How to design gender bias out of your workplace

Equity expert Sara Sanford offers a certified playbook that helps companies go beyond good intentions, using a data-driven standard to actively counter unconscious bias and foster gender equity -- by changing how workplaces operate, not just how people think.

A few years ago,

I had a corporate feminist dream job.

Launching a company's national initiative

to recruit more female employees.

In the finance sector.

But first, I had to get
the signed-off support

of all department heads.

So I spent months perfecting the proposal,

presented it

and won the support of almost everyone.

But in this team, there were two men
we'll call Howard and Tom.

Howard just would not get back to me.

I emailed him about the proposal,

I left him voice mails,

I'd roll my chair back and forth
during meetings,

trying to make eye contact with Howard.

(Laughter)

He'd just take out his phone
and start scrolling.

And then I started to question myself.

Had I been diplomatic enough
in that email?

Too demanding in that voice mail?

Does Howard hate this proposal

or am I just overreacting?

It's probably just me, I thought.

And then one day,

I'm walking down the hall
and here comes Howard.

He's holding a packet of papers,

sees me and lights up.

He says,

"Sara, Tom just emailed this to me,
you should take a look.

It's a proposal for us
to recruit more women."

(Laughter)

"I think Tom has a really great idea here,

and we should all get behind it."

Howard proceeds to hand
my own proposal back to me.

And explains to me
the many merits of what I wrote.

(Laughter)

Howard was never against
recruiting more women.

But he needed to hear from a man

why it was important to hire more women.

And as this scene played out,

I said nothing.

Because I knew somehow that I was a guest

in a place that wasn't meant for me.

And so instead of questioning
my environment,

I questioned myself.

I wanted to know

how so many talented women
who worked long hours

and started their careers with confidence

all became trained in this kind
of self-doubt that makes them say,

"It's probably just me."

How was that still possible?

Aren't things getting better?

Opportunities for women
have increased over the last 50 years.

But over the last decade,
progress has stalled.

Experts have previously identified 2059

as the year the wage gap would close.

But in September of this year,

these same experts announced
that according to the most current data,

we'll have to adjust our expectations

to the year 2119.

(Audience murmurs)

One hundred one years from now.

Looking beyond the wage gap,

women are still
underrepresented in leadership,

receive less access to senior leaders

and are leaving
the fastest-growing sectors,

such as tech,

at 45 percent higher rates than men,

citing culture as the primary reason.

So what have we been doing
to address gender inequality?

Why isn't it working?

Many businesses think
they're addressing the problem,

because they provide training.

Eight billion dollars
worth of training a year,

according to studies
from the "Harvard Business Review."

These same studies also conclude
that these trainings don't work

and often backfire.

Research tracking the hiring
and promotion practices of 830 companies

over the course of 30 years

found that white men who are asked
to go to diversity trainings

tend to rebel

by hiring and promoting fewer women

and fewer minorities.

The other solution has been to ask women
to change their own behavior.

To lean in.

To sit at the table.

Negotiate as often as men.

Oh, and get more training.

Women currently earn
the majority of college degrees,

outperform their peers
in key leadership skills

and are running businesses
that outperform the competition.

It doesn't look like education

or skills or business acumen
are the problem.

We're already empowered.

Enough to make an impact
on the businesses that are ready.

These approaches fail to address
the key systemic problem:

Unconscious bias.

(Applause)

We all have bias, it's OK.

It's lodged in our amygdala,

it keeps ticking away when we go to work.

Bias affects how much I like you,

what I believe you're capable of

and even how much space
I think you take up.

Thanks in part to the Me Too movement,

awareness of gender bias has spread.

But the harassment stories
that made headlines

are just one piece.

You don't have to harass a woman
to limit her career.

The messages women send me
aren't about being harassed.

They're being tolerated in the workplace.

But they're not being valued.

I don't know anyone who has ever said,

"You know what I love about my employer?

They just tolerate me so well,

I feel so tolerated."

(Laughter)

To break the inertia,

we need to take a step beyond Me Too.

Beyond just being tolerated as women.

Our organization decided
to tackle the problem in two ways.

First, if we're all biased,

our workplaces need to be
actively antibiased by design,

not by trying to change mindsets
one training at a time.

