Hello and welcome to another UWA podcast. My name is Jane and today we are discussing unconscious bias with Dr. Susan Howard. Now, Susan Howard is an experienced and well regarded gender equality specialist. Susan's investigation work in organization underpins her ongoing consultancy and training with senior management teams on how to address gendered workplace practices, toxic cultures, and how to prevent and manage workplace bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination, and victimization. Today's episode will be a double episode and will be split over two. Keep an eye out for the link for the second part of our chat today. But now without further ado, I would like to introduce Dr. Susan Howard. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, My pleasure. Now, Susan, you are a gender equality specialist, because today will be about unconscious bias. Now you see it, now you don't, is the name about our title today. Let's talk about you first. How did you come about to be a gender equality specialist? I hear you get asked that all the times. I do get asked that. People saddle up to me at presentations and say, how did I get to be a gender equality specialist? You say [inaudible] kiddo. Yeah, I've been working in this space unbelievably, you won't believe this since 1984. That's when the legislation, the equal opportunity legislation was promulgated in Australia. I happened to be working shortly after that in the women's bureau at TAFE, Technical And Further Education here in Perth, Western Australia. Part of our role was to encourage more women into study, more young girls into, this is going to sound so strange back in the late 80s, into non-traditional trades. Too many girls were just choosing or being directed towards being hairdressers because after all, that's what girls do. Instead of towards electrical engineering, all those exciting [inaudible] that would set girls up for life. Yeah. Even give them a platform to go into university later and upskill, get an engineering degree, that thing. I was seeing this wonderful space when we used to have women's bureaus. Their purpose was actually to implement both the federal government or the Commonwealth government's affirmative action policies. To also help organizations who now need to have something very new, called an equal opportunity plan. We started talking about gender equity and so on. That was a very good grounding for me, that space that I worked in. New opportunities for women was one of the programs that we were ran at TAFE colleges. Women in the workplace was another affirmative action program that I ran. Organizations were very aware that they needed to be able to demonstrate, particularly public sector ones and universities, what they were doing to address the requirements of the Equal Opportunity Act. Most of them did develop good plans and good policies, but then it all fell away. They didn't actually know what else to do. This is sounding very familiar to me because it's what I'm still doing. I did a lot of work in mining companies in the 1990s. Mining companies had recognized that women were particularly careful on the job with equipment. Yeah. It's true. Those things you go to WA and people talk about money and they say, well, they're looking for women because [inaudible] Yeah, that's right. I got diamonds when it set up was actually a greenfield site. They've done the research and the research told them that women made a considerable positive impact in the workplace. Particularly managing underground teams, helping, I guess, facilitate a better culture, all of those things. That was the 1990s that by then, the training guarantee levy had been introduced and every organization had to put 3 percent of the budget into training. Then it became a thing that, well, we may as well spend it on this gender equality, equal opportunity stuff. Please come in and train all of that stuff. I got a lot of work in mining companies back then and what I was doing with two hour awareness racing sessions. If you got a job with a mining company in the 1990s, you might have set with me up in West Perth. The main office or mining company and you sat there for two hours and this was part of your induction. You had to go through this training before you went on site. Now, I don't need to tell you that here in 2022 to the failure of those courses. Those two hours [inaudible] once a year courses, has manifested into an inquiry into sexual harassment of women in the mining sector. Now we also know that that's happened in parliament, it's happened in the entertainment industry. When I decided to do my PhD, which was part of my process of becoming a bit more of a specialist. I wanted to know, despite the legislation, despite all of these training courses that people like me had actually been delivering, why were we not seeing change? Why would work places becoming more diverse? Why weren't they more inclusive of women when they were advertising? We want women engineers. We want geologists. We want women managers. We want women on boards. So why wasn't it happening? I spent three years embedded in a policing organization because the commissioner arrived from another state, another country actually, and he asked a really interesting question. He said, "So where are all the women? Why have I got 17 White Anglo-Saxon men sitting around my leadership team?" I know there are women in the organization, and I know Western Australia's got more than White Anglo-Saxon people in the community, what's happening here? My PhD looked at the gendered practices of organizations that result in, despite all of the publicity, despite all of them rings received in policies on websites, codes of conduct, training causes, nothing much was changing, and it was, I have to say to get to our topic, a conscious bias. As part of my research journey, I got to visit the London Met. I looked at policing in America. I looked at policing in Scandinavia, and they were doing some very direct