All it takes is 1%

Here's a riddle for you.

A father and a son get in a car accident.  The father dies, but the son is sent to the hospital with serious injuries, needing emergency surgery.

The doctor comes in and says, "I can't operate.  It's my son."

How is this possible?
To be honest, my first thought was it's the son's step-dad.

Here's the answer: The doctor is his mom.  

Apparently, 80% of people can not figure out the right answer within a 5 minute time frame.  We have unconscious biases that link men with physicians (and almost all other high-paying, well-respected jobs).

At Google, we are going through Unconscious Bias training, and I found the following example from the presentation fascinating.


Unless you live without internet, you're well aware that almost all CEOs have penises.  

Less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, which people come up with a myriad of reasons to explain.

Women want babies not stock options!
Women need mentors!
Women are too passive!

There's a bit a truth to all of those things for specific subsets of women, but it falls short.

In the research study, "Simulating Gender Stratification", Robinson-Cox, Martell & Emrich sought to simulate corporate promotions and explore reasons behind this "glass ceiling."

Six meta-analytic reviews confirm that the work performance of females is evaluated less favorably than that of males both in controlled laboratory settings and in field studies. 

The effect of gender is typical described as of "small" size, explaining between 1% and 5% of the total variance of performance scores. 

That makes sense to me -- It's similar to the unconscious bias riddle about female doctors.  It's not overt (i.e., no modern HR policy will ever say "women should wait 2x longer than men for promotions"), but it still exists because corporations are made up of human beings.

So, you may be thinking -- 1% to 5% -- who cares.  WTF - I thought this was fascinating?!

Well, now on to that part.

If a corporation has 8 levels (sounds similar to one that rhymes with "Boogle), then a 1% bias can lead to major gender stratification when simulated by Martell, Lane, and Emrich in 1996.

If males & females came in evenly to the corporation 50%/50% -- overtime,
Level 8 will be 65% male and 35% female solely from a 1% gender bias 

(Note: with a male CEO as the cherry on top)

We haven't even touched on all those other reasons why women might drop out of the work place -- like babies and mentoring and work hours.

How do you change that bias?  I think through women encouraging other women to be awesome, hence, my blogs on cool chicks.  

The more positive examples we have of women, the more our bias will change in favor.