Bias against women in the workplace

I made a French translation of this post: Ces stéréotypes qui nuisent aux femmes au travail.


We are near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, and despite decades of a rich world history of advocating for equal rights for women, it saddens me that so many among us are still not aware of the common biases that hold back or hurt women, and it dejects me that some among us are fighting for the status quo.

International Women’s Day (March 8) is observed world-wide as a day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women (or, as commemoration of the struggle for women’s rights.)

2023 marks the 115th observance of the day.

Today, I’d like to raise awareness on the biases against women, as these affect women particularly in the workplace.

Indulge me as I illustrate the biases in the workplace with examples from the most excellent 60s advertising drama “Mad Men” with actor Jon Hamm as leading character Don Draper, creative director extraordinaire. The whole series tells with remarkable historical accuracy the story of women in a world of men, making their mark, becoming themselves in spite of rampant chauvinism.


  1. Bias
  2. Biases against women in the workplace
  3. Negative impact of bias in the workplace
  4. Common bias in the workplace illustrated
    1. Performance bias
    2. Attribution bias
    3. Likeability bias
    4. Maternal bias
    5. Affinity bias
    6. Intersectionality bias
  5. Be part of the solution
    1. Nobody is immune from biases
    2. Break the bias in the workplace
  6. Sources
  7. Read more

Bias

A bias is a predisposition, a preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment. Biases lead to bad decisions. I could fall into the rabbit hole and digress on how economics Nobel prize winner Daniel Khaneman illustrates in “Thinking Fast and Slow” how all of us are constantly manipulated to make bad decisions (many of which benefiting capitalism) because of our biases, but I don’t have it in me to bore you with this!

Internal biases are not just hurtful, they can be harmful. When it comes to the livelihood of people, internal biases are unfair to women, and even more so to women who are far from “the norm” in their age, background, race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs.

Biases against women in the workplace

Negative impact of bias in the workplace

Individually, or compounded, these stereotypes take form in very real examples most women encounter in the workplace:

  • Unequal pay
  • Diminished responsibilities
  • Discrimination
  • Glass ceilings
  • Microaggressions
  • Sexual harassment
  • Wasted talent or missed talent
  • Burnout

Common bias in the workplace illustrated

Performance bias

This is your bad old stereotype that gender, like DNA, predisposes people to certain jobs because of their intrinsic competence. Performance of women are underestimated while performance of men are overestimated.

The gender pay gap (or gender wage gap) is a clear illustration of performance bias, where women receive less pay for performing the same work.

Example: In the first episode of the first season of the 60s advertising TV series “Mad Men”, when Rachel Menken seeks the advertising agency to help attract refined and wealthy customers to her father’s Jewish department store, a ploy of the agency owner to garner Rachel’s patronage is to invite to the meeting his only Jewish employee who comes from the mail room, so when the agency’s star creative director Don Draper enters and sees that man for the first time next to Rachel, he immediately reaches out to shake the man’s hand, assuming he must be the store owner.

Attribution bias

A sibling of the performance bias that stems from our perception of value. Attribution bias is when we believe that women’s accomplishments aren’t as valuable as that of men’s. So women are given less credit, more blame, and therefore are held to much higher standards than men in an attempt (unfortunately commonly futile) to prove their worth in the workplace.

This is attribution bias at work when even women believe their contributions to have less merit than men’s, or when women’s confidence gradually erodes as a result. It is also attribution bias which dictates that men apply to jobs or promotions when they meet 60% of the criteria, and that women abstain until they meet 100%.

The “glass ceiling” is a metaphorical invisible barrier that prevents qualified women to take jobs they deserve and rise in the workplace.

Example: “Mad Men” central character Peggy Olsen embodies the hidden gem that fate has put on the path of her own full realisation and of turning the advertising industry’s crass commercialism into witty art. She progresses through the series first as a secretary and climbs the ladder to become a junior copywriter, and then with much much much effort and difficulty, becomes the top copywriter in the office.

Likeability bias

The patriarchy provides men with the right to be assertive, to take charge, to lead and when they do it feels natural and they fulfill their role. But society expects women to be gentle, docile, nurturing, so when they assert themselves they trigger unfavourable reactions. The dissonance between traditional gender roles and exhibited traits leads to dislike. So when women assert themselves, they are called intimidating, aggressive, bossy and are disliked.

An interesting paradox of the likeability bias is that it leads to the attribution bias in a double bind: an agreeable and kind woman inspires less competence. In other words: women can not win.

Example: Megan Calvet in “Mad Men”, a former aspiring actress whose talent and abilities are plentiful, becomes Don Draper’s wife. She blooms into a liberated woman full of prospect and eventually wilts at the hands of a husband who sets her up to fail, gaslights her in all sorts of ways and ends up falling out of love with her because he doesn’t understand her.