work, particularly engaging men in the dialogue about what men need to do to change the culture. Because the women are equipped, we spend a lot of time encouraging women to get more than qualified, to get experienced, to get the knowledge. They'd have at all and they still didn't get the job, so what is actually going on. It can't be that all women and women of color, and women from diverse backgrounds at all times lack the knowledge and experience and professional qualifications. It simply is not the case. So something else is going on, and that's what my PhD was about. That links us directly into unconscious bias. Yes. Which could you tell us a little bit about that? What are we talking about when we talk about unconscious? It's a bit like a debate. So I'm going to argue the no case. I didn't prepare another battle. I actually don't believe in unconscious bias. So I can't tell you what it is and I can't tell you how it's been used. My take on it after all these years working in this space is that most bias, particularly if we talk about recruitment, selection, promotion, is conscious. We just don't own up to it, and we don't always want to recognize that it's there because it says where racist and misfortunists and none of us actually are comfortable with that. So I believe the term unconscious bias hides a whole lot of bad behaviors. But to go to what it actually means, it's saying that, for example, our recruitment and selection panel, its members maybe unconsciously biased towards that terrific young bloke who comes in, stands very firm, has great views, speaks very strongly, and it's a positive bias because maybe some members of their team or their selection panel even sound like him. When the more softly spoken woman comes in, who is equal or better than that young man on paper, there's an unconscious bias against a softly spoken woman. For example, she might not have what they need to lead a team. She might not be strong enough to take it to stakeholders. This is a really difficult area, we need a really good Manager, that tough young bloke think he's the one. Now, the unconscious bias is when people look around and look at strong leaders, they tend to look at men. Fortunately, over the last few years, only we've had some strong women leaders and just seemed return, for example, presents a different style of leadership. You'll notice that every now and then though, she gets decimated attack for being too soft or not on top of things, and yet New Zealand was leading the way in the pandemic, especially in its first stages, and so we're not wanting to state out bias against someone of color, someone with an accent and gender different to me if I was a male, we say other things about it. We need to carry around a whole lot of these unconscious biases, and what I firmly believe is that the language has developed to, it's a bit of a weasel way of getting out of acknowledging the very real discriminatory practices that are unconscious bias, so we prefer to say, "I didn't really know that, I didn't really feel that. Oh, wouldn't have said that if I'd known." It gives everyone get out of jail free card because at the same time, it is unlawful since 1984 to consciously discriminate against hate. Yeah, and I guess unconscious bias sounds nicer than a prejudice, for example Definitely, it's more palatable. It's not a term that I use, but I'm happy to talk it from the opposite perspective. Then we will discuss on unconscious bias. I think another way of looking at it is. When we used to travel, do you remember that? When we used to travel? No. Pre-COVID, if you went to a country that you'd never been to before, and you had some ideas about what that country represented, what the culture was like, how the people were, and so on, then you might get surprised because your unconscious views, perhaps guided by what you'd heard from other people and so on. I found that the first time I went to the Netherlands, I kept saying, are they nice? They're really nice people. I actually heard myself saying that. I thought why I'm I so surprised. It was a family story. My mother used to play the piano, her violinist was Dutch. They used to play out five days a week and my mother would come home saying, "Oh, that Dutch violinist." I was a child. I had no idea that I carried that until I heard myself saying something. You will hear people have that aha moment. Well, we didn't think a woman would be good in this role, but geez she's great, and like oh, perhaps we could try another one now. Because we didn't think, well, why didn't they think? Because there was perhaps, and I'll pivot an unconscious bias because they didn't ever see men do it before. For someone from another culture, I didn't think I'd fit in. Although if you didn't so well, we're going to get another one. I'm obviously going to roast this example and completely ruin any of the statistics attached to it. Some example was, I guess an orchestra and they were auditioning orchestra members and blind audition. Yes. They ended up, they were like, why did we have no women in the orchestra? They thought, well, maybe they ended up putting a screen and having the audition is behind the screen and then they've found that it improved the number of women who were successful in getting into the orchestra. I guess that is a very adverse example of unconscious bias, which we are going to talk about today. Yeah. But if you think about that, how conscious it becomes when a woman walks out from behind the screen and they discover they employed a woman for the first time? Yes. Because they didn't know it was a woman. and other times they didn't know it was a woman and they didn't select women. Yes. You could keep say was unconscious, but if every single time a woman didn't get selected. I wonder why that is in somewhat minds. In the end they did, which is good. Yes, indeed. Well, for the sake of today's talk, we will still talk about unconscious bias. Let's talk about unconscious bias