Overcoming Gender Bias

Were there ever moments when you felt biased against you because you were a woman? And how did you deal with that?

I think the ones that jump out are probably ones that are going to be applicable across industries and maybe not just in tech. Where I suspect there was some bias because I’m a woman, and I don’t think there’s any ill intention here, it was when there are sort of team events or fun things that need to get organized or extracurricular things that you want to do to sort of build team camaraderie. I think it sort of defaulted to me or maybe another woman in the room, “Hey, can you organize this event for us? Can you order some feng shui for our team?”
Well, I probably responded with yes—very likely responded with yes, because there’s a part of me that would enjoy those things. There’s a part of me that definitely saw the value in doing that and building that team spirit, team camaraderie, as I said, partly because I didn’t know how to say no or delegate it to somebody else or sort of explain that it should be a shared ownership with the team. But that’s probably the ones that jump out in terms of being very much sort of a bias.

Hey, how do we assign that task to a man? Why does it have to be a woman?

Yeah, it’s getting better, I think, right now I think it’s getting better in two ways, both in the recognition that there may be some unconscious biases when requests like those are made, but also in the sense that those aren’t seen as nice to haves, those aren’t seen as, like, simple, easy things to do that maybe somebody can just pick it up as their side project. I think there’s an acknowledgment that building healthy teams and doing things that may not be directly tied one on one to the day-to-day job that a person is doing actually makes an impact to overall team health and performance.
And I think that has sort of elevated the impact and value and appreciation for that work, which now means more and more people are eager to take it on and participate.