The Gender Blog

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As my friend CJ would say, it’s “very pleasing”  to see that PinkStinks’s campaign against supermarket giant Sainsbury’s has been successful; thousands of children’s dressing-up outfits have now been cleared from shelves after complaints (via a PinkStinks co-ordinated campaign) that they promote sexist stereotypes.

As reported here in the Daily Telegraph, Sainsbury’s (“Try something new today!” – indeed …) were merrily selling nurses’ outfits “for girls” and doctors’ kits labelled “for boys”, along with pilot and “superhero” costumes – but these have now been removed and will be replaced with a new range of gender neutral dressing up outfits.

Nice work, PinkStinks – and a great testimony to the strength of their pester power social media campaign (which I joined even though I don’t have children myself, let alone daughters or even nieces).

Whenever I hear stories like this, or read about manufacturers and retailers unwittingly promoting gender and/or inappropriate messaging and stereotypes (wasn’t it Woolworths – RIP – who hit the headlines a few years ago for launching a range of pink painted bedroom furniture aimed at little girls named the “Lolita”?), I remind myself of a small boy called John and how invidious and impactful gender images can be. 

John is the son of a female friend who works as a GP; she is evidently from a very smart family, because her sister is also a doctor. One day, returning home from a visit to his aunt’s house, where my friend and her sister had been talking medical shop, John, then aged five, asked his mother:

“Mummy – when I grow up, can I become a doctor too, or is it only ladies who are allowed to do that?”

… and all the men and women merely players.”

And this link to a Vanity Fair article on the difficulties experienced by female writers trying to break into the closed circle world of writing for the US male chat show hosts shows that the issues faced by women in corporate life are no different.

October 2009: Nell Scovell on David Letterman Hollywood: vanityfair.com

This bit particularly resonated with me; swap “late-night-TV” for “investment banking” and “writers” for “executives” and the identikit situation is more than clear:

“One frequent excuse you hear from late-night-TV executives is that “women just don’t apply for these jobs.” And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the shows often rely on current (white male) writers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) writers.”

OK. I do concur that perhaps male investment bankers may not be as funny as the guys who knock out the gags for Jay Leno’s monologue. But apart from that … same scenario, different dress code, yes?

… for a mixed race couple.

Yes, really.

In Louisiana.

In 2009, just in case any of us thought that we’d entered some weird space-time continuum and were back in 1959.

The full story is reported here in “The Guardian”, but can be summarised with this extract – my use of bold:

“A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage licence to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Bardwell said he asked everyone who called about marriage if they were a mixed race couple. If they were, he did not marry them.”

The bit about the bathroom usage immediately reminded me of a wonderful (and recommended) book I read a few months ago called “The Help”, set in Mississippi in 1962, about a group of maids who work with one white woman to tell their stories (“black women raise white children but can’t be trusted not to steal the silver”) as part of the then burgeoning civil rights movement. In the book, it is very much the norm for “the help” to have their own toilet/washroom facilities and one employer feels societal pressure to build such an arrangement for her maid in a corner of the garage, rather than risk her family being contaminated by sharing the same facilities within the house.

Doesn’t it come across that this attitude lingers on in Louisiana, 47 years later? Quite incredible that permitting people of a different race to share your urinating environment is viewed as a mark of racial tolerance …

And how can it even be legal for anyone to refuse to marry two people on the grounds of race? Will watch the outcome of this story with interest.

Is it possible for an Asian man to be prejudiced against Asian people? For a woman to show bias against other women? Well, according to Professor Binna Kandola, it is. And, in his new book, “The Value of Difference”, which he wrote as a way of re-energising the diversity debate and providing some practical solutions and actions, he explains not only how we can learn to recognise and acknowledge that we are all, in different ways, guilty of bias but also how we can work to overcome it.

I recently attended the UK launch of the book (sub-titled: “eliminating bias in organisations”) – and I managed to score not one but TWO signed copies. I appreciate a free book – and I love two free books quite possibly more than life itself, so it was a highly successful evening from my point of view. I am definitely biased in favour of events which give away books

The occasion began with a description of Binna’s work to date in the area of bias awareness; an approach which begins by acknowledging that practical changes don’t always make as large an impact or change the culture of an organisation in the way that we imagine they would or should – and this is true for society as a whole, as evidenced by the continuing need for rafts of anti-discrimination legislation in countries around the world. We always hope, rely on and assume that each new generation coming through will evoke change – but yet, in spite of ourselves, people are the issue, not the solution.

And, if we acknowledge that positive change will not just happen on its own, then designing and running some positive “bias awareness” training, as Binna recommends that organisations do, is one approach to taking charge of a situation and creating progress via people.

Binna told the audience that, in spite of ourselves, when we meet people for the first time, we register their colour – followed by other visual “clues” about them, such as their age, gender, hair colour, disability status and so on. And these behaviours and “registrations” may be unconscious, and even benign, but are not random; they happen to us all because of our backgrounds and influences. Last year, I visited India on business and wrote at the time in my corporate blog that I felt very self-conscious being a tall, white woman in “western” dress whilst in Delhi. I don’t believe that I was showing negative bias but I know that I was very aware of my status and height – but then again, according to Prof. Kandola, nobody ever believes that they personally are displaying bias …

“The Value of Difference” has been endorsed by Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who managed to extricate himself from the extremely high profile (in the UK, at least) discussions currently happening in our political world with regard to MPs’ expenses in order to join us (declaring that “It’s frankly mayhem out there!”) and describe why he was supporting what he described as “an important book, and one which people may find controversial.”

He continued by noting that “there is a sense that we, as a country are changing …” and shared a story in which he recollected a recent event at which he was the only person of colour amongst a crowd of 200 people. He was not uncomfortable (although he was obviously aware) in this environment, but it prompted him to observe that:

“ … many more of us are much more comfortable with differences than ever before – and yet we rarely see people from minorities in positions of influence and power. And we still haven’t managed to crack the cultural, social and behavioural issues which impede progress.”

Paraphrasing Rahm Emanuel’s edict of “never letting a good crisis go to waste”, he asked the audience to consider how we can create social and organisational benefits from “this enforced shake out” and suggested that we now need a new framework for cultural change: how do we take advantage of all of the talent – and not just work with the people who resemble ourselves? Bias awareness is one of the keys to creating this new framework, and Binna’s book:

“… brings science into diversity and equality, providing us with a new tool to help us deal with tackling bias.”

Trevor handed over to PwC UK Advisory Partner Paul Cleal, who talked a little about his own dual-heritage background and shared the story of being one of the first Black partners in the UK firm and how he has been working with the leadership team to ensure that they really do understand the nature of bias. Returning to Trevor’s description of the book as “controversial”, Paul suggested that the most contentious idea comes from the statement that bias “ … isn’t just about the bad guys – it’s about you and me.”

And Binna confirmed this, adding that he didn’t:

“ … blame people for being biased; but I do blame them for not taking action.”

Paul wrapped up the event by suggesting that one of the most influential mechanisms of change within an organisation can come about when you combine the power of the story with the strength of facts and data. So I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into what Trevor Phillips has described as “essential reading” and will report back here with a review once I’ve done so.