To lots of folks, the mere suggestion that they think gender-biased, though often unconsciously, already sounds like personal criticism.
However, the reality and the truth are rather more complex. At any level of any organization, gender-biased thinking might occur, though often unconsciously.
This doesn’t just happen at the mid-management or office level. It occurs at all levels across organizations and this ‘multi-level’ discrimination is hurting businesses across the board by denying women the much-needed voice in the decision-making process.
Well, the fact of the matter is that most people are naturally somewhat biased. Even people that intend to be totally fair will have a hard time letting their brains remain completely impartial.
Cognitive bias happens in all our brains. It’s our mind’s way of automatically generating associations related to different concepts.
These are the mental shortcuts that help us process information more rapidly and they prevent our brains from getting overwhelmed with information details.
Instinctively, we tend to put people into categories and for doing that, we use criteria such as gender, age, skin color, accent, weight, education level, socioeconomic status, or sexuality.
