The Invention of Difference: The Story of Gender Bias at Work

Index

Preface

ONE WORLD, ONE SPECIES

Until a few years ago, we knew of only the handful of planets in and around our solar system. We now know of thousands outside our solar system. Some researchers believe there is at least one planet circling every star in our galaxy. That's a minimum of 100 billion worlds, perhaps half of them rocky like ours.¹ Some of these may harbour life. But Earth may be the only one of those worlds in which the dominant species fancies that it is really two incompatible types of animal, with perspectives, insights and goals that are fundamentally unknowable across the divide. Even in the interludes that punctuate the war of the sexes, the two sides persist in their separation. We have made ourselves aliens. Humans - can't live with them, can't live without them.

Books that claim there are eternal and universal differences between the sexes are popular. We seem to recognise ourselves in them. But what we are really responding to is convenient stereotypes. Typical man, we say, when a dexterous and technologically inclined man fails to work the washing machine. These books purport to tell us why women can't read maps or stick to the point of a story. The reward in reading books of this kind is a little like that of observational stand-up comedy - they are a kind of satire aimed at ourselves. We identify with the caricatures presented to us because this gives us a sense of belonging. We are licensed to excuse the faults and celebrate the talents guaranteed to us by our gender. A good dose of scientific-sounding narrative about natural selection, and preferably some brightly-coloured brain scans, and we're hooked.

The books that tell us women need to shed tears but men just need sheds play to our existing beliefs and reinforce well-established stereotypes. They make sense based on the ideologies we've been exposed to since birth, so we take them as truth. Although we characterise humans as learning animals, people are actually inclined to seek out information that will prove their existing hypotheses. We don't want to abandon what we already believe, so we are attracted to information that confirms our beliefs.

As the saying goes, people find what they look for, and the dangers of confirmation bias are well known in scientific disciplines. If a researcher already has a settled conviction about the phenomenon they are studying, then they won't pay attention to data that doesn't fit the conviction. Scientific trials have to be blind because researchers cannot be guaranteed to be blind. Experiments are designed specifically to eliminate bias and ensure repeatability by disinterested peers. We are not nearly so scrupulous in our day-to-day explorations of the world around us.

Given the absolute centrality of stereotypes to our habitual thought processes and our unconscious actions, the proposition of this book may be difficult for our minds to deal with. We will be presented with evidence that doesn't fit, so we'll want to ignore it. The key point to hold on to is this:

Personality and ability differences between men and women are not certain truths.

This approach is deeply antithetical to our preferred, habitual ways of interacting with the world. We all build theories all the time, guessing what other people want, what other people will do. But we are looking to be right, not wrong. It is easier and quicker this way because our minds love to take shortcuts.

Living on autopilot

In ordinary circumstances, we use the least mental effort necessary to achieve our current aims. We are, in the words of psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelly Taylor, cognitive misers. It's as if our minds hoard our ideas, associations and stereotypes without wanting to let them go, or seek new ones.

Learning about facts that disconfirm our existing ideas can be difficult, uncomfortable and emotionally unrewarding. Every time a supposed fact is debunked, the world seems to become a little less familiar, a little more threatening. Adopting a contrary position on a subject of common sense can make a person stand out from a group and appear unsupportive. Social cohesion relies, after all, on unspoken agreement. So, pointing out that cracking your knuckles won't give you arthritis is one way of telling people that you are (a) pedantic, (b) humourless and (c) plain wrong. Likewise, doubting that testosterone is a kind of brain fuel for men, or opining that women make better soldiers, are acts of social failure. The passive reinforcement of existing beliefs exerted by our social surroundings chimes with the mind's preference for parsimonious and well-worn solutions.

Psychologists have repeatedly shown people's ability to dismiss evidence that does not match expectations. The most famous, and still one of the most entertaining, experiments in this field is the invisible gorilla experiment. Participants in the experiment are asked to watch a video of people moving around and passing basketballs to each other. The task is to count the passes. During the exercise, a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks among the players. The watchers don't see the gorilla, even though it is in plain sight, because their attention is focused on counting passes rather than recognising players.²

We seem to be able to screen out information which conflicts with our expectations or which is not relevant to the task in hand. The implications of the invisible gorilla effect are profound for any activity which requires monitoring for patterns. Unfortunately, unconscious bias is continually at work in our minds, leading us to ignore evidence that doesn't fit with what we are looking for. In this way, we do not notice the evidence of counter-stereotypical behaviour in those we deal with, but give over-generous weight to anything that bolsters a stereotype.

Humans, then, love to categorise and systematise. We are good at it, and it's at the heart of our evolutionary success. We organise our own thinking and we organise ourselves in groups.

Although these abstractions are intellectually sophisticated, the standards to which we operate with them are far from robust. We build elegant, finely graded systems for sorting people, but we don't notice what we're doing with those systems.

For a start, we make the logical error of assuming that a striking instance, or a set of similar instances, marks a categorical fact. We may believe that all swans are white, because we have only seen white swans - not knowing there are black swans in Australia. If we only grant swanhood to white swans, then, in our mental system, black swans are not swans at all. They are not only anomalous; they appear offensive to reason.

Research does show certain physical differences between men and women. But these differences are statistical rather than logical. So, on the whole, men are larger than women. However, there are clearly many women who are larger than many men. Statistical norms are useful for planning mass products or services. For example, you might build longer beds for the Scandinavian market than the Mediterranean market. This does not mean you should be surprised to meet a tall Italian or a short Swede. Although they are efficient from the production point of view, statistical norm-based solutions tend to reinforce stereotypes.

Here is a more formal illustration of the problem:

Consider these two statements:

A. In our sample, we found a statistically significant difference in mean risk aversion between men and women, with women on average being more risk averse.

