If you were asked to respond "Yes/No" to the above question, there is
every likelihood that, apart from some good humoured jokes about women
and decision making, your response would emphatically be in the
affirmative. The uncomfortable fact is that you probably believe that
women are incapable of making smart decisions.
These reflect the
hidden biases all of us suffer from. Most of us have grossly delusionary
and inflated self-perceptions of how ethical or unbiased we are. The
Yale psychologist, David Armor, calls this "the illusion of
objectivity". When quizzed, we are likely to say that we believe women
to be smart, that they can do a job as well as any man, that they have
the talent to rise to the top of the hierarchy and that we do not
believe professionalism is gender driven. In other words, we believe we
are fair, open-minded, unbiased and objective.
Following years of
collaborative research, Professor Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University
and Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington demonstrated that
all of us hold unconscious, or implicit, biases which can be contrary
to our consciously held, explicit beliefs. They conclude that the
prevalence of these biases suggests that even the most well-meaning
person unwittingly allows unconscious thoughts and feelings to influence
seemingly objective decisions. Their research exposed, for instance,
how we might consciously believe that a candidate's race, physical
features, colour, sexual orientation or gender might have nothing to do
with our hiring decision and yet, unconscious biases actually drive us
into taking flawed decisions.
Consider an example. What would you
feel is our attitude towards the elderly? Hardly anyone is likely to
have seriously negative views about old people. We are likely to
consider them as being benign and kind, possibly a bit slow in their
movements, but our overall impression is hardly likely to be
anti-elderly. However, tests have demonstrated that our feelings towards
the elderly are anything but warm and friendly. Indeed, 80 percent of
Americans have a stronger and automatic preference for the young over
the old. Furthermore, ageism is one of the strongest implicit biases
visible in every country, including in Asia.
So, what could be
the reason? Banaji and Greenwald argue that there are many negative
stereotypes associated with the elderly in our culture - "loneliness and
isolation, poor health, weak bodies, fading looks, diminished sensory
capabilities, incontinence, impotence, memory problems, dementia,
Alzheimer's, and so on" - none of which we find particularly appealing.
Studies
have also demonstrated the strong influence our external environment
has on the way in which we unconsciously think and behave. Indeed, our
social milieu influences our attitude towards "others": the elderly,
women, the gay community, Muslims, the physically and mentally
challenged, Dalits, the poor and homeless (social media comments
following the court judgment in the Salman Khan hit and run case may be
recalled), physical looks [who wants to be fat!], etc. But when
questioned, we are likely to claim that we are free of biases and that
our decision making is based solely on objective criteria.
Unfortunately, this is not true. The problem is that the flawed
decisions we take, based on our hidden biases, seriously and negatively
impact company performance.
Let us consider our attitude towards
women as professionals. SEBI has issued instructions that all listed
companies must have a woman on the board as director or face legal
consequences. Despite this standing instruction, several companies,
including public sector undertakings (PSUs) are yet to comply with the
order. A few forward-looking companies had women on the Board even
before the SEBI order. But, for the majority, the order came as a shock.
Some tried to mechanically comply and, consequently, through
word-of-mouth and personal association, some women became directors in
boards of several companies. Many others claim they simply have not been
able to find the "right" woman for the job.
The bias, which many
would hotly deny, is that company performance and the professional
world are implicitly seen as an exclusive male domain. This is not
restricted to India or to Asia. Even in America, as Sheryl Sandberg of
Facebook points out in her celebrated book Lean In, professional women
face a significant challenge because men still hold the vast majority of
leadership positions in government and industry. Women are simply not
considered to be right enough.
Persons at middle and senior
management I have spoken with confess that having women in the board
requires a fundamental shift in attitudes. While they are comfortable in
seeing women in the work place (as an example of their explicit
objectivity: women have an equal right to work as professionals), this
is usually in non-threatening jobs. Many argue, for instance, that women
have the exceptional "soft skills" that most men lack. What they
actually mean (implicit bias) is that women cannot take hard decisions
and that they are risk averse. In other words, there are only certain
kinds of jobs that women are capable of handling and being a member of
the Board is a challenge they are not geared for.
Chambers of
commerce and industry have, consequently, started collaborating with
business schools to organize training programmes for women professionals
to help them to learn new skills and upgrade existing ones. Indeed, the
SEBI order has opened up a lucrative business opportunity. Women see an
exceptional and unanticipated opportunity to substantially enhance
their income by joining as a member in multiple boards. They are
willing, therefore, to undergo training programmes that certify their
professional competence and, hence, facilitate their entry into the
board.
The problem with such training programmes is that they
reinforce the sexist bias that women are incapable of assuming higher
responsibilities and if they are, indeed, to take that extra step, they
need to be made professionally competent. This, most certainly, is not
likely to bring about the attitudinal change that sees women as being
unequal.
Training programmes optimize efficiencies and cannot, by
definition, be gender-driven. B-schools, consequently, need to focus on
improving the decision-making process in companies. This requires
training all members of the management team, irrespective of gender. It
is only when the shift from "some" to "all" employees becomes part of
our implicit thinking that we would address our hidden biases and bring
about the long-awaited and much-needed shift in attitude. Till then, we
are not likely to accept women as professionals capable of taking smart
decisions.
(Amit Dasgupta, a former diplomat and author of
"Lessons from Ruslana: In Search of Transformative Thinking"
(Harper-Collins), is part of the SP Jain School of Global Management.
The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at
[email protected])
