I'm Emily and in today's talk we're
going to talk about
is an unconscious bias and how it
affects folks like us and tech
workspaces and what we can do about it
great so just a little bit more about me
my pronouns are she her hers and I'm a
PhD candidate at UC Berkeley
I'm studying chocolate and how humans
can save it so I know very important
work but well my work doesn't have me
playing around in JavaScript all that
much I do do a lot of data science and
RN Python but today my day job doesn't
matter instead we're going to talk about
something that affects everyone in this
room because we are all humans and
that's unconscious bias so who here has
gone to some sort of diversity training
that they felt was a big waste of time
yeah I definitely have and as it turns
out studies have shown that a bad
training can actually have a negative
effect on people so they can come out of
a bad training with more hostile
attitudes towards people who are
different from them and so at the
unconscious bias project where most of
us are either in grad school or have
PhDs in STEM fields we've always been
really careful to only promote
evidence-based approaches we also want
the information we provide to empower
you instead of leading you even more
deflated about the current state of the
world that's why our motto is a hundred
percent oops yeah a hundred percent
empowerment zero percent guilt trip and
today I'm going to teach you all tools
to reduce the effect of unconscious bias
and I want you to leave this conference
as unconscious bias warriors our
ambassadors that are dedicated to making
a positive impact in your circle so that
tech becomes more and more diverse
inclusive and equitable so I'll be going
over a lot of tools and resources today
in my talk but don't worry if you miss
something you'll be able to access all
of the peer reviewed literature and all
of the other resources I mentioned on
our website so finally before we jump
into the good stuff I want to mention
that I'll be touching on issues that are
deeply personal and some of the examples
that I may present could be triggering
to some of you in the audience but I
present them in the hopes of having a
frank conversation about why they are
harmful and what we can take what steps
we can take as individuals and by Stan
to make the world a better place so
unfortunately I won't really have any
time for questions from the audience up
here on stage but I encourage you to
come find me if you have questions
concerns or comments about the
presentation and so with that let's
start with a definition so we need to be
on the same page about what bias is and
biases prejudice in favor of or against
one group person or thing compared with
another and usually a way considered to
be unfair so unconscious or implicit
bias is bias that you have even though
you don't consciously agree with it or
even know that it's there and most
people don't want to be racist or sexist
but a lot of us are unconsciously biased
against certain groups anyway and this
starts with negative stereotypes from
the world around us what we see in TV
shows in movies here on the radio read
in books see on the internet and even
pick up from our friends and family and
so even if we don't unconsciously agree
with these negative stereotypes they can
still worm their way into our
unconscious and influence how we think
and act so I'd like to call attention to
a few examples of negative stereotypes
from American culture to show you what
I'm talking about men are seen as
breadwinners and women as caregivers
women can be beautiful or intelligent
but not both African Americans are
commonly portrayed as loud and biased
can even come from simple associations
of patterns that we notice unconsciously
like that custodians are often racial
minorities and before stereotypes even
lead to bias stereotypes themselves are
damaging being stereotyped has been
found to lead to short-term aggression
inability to focus which results in
decrease performance and overeating
people who regularly encounter the
threat of being judged by a negative
stereotype are more likely to have
hypertension be depressed and to rate
their own health more poorly and being
on the receiving end of positive bias or
positive stereotypes hurts too implying
someone is good at math because they are
Asian might make the receiver of the
comment dislike the speaker and invoke
feelings of anger but when stereotypes
lead to unconscious bias about who can
thrive in science and tech this can be
even this can have even more damaging
effects by creating barriers to entering
STEM fields and this is the so-called
pipeline problem and folks start being
affected by this bias at a very early
age and it happens around the world so
this paper is actually from Germany and
I'll be presenting a few more papers and
then in this section here the
researchers showed that teachers have
both conscious and unconscious
stereotypes about boys being better at
math and girls being better at languages
and those stereotypes influence whether
the teachers recommend boys and girls
for science and technology schools
versus language oriented schools and
this bias continues from grade school
through graduate school but the pipeline
is only the beginning of the problem
once marginalized people get their foot
in the door unconscious bias leads to
barriers to rising in stem so study
after study has found evidence of bias
against almost any marginalized group
you can think of in terms of who gets
called back for an interview and as we
all know jobs are pretty important and
this type of bias occurs even when that
discrimination is illegal in that area
so in the United States there's bias
against openly gay men and bias against
people with disabilities even with the
