Learning about Bias, Diversity and Inclusion by wearing a Batman T-shirt

Rate my Leader
Aug 8, 2017 · 5 min read

Bias, Diversity and Inclusion from a Batman T-shirt

A few months ago one of my brothers visited me in London and he gave me a Batman T-shirt as a gift. My reaction: “Awesome T-shirt, I feel cool… important for a 31-year-old :))”.

Now imagine that in my field of work I hear, and read, a lot about diversity, inclusion, bias and that we need to fight bias so that diversity and inclusion can thrive. Whilst I agree with the fact that these topics are correlated, the idea of fighting against something always makes me question social maturity.

Therefore it was a no brainer that after starting to wear my new T-shirt and observing the reactions of people towards it and me (mostly coming from strangers), I will bring the two together to explore actually who is more biased than who, does fighting against bias make any sense, and what’s the correlation between the symbol on my T-shirt and gender biases across generations.

This is how I decided to do a research on the topic and simply wear this Batman T-shirt for 2 days a week, over the course of 2 months and count every reaction I get and who expresses what. The definition of unconscious bias informed my research goal: unconscious bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgments and assessments of people and situations without us realising.

So, my new T-shirt became part of smart casual outfits at corporate meetings, during regular office days, startup events, travelling through airports, exposing myself to big crowds of people and drinks with friends. Everything was aimed at those 5 seconds of human reaction at the beginning of each interaction, sequence that tells most of the truth about what we really think. Of course washing the T-shirt in between wears was part of the research also.. in case you’re wondering :)).

My 2-month long research ended last week. I couldn’t wait to get the summary out because I have had 316 reactions (more than I expected) on this topic alone; quite a few for a 2-month research when you think that during our entire lifetime we get a total of reactions from 80.000 people. Now, the reactions of the 316 individuals sum up in 4 buckets: (1.) 85% reacted by calling me out as “Batman”; (2.) 10% reacted by calling me out a combination of names “Batgirl, Batwoman and very few BatPerson” ; (3.) 5% reacted by calling out “look that lady is dressed like Bat” or “mum/dad, look at the Lady Bat”; (4.) 0% reacted by asking me “What’s up with the T-shirt?”.

There is a second dimension of the 4 buckets, one about who said what and where I noticed that: (1.) gender bias (conscious or unconscious) exists for both men and women as 85% of the “Batman” reactions belong to both genders in equal proportion (subjects aged 35+); (2.) gender bias perceptions favour inclusion with 10% of the “Batgirl, Batwoman and very few BatPerson” reactions again belonging to both men and women aged 20+ (and in some instances 40+); this is still low considering we hear constantly that we need to fight bias; (3.) gender bias perceptions for children (5%) manifest altogether differently when compared to adults, meaning children see first the person and then the label “look that lady is dressed like Bat” or “mum/dad, look at the lady Bat”.

Let me bring the research together now: both men and women are equally biased towards each other and gender labels (and maybe others not seen with a naked eye). Therefore my simple question is who should we talk more to about overcoming gender bias? Is it mostly to men, to women or to both in equal proportion? At the same time should we not evolve the social dialogue about bias, and move away from labels (men vs. women) and fighting bias, to a social dialogue where we encourage learning about the other person, finding how to recognize and deal with biases resulting from many years of social exposure?

I strongly believe that over the past decades we made huge progress in terms of equality (gender, race and others) but at the same time, it’s fair to call out that the current pace of dialogue is at risk to stagnate future progress. Social evolution asks of us all to upgrade the tone of dialogue and infuse a new mindset. The new mindset is to collectively build a world wide culture where we acknowledge that bias is part of our cultural baggage, but instead of fight it (… as if it’s the plague) we use our energy to learn how to deal with it and we are curious about why each of us is different. Most of the times the most complex problems have the most simple answers so what stops us from asking someone “What’s up with the T-shirt?”.

Doing this research was awesome, rich for me personally and my T-shirt is still up for a good round of wears in the future. I feel proud to say that a T-shirt taught me how I can contribute to changing the global mindset around bias by simply: (1.) having a child mindset and being curious first about the person vs. the label; (2.) being more curious about others by asking “Why?” and “What makes you, you?” or “What’s up with the T-shirt?”

Hope this reading will provoke a discussion and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Alex Badulescu, Founder and CEO

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