Maternal bias

The maternal bias is the absurd belief that mothers are less committed and less competent at their jobs, that any ability or competence in the workplace is throttled once a woman becomes pregnant, and fully extinct by the time the woman becomes a mother.

This bias, which compounds the performance bias, results in fewer opportunities for women, and higher standards than fathers.

Example: Faye Miller, “Mad Men”‘s marketing research consultant, tells Don Draper that she “chose” not to have children so as to have a career. Peggy Olsen used elaborate clothing tricks to hide her pregnancy and pretended illness when she had to give birth and then gave the baby up for adoption because having a career was her life. Women with professional aspirations were often forced to make sacrifices in the 60s because employers were well within legal rights to fire women who had babies.

Affinity bias

This is the tendency people have to gravitate and tilt toward those similar in appearance, beliefs, and backgrounds. A pernicious or vicious side-effect is to tend to avoid or even dislike people or groups who are different.

Given that the workplace is dominated by white male in position of power, this bias affects women, and in particular women of colour. This is the bias that leads to most of the workplace prejudice: unfair hiring decisions, unfair promotions, ideas being dismissed or stolen.

Example: Joan Holloway of “Mad Men”, the advertising agency office manager who knows the ins and outs of the place and has achieved the highest status among the women caste, navigates the workplace upward by being savvy. She uses her wit, a lot of patience, and even pays the unimaginable price of sleeping with a potential client in the pursuit of making a partnership which is simply destroyed by Don Draper when he arbitrarily terminates that client. Ultimately Joan gets a well-deserved promotion, but not after a fair assessment of her merit, but because a man in power makes a decision on a whim.

Intersectionality bias

This bias compounds gender bias with biases against other groups. Men and women who are from three or more minorities experience that they don’t belong anywhere. Compounded biases are at the root of harmful discrimination against gender, race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, age, disabilities, background, or all of the above.

Example: I don’t think the show addressed intersectionality bias. “Mad Men” chose to denounce racism in the workplace rather obliquely by showing anecdotal imbalance and power plays between characters as part of going deeper in their respective timelines, as if to set the stage for the abrupt and striking gesture of having the elderly eccentric agency founder Bert Cooper, the most charming and endearing character of the set, exhibit overt racism when he spotted Dawn, an eminently capable Black woman, in the lobby as receptionist. He immediately asked office manager Joan to reassign Dawn. “I’m all for the national advancement of colored people, but I do not believe they should advance all the way to the front of this office.”

Be part of the solution

Nobody is immune from biases

Did you know that in a group of 100, 76 people associate men with career and women with family?

Did you know that in a group of 100, 75 people show a preference for White people over Black people (this is even true of half of the Black participants)?

You can learn more about and even take Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Awareness (of the general notion of internal bias, of one’s particular biases, of the workplace common biases) isn’t enough. If you think of it, and unless you’re a vile hypocrite, you know that studies are right when they demonstrate that colleagues from diverse teams are more aware, more committed, and work better. Or when they demonstrate that organisations with more women in leadership have more generous policies and create better products.

Why? Because if women are included, it becomes easier for any other group to be included too. We all rise when women rise.

Break the bias in the workplace

  1. Raise awareness by training employees to identify and recognise bias.
  2. Reduce risk of bias by setting clear and defined criteria (for hiring, for performance review, for promotion opportunities.)
  3. Make deliberate room for gender equality, diversity, and inclusion in any case where a measured decision can be taken.
  4. Set goals for gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.
  5. Implement accountability for the goals that have been set.
  6. Audit regularly internal pay rates and gap, and gender distribution. Challenge leadership roles domination by middle-aged white cis-gender males.
  7. Make it easy, safe, and effective for anyone to speak up against bias.
  8. Give actual means to ensure that no unhealthy environment and behaviours fester.

Sources

Read more

Burnout

I’m still in between feeling ashamed and being OK about having crashed and burned at work. I’m recovering from a burnout that was long in coming and even the recovery is long in coming!

Manifestation

The few signs which undoubtedly called my attention to the fact that I was burning out were:

  • Scattered thoughts and inability to keep one thought in focus
  • Difficulty to comprehend what I was reading
  • General sudden sluggishness in even the most mundane habitual tasks
  • Loss of words
  • Loss of hair

In truth, the sudden and continued loss of hair is what worried me and got me to make an appointment at my doctor’s. I was quick to discard all of the rest as just a collateral of sustained work done in a period of rush, such as we all regularly have. I didn’t lose all of my hair but I was losing enough every time I touched it that after a few weeks (months, really) it really bothered me. My body gave me cause to worry and act on it, since I was ignoring all other signs.

Diagnostic

My doctor ordered blood sample analysis which returned that I was in perfect health, so having ruled out a physical disease focused on a disease of the mind. After a few questions I was offered to be off work on medical leave.