disability would not have affected the
person's ability to perform the job in
the United States and China being a
parent hurt job prospects for women but
it was actually the opposite for men
being a father helped job prospects and
one last example bias was found against
people with Arabic sounding names upon
both among both American and Dutch
reviewers so imagine experiencing these
biases every time you apply to a job or
when you want to move up within your own
company or switch to a different team
and imagine how much harder that might
be or how much worse that bias might be
if you're an Arabic lesbian mother in a
wheelchair and studies have actually
looked specifically at this type of
intersection for instance between gender
and race so women and racial minorities
are both less likely to be given the
benefit of the doubt and the problem is
only worse if you're both a woman and a
racial minority so when women of color
demonstrate leadership and competence
there are certain is's perceived
negatively and the data shows that they
get pushed back for it so even when
you're successful unsupportive work
environments are
reason for leading stem in the next few
slides I'll be focusing on women but
these trends are representative of most
underrepresented groups in tech so let
me be frank women do leave stem at
greater rates than they leave the non
stem workforce the orange line that you
see on this screen is women being
retained in non STEM fields
now let's look at stem as you can see
the retention is much much worse and
less than 20% of the women who leave
STEM fields are also leaving the
workforce for instance like taking care
of family more than 80% of the women
leaving the stem workforce are just
getting jobs in other fields they're
going to non STEM fields
so let's look at a different control and
focus in on just the tech industry when
you compare the attrition rates of of
women to men in tech it's more than
twice as high 41% of women leave tech
versus just 17% of men and on top of the
well-documented pay gap that exists
there are many cultural cues that a
company can give to signal that an
employee is not valued which in turn
encourages that employee to leave one is
feedback in performance reviews in this
study the majority of women received
reviews with a negative unhelpful
feedback while the majority of men
received only constructive feedback and
the negative feedback for women was
about personality in ways that reflect
common unconscious biases like telling
women to pipe down or be less abrasive
so together these barriers keep some
groups underrepresented in stem and tech
and reinforce pre-existing stereotypes
creating what we've dubbed the positive
feedback loop of negative stereotypes
and there's so so much more
peer-reviewed literature out there that
shows that unconscious bias is real and
it is impacting diversity if you'd like
to explore more please head over to our
website where you can find all of the
papers that I mentioned in the stock as
well as hundreds others about almost
every aspect of bias its effect and what
we can do about it ok so let's take a
breath because that was a lot of bad
news and I know some of you might be
feeling a little low at this point in
the talk but the good news is that we're
only about half way through
that means we have a lot of time to talk
about solutions so even though
stereotypes come from our environment
that doesn't make us powerless happily
there's enough studies out there that we
know how to reduce negative effects of
bias and reliably reduce our biases too
so thoughts are actually our first line
of defense when confronting bias so I'm
going to teach you two techniques that
can help you decrease your own
unconscious bias but before we start
training we need to cover some
prerequisites in order for these
techniques to be effective for you you
need to be motivated to overcome your
unconscious bias hopefully the positive
loop of negative stereo bat stereotypes
helps to give you that motivation you
then need to take steps to become aware
of your bias and why it exists and we'll
explore how to recognize your own bias
and the first technique that I teach you
but you can also do it through more
technical ways by taking an implicit
association test at harvard's project
implicit website you'll need to learn
the to detect the subtle influence of
bias and your everyday surroundings
which helps you know when to act and
then you have to practice these
strategies to reduce your bias that you
know what to do in that moment when you
recognize it and yes you do have to
practice without practice there will be
no change
okay so let's learn our first strategy I
want you to take a look at this picture
and think to yourself what is your first
reaction to it if I asked you to
describe who these people are and what
they were doing what would you think
what would you say did you assume that
each of these people are engineers or
designers beginners or experienced
straight or queer disabled or not
communicating well or poorly when I
first saw this picture I thought young
and experienced interns and that's my
bias
so once you've acknowledged that your
own biases are informing the way you see
people you can choose to replace any
biased aspect of your thoughts or your
reaction with a different less
stereotypical scenario and this is what
we call breaking down the stereotype the
idea here is to consciously recognize
that I thought that you had came from a
stereotype and instead of leaving that
bias buried in your subconscious bring
it to the surface and then replace it
so in this case I can choose to
recognize my biased reaction and think
CEOs entrepreneurs
leaders experienced okay so let's move
on to our second strategy which is
