modern world, which is full of people from different cultures, ages, classes and experiences, unconscious bias will be a big stumbling block. Our personal and cultural experience leads us to see things in certain ways - it's a filter – we see what we expect to see, and therefore, we can often miss things we’re not looking for. And one of the only ways around it is to be curious and to ask people about their lives.
My tips for addressing unconscious bias are:
Reflect, reflect, reflect. Think about what has contributed to who you are and how you see the world.
Identify your values – we all notice difference (and that’s okay); it’s when we assign values incorrectly to those differences that problems arise. What values do you assign, for example, to poverty?
Develop sympathy by thinking about a time when you might have felt different or excluded.
Equally, think about those times when you have felt included - identify the factors that contributed to that feeling, and maybe you can extend that feeling of inclusion to others.
What examples of unconscious bias "a-ha" moments have you had?
And, if you'd like to learn more about how unconscious bias might be affecting diversity, equity and inclusion at your business, have a look at the DEI course I offer here.
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