Break

The doctor gave me a two-week medical leave at first and then extended it by the week, or every few weeks, for a total of 8 weeks. I met with the doctor after each extension.

During what I thought was the last extension I got really anxious about going back to work. I felt I was not ready and worried a lot. I described to the doctor that I had been worried sick the whole time, that I felt I had just one go at this and that if I returned prematurely I feared it would have been all for nothing. The last extension of the medical leave he gave me was for three weeks.

All in all, I did a whole lot of nothing, except for exercising, and did it very slowly too. I wasn’t too sad, or too distressed. I didn’t miss work. I dreaded it as I wrote. The doctor gave me pills to try to sleep better and more efficiently but the two types I tried did not work. When I wasn’t on the bike, or running, or walking, I watched a TV show that my parents gave me as a birthday present. I didn’t have a lot of bandwidth and headspace for much else.

I would have liked to do more, be that reading, or drawing, or even thinking but it just didn’t happen and I was OK with it because I knew I just didn’t have it in me.

The break was good and beneficial. Every one around me, including at work, was so supportive I am very lucky and appreciate how blessed I am.

Return

After 8 weeks off, I returned to work. It was very overwhelming but everyone was very nice, and careful to NOT make me feel overwhelmed. There was a few thousands email in my various mail boxes. I still remembered how to work, my passwords, Zoom meeting room numbers and the likes.

For many weeks, I was still at loss for so many words. That was one of the most unexpected signs, to be frank. Especially in English where my vocabulary is rich and broad (not to brag!) Today even, to a lesser degree I continue to struggle, and words are at the tip of my tongue or fingers.

It took me 4 or 5 weeks to get back in most of the flow of work and another 1 or 2 to actually feel I was almost back.

“Almost”, because I feel that I’m not back to being myself (yet?) Things still take me much longer than before 🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s as though something in my brain restricts it from being fully functional. Maybe it’s a built-in security until such time that I can be back to my previous self, speed and abilities. 

Addendum: Origins

2022-12-21 update: I had meant to include a section last night as part of this entry to shed a bit of light on the origins of my burnout, but I realize just now that I forgot it.

I had lost faith. It’s as simple as that. I could sustain a certain level of stress, anxiety, workload and frustration as long as I was *driven*. But when the drive disappeared, the entire balance (however unhealthy and wrong) broke.

I won’t go into details but I will say that I realised that my voice was not heard, my actions had no impact and the weight of that was too much for me.

Addendum: Hope

2022-12-22 update: I might have some faith still. And if not faith, at least hope.

Since I returned, I mostly focused on the parts of work that don’t require faith but execution.

The organisation is changing so there is hope I can try to make a difference. I really like our mission. I feel I still have what my former manager (our former CEO, who left almost a month ago) referred to as “unfinished business.”

Day-to-day work at W3C

An author for IEEE asked me last week, for an article he’s writing, to write a high level introduction to the World Wide Web Consortium, and what its day-to-day work looks like.

Most of the time when we get asked, we pull from boilerplate descriptions, and/or from the website, and send a copy-paste and links. It takes less than a minute. But every now and then, I write something from scratch. It brings me right back to why I am in awe of what the web community does at the Consortium, and why I am so proud and grateful to be a small part of it.

Then that particular write-up becomes my favourite until the next time I’m in the mood to write another version. Here’s my current best high level introduction to the World Wide Web Consortium, and what its day-to-day work looks like, which I have adorned with home-made illustrations I showed during a conference talk a few years ago.

World Wide What Consortium?

The World Wide Web Consortium was created in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, a few years after he had invented the Word Wide Web. He did so in order for the interests of the Web to be in the hands of the community.

“If I had turned the Web into a product, it would have been in people’s interest to create an incompatible version of it.”

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web

So for almost 28 years, W3C has been developing standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web that is based on crucial and inclusive values: accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security, and the principle of interoperability. Pretty neat, huh? Pretty broad too!

From the start W3C has been an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together in the open.

Graphic with illustrations showing that the public and members contribute to 52 work groups, and that 56 people in the w3c staff help create web standards of which there were 400 at the time I made this drawing
W3C Overview

The sausage

In the web standards folklore, the product –web standards– are called “the sausage” with tongue in cheek. (That’s one of the reasons behind having made black aprons with a white embroidered W3C icon on the front, as a gift to our Members and group participants when a big meeting took place in Lyon, the capital of French cuisine.)

Since 1994, W3C Members have produced 454 standards. The most well-known are HTML and CSS because they have been so core to the web for so long, but in recent years, in particular since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve heard a lot about WebRTC which turns terminals and devices into communication tools by enabling real-time audio/video, and other well-known standards include XML which powers vast data systems on the web, or WebAuthn which significantly improves security while interacting with sites, or Web Content Authoring Guidelines which puts web accessibility to the fore and is critical to make the web available to people of all disabilities and all abilities.

