Description
Many CEOs who make gender diversity a priority—by setting aspirational goals for the proportion of women in leadership roles, insisting on diverse slates of candidates for senior positions, and developing mentoring and training programs—are frustrated.
They and their companies spend time, money, and good intentions on efforts to build a more robust pipeline of upwardly mobile women, and then not much happens.
This program will help participants develop their skills around Breaking the Bias to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to prepare for managing automatic associations feed into decision-making, enabling a quick assessment of an individual according to gender and gender stereotypes.
Program Learning Outcomes
Globally, women are underrepresented in corporations, and the share of women decreases with each step up the corporate hierarchy. Women encounter many barriers to advancement into corporate leadership positions, and these barriers include gender-based discrimination as well as unconscious gender bias.
Many companies have shown their commitment to gender equality by establishing family friendly policies and facilitating women’s careers and professional networks. Nevertheless, unconscious gender bias continues to impact women in the workplace, and more must be done to enable highly skilled women to advance into leadership positions.
On successful completion of the program participants will be able to understand and manage:
- Unconscious gender bias is defined as unintentional and automatic mental associations based on gender, stemming from traditions, norms, values, culture and/or experience.
- Automatic associations feed into decision-making, enabling a quick assessment of an individual according to gender and gender stereotypes.
- Organizations can take steps to counteract gender biases and other types of biases, thus the presence of unconscious gender bias in an individual does not automatically translate into biases in the workplace.
- Invisible barriers are holding women back, rather than overt sexism alone. Gender biases in the mindsets of managers can prevent women from advancing into leadership positions.
- Many companies have taken steps to facilitate women’s networking and career growth, but more can be done to identify and overcome unconscious gender bias to truly give women and men an equal chance to advance into leadership positions.
- In recent years women have gained significant ground in the world of work.
- They have entered many sectors and excelled in fields that were once the exclusive domain of men.
- Despite the progress that has been made toward gender equality, women are sometimes held back by company practices and structure that are biased toward men.
- This section provides an overview of human resources practices and other factors in which unconscious bias may hinder the career advancement of women.
