Gender Diversity in Tech: Tackling Unconscious Bias
The gender gap in tech is something that more and more tech companies are actively trying to address. Many of the most tenacious obstacles to achieving gender parity boil down to unconscious bias. Unconscious biases are deep-seated ideas and impressions about certain groups that we carry with us and cause us to draw unfounded conclusions about people in those groups. It is important to understand that everyone has unconscious biases. Because the tech sector has been dominated by white men for so many years, this reality often manifests itself in a way that leaves women and minorities feeling sidelined.
Here’s a personal example of how an unconscious bias affected me:
When I enrolled in programming bootcamp, I had a vision to change my career and to pursue my dream job. Some people seemed to suggest that I was less than capable of making this career transition since I hadn’t followed the traditional path of getting a computer science degree. Others revealed biases of engineering culture when they joked that I wasn’t “manly” or “nerdy” enough to be a programmer. These biases were tough to unpack and to overcome, but ultimately I drew confidence by connecting with fellow female engineers and surrounding myself with both men and women whose commitment to teamwork and collaboration superseded their biases.
Recognizing Unconscious Bias
The key to preventing unconscious bias from affecting the way any group is perceived is first to accept that unconscious bias is real and can materialize to negatively impact anyone. There are many online resources available to educate yourself on unconscious bias and even test whether an implicit bias might be affecting your own judgment. Project Implicit is a non-profit organization founded by researchers across several universities that provides a set of online tests to detect if you are implicitly associating particular groups (even ones to which you belong) with negative evaluations.
Prolific Interactive acknowledged and started to tackle this issue a few months ago when we brought in Life Labs to conduct an office-wide unconscious bias training. A memorable exercise we each completed was to write down the names of several of our closest friends, and to make note of their attributes: age, political beliefs, gender identification, sexuality, race, nationality, level of education, and more. It became clear that our most trusted circle did not encompass the full spectrum. Apply this individual phenomenon onto an industry that remains 68.5% white and 64% male, and you can see how tech can unintentionally become a breeding ground for perspectives that are not inclusive to women or people of color.
Employees testified that the training made them feel more mindful and comfortable to speak up if they felt unconscious biases were present. Furthermore, the training created momentum for ongoing education concerning these issues. Feedback to our People Operations team fueled a subsequent training on LGBTQ sensitivity and further research into how Prolific can best support team members of marginalized groups.
Inspiration From Our Leaders
A strategy for discouraging bias is to highlight role models and leaders who belong to marginalized groups. Last year a female product manager recommended that the team read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In for Prolific Interactive’s book club meeting. Not only did the team learn about Sandberg’s ideas and her path to success as a woman in tech leadership, but we also discussed barriers to success. For example, Sandberg’s brand of feminism isn’t necessarily accessible or relevant to all women because they do not have the same background as her. The perspectives that were offered during this meeting helped spread awareness about the internal and external forces that have led to homogeneity in the highest ranks of tech leadership.
In addition to studying iconic leaders from a distance, it’s important to find more proximal role models. We believe that both unconscious bias and self-limiting beliefs can be overcome through “seeing it, then being it.” Prolific currently has two women on the leadership team: Fiona O’Donnell-McCarthy, our VP of Product, and Kelly Menne, our CFO. Dianne Wilkins, the CEO of Critical Mass, is also a board member and reinforces the idea that women can successfully and authentically lead large organizations. While the Product Management team is now 55% female, there are still only four women on the engineering team and none of the leads are women. Prolific will be more successful as an organization when we have more women on the engineering team and in senior-level positions adding to the diversity of thought from their lived experiences and the way they approach a problem.
Saying What We Mean
Unconscious biases are deeply rooted within societal norms, right down to our wording and rhetoric. To draw a few examples from engineering culture, developers are often referred to as “nerds,” “coding ninjas,” or “rockstar programmers.” In the workplace more broadly, words like “independent,” “ambitious,” and “strong” paint a masculine picture of success. As I recounted, this type of language at times made me feel intimidated by or excluded from tech culture just as I was taking the leap into the field. Prolific’s hiring team ensures that job descriptions contain inclusive language and convey values that we encourage such as “adaptability,” “curiosity,” and “self-awareness.”
Another significant action taken was removing the term “culture fit” from our vocabulary. “Culture fit” is an ambiguous term that limits an organization to a narrow definition of culture and can potentially exclude people of diverse backgrounds. It was removed from our applicant tracking system in favor of a process that encourages candidates who will add to the culture, not just fit into it. Additionally, hiring managers have been coached not to think of candidates in terms of “is this someone I’d want to grab a beer with,” a phrase commonly heard throughout hiring practices across many different domains. Instead, we think critically about what we are looking for as an organization. It takes a lot of hard work and debate up-front, but allows us to evaluate candidates based on alignment with our core values and strategic business goals.
Charting Our Next Steps
One of the best things about working at Prolific Interactive is that the people strive to better understand one another. The culture supports us to be innovators seeking continuous improvement as individuals and as an organization. Our CEO and co-founder, Bobak Emamian, recounted a moment early in the company’s history that set the precedent for this. An employee had submitted an anonymous critique, saying that our hiring practices needed an update, and fast, because we were doing a poor job of diversifying. Rather than reacting defensively, he and our leadership team reflected, evaluated, and concluded that the employee was right. Since that time, we have made great strides in supporting diversity and inclusivity at every tier. But, as with any important goal, the name of the game is diligent pursuit of an elusive finish line. There are 37 people in our engineering department, and just four of us are women. This is a very small fraction, but nevertheless is the greatest number of female engineers that Prolific has had at any point. We will do better, and our efforts to root out unconscious biases are a step in the right direction.
[This is the first part in a three-part series about Gender Diversity in Tech that Luna An, Ruchi Jain, and Claire Lynch will be contributing to with support from VP of Product, Fiona O’Donnell-McCarthy, and the People Operations team.]