The sausage factory

The day to day work we do is really of setting the stages to bring various groups together in parallel to progress on nearly 400 specifications (at the moment), developed in over 50 different groups.

There are 2,000 participants from W3C Members in those groups, and over 13,000 participants in the public groups that anyone can create and join and where typically specifications are socialized and incubated.

There are about 50 persons in the W3C staff, a fourth of which dedicate time as helpers to advise on the work, technologies, and to ensure easy “travel” on the Recommendation track, for groups which advance the web specifications following the W3C process (the steps through which specs must progress.)

Graphic showing a stick figure with 16 arms and smaller drawings of stick figure at a computer, stick figure talking to people, and stick figure next to documents. The graphic lists nine different roles: super interface, representation of w3c in groups, participation and contribution, technical expertise, mastering the process, creation of groups and their management, liaison with other technical groups, being consensual.
Role of the W3C staff in work groups

The rest of the staff operate at the level of strategy setting and tracking for technical work, soundness of technical integrity of the global work, meeting the particular needs of industries which rely on the web or leverage it, integrity of the work with regard to the values that drive us: accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security; and finally, recruiting members, doing marketing and communications (that’s where I fit!), running events for the work groups to meet, and general administrative support.

Graphic with stick figures representing Tim Berners-Lee, the CEO and the team, and four areas of help: support, strategy, architecture & technology, industry, project.
W3C team

Why does it work?

Several of the unique strengths of W3C are our proven process which is optimized to seek consensus and aim for quality work; and our ground-breaking Patent Policy whose royalty-free commitments boosts broad adoption: W3C standards may be used by any corporation, anyone, at no cost: if they were not free, developers would ignore them.

Graphic showing the steps from an idea to a web standard
From an idea to a standard

There are other strengths but in the interest of time, I’ll stop at the top two. There are countless stories and many other facets, but that would be for another time.

Sorry, it turned out to be a bit long because it’s hard to do a quick intro; there is so much work. If you’re still with me (hi!), did you learn anything from this post?

L’histoire de mon pseudo

Je n’ai pas choisi mon pseudo, mais quand on l’a trouvé pour moi, je l’ai adopté.

Retournons vingt-trois ans en arrière. En 1999, j’entame un nouveau job dans un endroit connu : l’INRIA Sophia Antipolis où j’ai effectué quelques mois auparavant un remplacement de six mois dans un projet cool qui fait de la simulation numérique des sciences de l’ingénieur, et où j’ai pris le temps d’apprendre des trucs neufs pour moi sur ma station Sun, tels que les bases d’unix et LaTeX (le langage, pas le matériau), et j’ai eu le temps de faire en plus le secrétariat du comité regroupant tous les projets de l’institut. J’ai fait bonne impression et lorsque le Consortium pour le web (qui à l’époque était hébergé à l’INRIA) recherchait une assistante, on a pensé à moi même si deux saisons avaient passé.

Alors je fais mon retour à l’INRIA où je suis partagée entre W3C principalement et un projet INRIA en partenariat avec Bull : Koala. Probablement nommé ainsi car le chef du projet se prénomme Colas.

On est tous dans le même bâtiment, au même étage, tous voisins, mais on ne se parle pas –on s’écrit. J’exagère à peine ! On s’écrit via IRC (Internet Relay Chat), soit individuellement, soit par groupes. Mon pseudo à l’époque est mon prénom, puis l’anagramme de mon prénom « calorie », jusqu’à l’arrivée d’un stagiaire dans l’équipe des Koalas, qui trouve rapidement que Coralie et Koala c’est assez proche, et suggère que je prenne « koalie » comme pseudo.

C’est malin, nan ?

Je l’ai adopté immédiatement et ne l’ai pas quitté (le pseudo, pas le stagiaire.)

Ça s’est bien goupillé pour la partie W3C où j’utilisais le même pseudo, parce que peu de mes nombreux collègues internationaux parvenaient à prononcer mon prénom de toutes façons. Les anglophones buttent sur le « r » et ne savent pas où mettre l’inflexion, et les japonais inversent le « r » et le « l ». Puis assez rapidement on a recruté une Caroline, puis une Carine, et là ils étaient tous bien contents que ça soit que dans la vraie vie (In Real Life) qu’ils confondent nos prénoms, car on ne se voyait tous en vrai que deux fois par an maximum.

Vingt-trois ans après, on utilise toujours IRC et je suis toujours « koalie », par contre ça fait des années que je travaille depuis chez moi (et faute à la pandémie de coronavirus, ça fait trois ans que je ne vois mes collègues presque que via Zoom !)