inside organizations. To your knowledge, what's the effect of unconscious bias within organizations that you've seen. I'm going to speak to you from I wear of a lot of hats. One of the hats I wear is as an investigator of where I've explained sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. I'm brought in as an independent external investigator when things have gone pear-shaped, usually, 3.5 years after someone's first put their hand up and made a complaint, that's how long it can take and the internal processes haven't worked. Someone has said, look, we've just got to get someone external to come in. The briefings that I have, when I'm brought in, I could write a book about the biases that creep into the language of the people who are briefing me. Now, if we think about it, they're going to be human resource management people that generally brief me. Or it could be a director, it could be a CEO who might say, look, this is going to end up in the Industrial Relations Commission, we really, really have to work on what are we doing wrong here. I will get the person described to me, the complainant and it's sometimes can be up to five or six complainants. I'll get descriptors like she's a bit of a window. We really don't think there is anything much in this complaint. They're saying they're being bullied, but actually, they're a poor performer. When they got to poor performance review, they're then put in a complaint about the manager. That's by way of background. That's a very common briefing. I'll say to them, okay so you're saying it's workplace bullying? Oh, yeah. There's nothing else. Now, by the time I've interviewed the complainant and witnesses, and the alleged perpetrators, what I most often discover is that the bullying is on the basis of that person's gender, that person's color, something that is different about them. The organization seemingly is blind to the fact that that person of color is the only person of color in this particular area they work in, and they are the only person being subjected to fairly intense scrutiny, micromanagement. There's a whole raft of things I could name here. The organization has failed to recognize its own biases and so it's very unfortunate when you have to spell this all out in an investigation report and say the intersection of this person's age, gender, it could be their sexuality, it could be their ethnicity, it could be the family background, appears to not have been recognized by the organization that the bullying they have been subjected to is targeted on the basis of some or all of those grounds. Then at any time, if that complainant had walked to the Equal Opportunity Commission, the Equal Opportunity Commission would have had grounds to proceed. I shouldn't be surprised that this still happens. I've been working in that investigation space for about 15 years, but it does happen and very recently still happening. It is to me, people unaware of their obligations under the Equal Opportunity Act to create a fair and equal and equitable workplace. That's what they're not conscious of, and yet every manager's job description will have that in it. They are obliged. It's interesting that some of the examples that you had just said of unconscious bias of things like micro-managing. I guess the microaggressions in it, they're not overtly like, I don't like you because you're a woman, but I guess second-guessing their abilities or undermining, those actions. I guess that's where the unconscious element comes from because a person is just unconsciously doubting the person's ability to potentially succeed in the situation, so they therefore need to over manage. [inaudible] I think you're being kind. I'm I being too generous? I think doubting their ability, it's not a doubt. It's I need to do this because you're not like me, and I'm pretty sure you won't be able to do this. I did a gender equity audit in Australia's top scientific research organization. Where have all the women gone? We used to have some women managers once and we lost them. They had no idea. They hadn't done exit interviews. They hadn't followed them up. They didn't know why they'd left. As I went round that organization interviewing people, I would say things like, so as a director, have you ever had a senior woman working for you on one of these three-year long big projects that are with universities and worth a lot of money and so on. Oh, yes. Look, we tried one once and it didn't work. Now, that is a direct quote. I'm actually not making that up. We tried one once, but it didn't work. I tried [inaudible] once and it didn't work for me. Yes. I said, Oh, wow. She must have been really bad if you haven't had another woman since what happened, or was she just wasn't good at managing the project. She didn't keep to the timelines. I did try to do the right thing and put her in there, so I said, Okay. Now you've got all men in this division? Yes. All of their projects succeed then, no one's failed. No one has failed to deliver. Now, to his credit he immediately went, oh, well, I couldn't say that. Now hear that. That's what that is. That is a bias against other women ever coming in because one failed, and a preparedness to accept there will be failures amongst the men, but that's okay. To me, he became conscious as he was speaking of what he was saying because I put that question to him. Would he ever have become conscious without that question being asked? Possibly not. It's very interesting. I mean, I had a similar conversation. I was speaking to a person and they said, I don't like female comedians, and I said, Oh, well, what female comedians have you watched, and they said, I didn't like, and named one specific female comedian, and I said, Well, what about this female comedians, and they said, Oh, no, I like that one. She's not bad, but because they really didn't like one specific female comedian, and because I guess the percentage of female comedians are a lot smaller, it's more likely for them to get