So our team began by identifying
over 100 cultural levers

that can be adjusted
to counter the impact of bias.

We found that small tweaks
can lead to big changes.

And they cost a lot less
than eight billion dollars.

So what do these small tweaks look like?

If a woman is asked to state her gender

before filling out a job application,

or performing a skills-related test,

she performs worse
than if she were not asked first.

So how can businesses avoid activating
this self-stereotyping bias?

Move the gender check box
to the end of the application.

Example two.

In a national survey that we conducted,

men were 50 percent more likely to state

they had received multiple,
frequent evaluations

over the course of the last year.

As opposed to one single yearly review.

Here's why this matters.

"Fortune" magazine reviewed
performance evals across industries.

And found that criticism like this
related to personality,

["Watch your tone!"]

but not job-related skills,

appeared in 71 of the 94
yearly reviews received by women.

Of the 83 reviews received by men,

personality criticism showed up twice.

But in businesses that conduct
much shorter, highly frequent reviews,

say, five-minute weekly evaluations

focused on specific projects,

the personality criticism vanishes.

And the perceived performance gap
between men and women

is nearly nonexistent.

While yearly reviews rely
on overall impressions,

which are like petri dishes for bias,

short, objectively focused evaluations

eliminate this feelings-based gray area.

Now, some businesses
are consciously taking these steps

to counter the impact of bias,

while others just do
a good job of advertising.

We wanted to find out
who is actually getting it right.

So we put a poll on Facebook,

we asked women in workshops

how they were choosing employers
where they would be valued.

The most common response that we heard?

"I Google it."

So we googled it.

(Laughter)

Specifically, we googled
"best employers for women in tech."

Our results showed
three completely different lists.

One business shows up
as the top employer on one list,

doesn't show up at all on another,

some lists offer no criteria

and some are purchased ads.

They're paid for.

Employees and employers
both want clear benchmarks

that go beyond good intentions.

The LEED certification
gave businesses this clarity

around environmental stewardship

by outlining the exact steps
they need to take for certification.

We wanted businesses to have
this kind of playbook for gender equity.

So for our second act,

we took what we had learned
from testing these cultural levers,

we partnered with
the University of Washington

and created the first
standardized certification

for gender equity in US businesses.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

To create this standard,

we had to learn what matters
and what doesn't.

We found out that what matters

is not the total percentage
of female employees.

Or the number of board members
that are female.

Those are what we call vanity metrics.

They can be bought,

while the culture inside
can still be out of balance.

The factors that matter
and that should be measured

are under the surface.

For example,

even in organizations where
equal percentages of women and men

state that they have had
access to a mentor,

men's mentors are more likely
to be in senior positions.

Reviewing our survey results,

men were twice as likely to state

they had been offered an opportunity
to shadow someone in a senior role.

We're all used to hearing
about the wage gap.

Hidden opportunity gaps like these
are just as influential.

So when assessing a company's culture,

we measure these gaps
between men's and women's experiences.

And the smaller the gap,

the more equity is center of the culture.

We also searched our findings

for the tenets of workplace culture

that are most important to men
and most important to women.

We learned that only three factors
consistently matter to men,

while a dozen matter to women.

And they only share one in common.

Topping the list for women:

Paid family leave,

health care for dependents

and feeling that their ideas are heard

and they're properly credited for them.

These are a few of the 188 indicators

that determine whether or not
an organization

meets our quantitative standard
for workplace equality.

Based on the data that matter.

These are the factors

to create a culture of equity that lasts.

Not just for a month or for a quarter

but for years.

So where does this leave us?

Women in the workforce today
are constantly told,

"You can be anything you want now.

It's up to you."

Women of color,

for whom the wage gap is even larger,

have heard it.

The two-thirds of minimum-wage workers
who are women have heard it.

Workers who don't identify
as male or female

and hide their identity at work

have heard it.

If they can hear,
"You can be anything you want now,

it's up to you,"

I believe it's time
for our businesses to hear it, too.

Eliminating workplace bias
is a tall order.

But we can't afford
to let half our people go on

being ignored.

We've given businesses
a framework for real change.

Businesses can be anything they want now.

It is up to them.

Thank you.

(Applause)