increasing opportunities for contact and
it is probably one of the most important
strategies that you'll find because it
tends to help with all aspects of
breaking down our biases it can make us
confront our basic assumptions
it helps us empathize with individuals
who are different from us and it can
give us non-stereotypical x' that we can
continuously use to fight our own bias
and there's many ways to do this even if
you aren't a social butterfly so you can
try going to a diverse conference like
this one you could follow folks like the
other amazing speakers that you've heard
on Twitter you can contribute to an open
source project with diverse maintained
errs or you could mentor someone new or
find a mentor for yourself whatever
feels like a good step for you that's
enough and I'm not going to lie
increasing opportunities for contact can
be scary sometimes too so if you
struggle with this like I tend to do
it's always a good move to listen and be
genuinely curious Twitter and blogs can
be an awesome start because you can
follow along and get a sense of what
someone might or might not want to talk
about it also helps to be open to
hearing things you didn't expect reading
body language cues and believing what
people say about their experiences even
if it seems contradictory to what -
something that you thought you knew and
if someone gives you some hard feedback
or it just doesn't have time to talk
try and stay humble other people are the
main character in their own story so as
a group
let's send an intention to use the rest
of this conference to meet new people
and help increase our opportunities for
contact with groups that are
underrepresented in our workplaces and
let's try and maintain those connections
after this conference even if it is just
following a new person on Twitter so to
wrap up this section unconsciously
biased thoughts are a habit and like any
habit they can be broken mostly you can
never be quite cured of unconscious bias
but over time the strategies to reduce
bias become habits themselves and it
will feel easier to quash unconscious
bias when it
sup again so let's shift away from our
internal struggles and dive into how we
can respond to bias in our environments
we've been working with an amazing
cartoonist - RIA Theresa Oh born to
illustrate real scenarios that come up
and how we can react when they do so we
have cartoon showing bias against white
women people of color bias against
people with disabilities against queer
folks and so on but for this talk I
picked just a couple of cartoons that I
hope are less emotionally charged than
others but still useful for practicing
these techniques so who's heard this one
before she's really smart but I wish she
wasn't so bossy so I have and I may have
thought it one or two times to remember
that we are all biased and we can even
be biased against our own group so let's
identify this bias this cartoon
showcases a common bias against women in
leadership roles so what are your
options when someone says this to you
instead of labeling the person who made
the comment as racist or sexist inciting
a reflection on the comment through four
simple strategies will help to highlight
the problematic nature of it and reflect
and encourage a change in behavior
rather than an argument so our first
strategy is just to observe the problem
instead of saying staying silent or
moving on
observe that the comment was
stereotypical and hurtful something like
ouch that's a bit harsh or you could
counter a microaggression with a micro
affection she's not bossy she's a leader
a positive comment like this can help
weaken the negative stereotype for those
around you and without being too
confrontational or derail in the
conversation our bystander could also
reflect the comment back which would
make the speaker do the work of
challenging their own assumptions
something like how come you never called
guys bossy and finally he could simply
label the stereotype that's in play hey
I think that's reinforcing a hurtful
gender stereotype or as a friend said to
me when I was practice talk a few days
ago bias much bro
okay so let's practice in this cartoon a
manager is just finishing up a meeting
and asking one of his newer team members
does your wife take care care of the
kids or do you do daycare sorry let me
repeat that does your wife take care of
the kids
or do you do daycare as an opportunity
to meet people right now I would like
you to form groups of two or three make
sure no one is left out and identify the
stereotype or types in this cartoon and
then brainstorm a few responses of your
own I'll give you a little bit more than
a minute to do that and I'm actually
going to ask visnu to come up and play
some lilting ukulele tunes to keep you
call while you are brainstorming and
talking so when you hear his music stop
please turn your attention back up on
stage to me
[Music]
great wow that was a lot of talking and
I'm so glad that all of you have so much
to say about this so let's review what
we just went over and had great ideas
about so there are actually two biases
in this situation and I hope some of you
picked up on that so the first is that
dads don't play an active role in
parenting and the second is that dads
must be in a heterosexual relationship
yeah
i I couldn't Oh monogamy
yeah you know could be in a polyamorous
relationship too okay so let's review
some of the possible responses that our
dad could use in this situation the team
member could observe the problem by
saying actually my husband and I share
parenting responsibilities equally he
could also use positive redirection I
take pride in being the primary
caretaker of my children he could also
transfer the work
why are those the only options and