lumped into a group together, and so therefore they get thrown out with the black one. Look, that's such a great example because now we can segue to Julia Gillard. We tried one once, a female prime minister, look, it didn't work. Therefore, thank goodness we haven't had any more since. Women aren't up to it. Now, you could say a career politician became a prime minister, didn't get married along the way and failed to have children. There was a bias against her because she was a childless, or as one famous senator said, barren. Barren. It's either way it's going to be. Then if it was a career politician woman, and her Welsh accent of course, people didn't like that either, so there's a bit of inter-sectionality. She wasn't gay, but possibly her partner was was the constant suggestion. Then you go to, okay, so where women do have children, does that make them better? No, they neglect them. If you're watching Ms Represented Annabel Crabb, there were women she interviewed who were back in the day when you weren't trolled, letters were sent published in the newspaper, why doesn't she just go home and look after her children, she's neglecting them. We're only just now getting male politicians perhaps over the last five,10 years who will say I'm resigning/retiring to spend more time with my family. It has become an acceptable thing for men to say that. Well pointed out that that is the underside of the coin is being able to normalize men, being able to take the time they leave. Men having more of a carer role as opposed to seeing that as we can on masculine gets the opposite side of that coin, I guess. My next question, which is impossible, but maybe not, what is the answer to this? Is it training? I am a trainer, I'm a researcher, I'm a facilitator, I'm a mediator, I'm an investigator. You would think I would have the answer each stage, knowledge I am outraged. I think can taking a leaf out of Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins who've had all of their headlines recently for a very good reason. I think we have to stop tinkering around the edges. I think we have to stop polishing and dusting and refining and wordsmithing our policies, our webpages, our recruitment notices. We want you. We especially encourage indigenous applicants for this role. We especially encourage women to apply if you're looking at policing. We especially encourage people from diverse backgrounds. That is often where most of the energy is put into getting people in and then the door closes on them, and within three months, they've been indoctrinated into the organization. Forget what the code of conduct said about inclusion, integrity, respect, forget what the organization promised at the interview that always so inclusive and you really love and we're so thrilled to have you. What are we putting in place for people who are different? So with disability, it's become a bit easier, and having an Australian of the Year as a disability advocate is definitely a step in the right direction. But you'll notice that in his acceptance speech, he made note of the fact. But when he was growing up, this is Dylan Alcott. He did not have any role models. He looked at the television. There was no one who looked like him and it caused him great despair and depression. Fortunately for all of us, he had a good family who kept promoting him to do what he could do and of course, he's come over the other side. Now he can talk about the fact that for Australian of the Year, someone thought to put in a really good ramp for him to come up so that he would accept his award on the stage. Those ramps have to be there for everyone who's told we really want difference in our workplace. We welcome you. You're the first woman with headers senior executive level. You're the first person of color with head on our executive team. You're the first indigenous adviser in this role. What structures need to change to accommodate that person? What attitudes need to change? You're the first gender reassigned person we've had. We're going to make sure that everyone is aware that it's unlawful to discriminate against you. People might not know that they are being discriminatory. There will be people in the workplace who talked down to someone in a wheelchair, for example. There will be people who don't understand your disability. Our role is to prepare the path for you just like that ramp was put in for Dylan Alcott. It's the structures, it's the attitudes. It's not just a good add and a good selection panel that results in disappointment. We know that the Engineering faculty at universities are strongly advocating to get more women engineers in. They got the mean. They change the culture they tried of engineering schools. So they've got more women in. Then companies said fantastic, we really want those women engineers. Those women engineers arrive as the first woman engineer on site and I'll go back to the mining company in a far-flung Western Australian. I'll choose that one because this is true remote location. Is it going to be an inclusive culture? Who is going to make sure that that woman stays and isn't given every reason to leave from the moment she arrives? Then when she does choose to go because the sex is demeaning, dreadful language and we only have to look at the latest investigation to know, stopped all the way back to her room at night. The door knocks at 2:00 a.m in the morning. Are we going to say, well, we tried a woman once and it didn't work? She might be a woman from another culture or here we need to get multicultural into mining campus. Are we going to say we tried by months and it didn't work? Or we going to say, let's take a good hard look at our culture because we can't just say we're inclusive. How did we become inclusive? That brings us to the end of our first episode in our two-part conversation on unconscious bias with Dr. Susan Howard. To keep listening, click through the links to Episode 2, and I shall see you there. Thanks for listening.