finally he could label the stereotype as
a gay father who manages our family's
childcare my situation is only unusual
for those who hold unfair gender
binaries so that one might be a little
wordy but I'm sure you can come up with
some that you would use in that
situation too so we want all of you to
feel represented by our cartoons so feel
free to share your own real experiences
of bias with us through our website and
maybe they will be made into a cartoon
to teach others to be more empathetic
humans and to born the great is actually
the cartoonists Instagram and Twitter
handle so if you want to tweet at her
feel free so in parallel with personal
adjustments that you can make to your
words and thoughts there's also
important work that can be done at an
organizational level through putting
good policies in place now I bet some of
you might be resisting this idea of it
after all Tech is a meritocracy right
well nope exactly the opposite the fact
that the tech sector celebrates the idea
of innate talent is actually evidence
that tech is not a meritocracy this
study shows that when you focus on just
coding or engineering instead of
including holistic values like teamwork
transparency and consistency in
performance reviews then manager level
folks with unconscious bias are more
likely to review their team members with
that bias regardless of how awesome a
person's code is so you can think of
good policies as the bumpers in bowling
without them people with more
unconscious bias will throw more gutter
balls by unintentionally acting with
their biases on the other hand good
policies can guide people's behavior in
the direction that you want it to go if
you consciously ask them
towards an environment that includes and
recognizes everyone's unique talent so
many conversations about policies
usually start with hiring how to get
more diverse candidates into the
recruiting pipeline how to get more
through the interview process and how to
have more have more of them accept
offers and hiring really is an important
place to start but it's only one small
piece of the puzzle so once you have
employees on staff there's a wide range
of of ways you can provide inclusive
support that meet the different needs
and working styles of different people
might have and when people on your team
get into the habit of valuing each other
as unique individuals that internal
culture can actually translate into
building more equitable less biased
products for your users so we like to
say that policies should come from
overarching principles and one of the
most important is aiming for inclusion
and equity not just diversity we haven't
really defined those terms yet so here's
how I think about it I think if
diversity is about being about headcount
and representation as an example do you
do user research with people with
disabilities equity is about resources
and opportunity do you compensate people
with disabilities at a fair and just
level considering their unique
perspective their investment and giving
you that feedback and the extra value
that they're adding to your product an
inclusion is the hardest to measure it's
about how marginalized people feel about
your culture do people with disabilities
come away feeling like valued partners
do you create an environment where they
can provide honest feedback and you
listen and act on their feedback so
let's give you some examples to improve
the inclusion and equity within your
organization you can work at many levels
so you could write more inclusive job
descriptions a cool - cool tool here is
text EO which I think one of our
previous speakers actually works at
right now which points out masculine and
feminine word ease and helps you shift
the balance in your job description so
that everyone feels comfortable applying
you could also expand benefits beyond
just young single employees one example
is allowing flexible hours for a child
or elder care or you can make make
remote work an option for everyone
you should also account for power
dynamics
during conflict resolution this can
relieve some pressure from marginalized
people who may feel trapped or powerless
if there's a dispute so focusing on
diversity without also working on
inclusion and equity can create a
situation where you get diverse people
in the door take your metrics up but
they encounter high levels of
unconscious bias on their team and
they'll be quicker to leave if you make
inclusion equity and bias reduction
priorities to marginalized people may be
more likely to stay on your team and
recruit others to join and with that
let's wrap up so yes unconscious bias is
a real problem and yes ways to reduce
unconscious bias are real - and no
matter what role we play in different
situations or different organizations we
each have options for what to say in the
moment when we see or experience bias
and what policies we can advocate for
that can guide everyone towards less
bias and even though most of us here
have unconscious bias those biases don't
own us with dedication we can practice
breaking that bias habit and becoming
closer the people around us and closer
to the people that we want to be so if
you like more info please come talk to
me or contact us online or go to our
website you BP is always super excited
to speak to new people and new
organizations about what they can do to
improve their culture and decrease the
affective bias in their workplaces we
are a volunteer driven nonprofit so if
you'd like to get involved you can visit
our website or chat with me again and
you can also just jump right in by
joining our weekly virtual meetings
using the join ubp link so thank you so
much and let's work together to weed out
unconscious bias in all of our
workplaces
you
[Applause]