B. Women are more risk averse than men.

While the two statements are often taken as meaning the same thing, there is in fact a wide gulf of meaning between statement A, which is a narrow statement that can be factually correct within the confines of a particular study, and statement B, which is a broad statement that implies a stable characteristic of people according to their sex.³

From instance to generalisation, via statistics, stereotypes are nourished and reinforced by our speedy habits of thought.

Stereotyped thinking is self-reinforcing. A cognitive shortcut brings benefits in terms of faster decision-making, reduced periods of uncertainty and an overall sense of mastery over the situation. Each time we use a shortcut, we ingrain it a little deeper. And the deeper the ruts of our thinking grow, the harder it is to see beyond them.

Stereotyped thinking enables us to live on autopilot, negotiating our way through life as smoothly as possible. The more decisions we can take automatically, the more attention we can pay to what we deem to be really important. Even better, those automatic decisions don't even feel like decisions, because we expend no conscious effort on them. We reach for a canned judgement without knowing we are doing so, just as we slow down or change gear when we are driving. Our judgement machinery has all the appearance of instinct.

Challenging our beliefs and behaviours

Few of us would willingly agree that we are actively looking for support for our beliefs. Yet having our stereotypes challenged is uncomfortable. We may feel ashamed and defensive if we are called out on statements or actions that appear discriminatory. We don't consciously mean to be unfair. Unconscious bias has no moral sense. It takes place under the radar.

Nevertheless, we are attracted to messages that confirm and sanction the stereotypes in our private armouries. Anecdotes, articles and books which challenge gender stereotypes clash headlong with our deepest and most familiar beliefs. This makes them hard to engage with. Beliefs about gender are so central to our way of acting in the world that they don't even seem like beliefs. The conscious mind sees these beliefs as certain knowledge. To entertain an argument that runs counter to knowledge is a waste of time.

The first step in changing our behaviour therefore has to be recognising that our beliefs about gender are indeed beliefs and not true knowledge. We can then start to look at the evidence for our beliefs and question their validity.

Challenging the truth of existing beliefs is necessarily confrontational. For example, in order to assess the merits of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, it's necessary to consider religion's account of creation as a matter of belief and not knowledge. Natural selection is still vehemently rejected in some communities, where the idea of nature as a blind and mechanical force offends beliefs in an original act of creation. And creationist beliefs work as well as Darwinian theory. Creationism does not explain nature as well as Darwinism from a scientific point of view. But, culturally, it will do. Creationism fits in a vast body of traditional practice and teaching that many people subscribe to as the basis of morality. Its social function is therefore very important - much more so than its scientific truth. So it is with gender.

Men and women have certain obvious physiological differences related to reproduction and the nurture of babies. But this is the full extent of the real differences between women and men. The physiological distinctions between women and men do not work systemically to influence features such as intelligence, skills or behaviour. It is not the case that women are flooded with female hormones that make them pliable and irrational; nor are men prey to male hormones that tug them towards cars and fights.

The basic physiological differences, transformed by culture, comprise what we call gender. Gender, then, is a social construction. The effects of gender in society are in turn a long way removed from nature's decision about organ allocation in mammals.

Why then do men and women appear to be so completely distinct? In this book we explore where modern-day beliefs about gender differences originate and how they operate in our day-to-day life at work. We also assess the evidence for non-physiological differences and how human nature is distorted - by we humans.

Why we wrote this book: gender equality at work

Gender at work remains a blind spot in most organisations. Gender equality is seen as a cause, and a peripheral one at that. We believe that issues of gender form the most fundamental and obstinate barriers to organisational effectiveness and individual happiness. Equality is more than a cause. It is a natural right that is being systematically denied to us - by ourselves.

We wrote this book to show that the concepts and culture of work that we all take for granted and treat as timeless and natural are really arbitrary, artificial conventions. By exploring the ways in which the orthodox gendered organisation has evolved, we can see how human motives have shaped our world of work. In seeing the hand of man (rarely woman) in the construction of work, we may be encouraged to make changes. The first step in changing work is owning the idea of work.

Can our businesses, government departments, schools and hospitals become places that serve and benefit men and women equally? Can we create organisations for people - regardless of their sex? We believe this is achievable. The power to make the change is in our heads. The world of work is what we think it is, what we say it is, and what we hear it is. If we can think, speak and hear anew, then we can make it new.

This book won't tell you how to get ahead if you're a woman. It won't beat you up if you're a man. It doesn't offer a tidy list of bullet points you can pin up on a wall.

But it will ask you to look afresh at work, to question what's taken for granted, and to ask ''why not?" Our aim is to point out that many seemingly fixed and immutable features of work are unnecessary and dysfunctional. We use existing research to expose the facts about the gendered organisation and new psychological insights to suggest how organisations can change.

Gender equality is the natural state of women and men. Inequality is a cultural product created and maintained by people, consciously and unconsciously. It is learned behaviour. As such, it can be unlearned, or replaced by new learning. Equality is a revolutionary idea, because it requires the removal or redesign of institutions and habits. But it is also a conservative idea. Equality seeks to return humanity to its full potential. This is a corrective movement.

Consider US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has worked consistently over many years for the cause of equal rights for women and men. The European Convention of Human Rights bans discrimination on the basis of sex in Britain. In the United States, a guarantee of equality was added to the Constitution in the Fourteenth Amendment, just after the Civil War. The amendment affirms that all US citizens are entitled to the equal protection of the laws. However, when women cited the new amendment in order to claim the vote in Missouri, the Supreme Court ruled that this was a matter for the state. The Court continued to tolerate sex-based discrimination until Justice Ginsburg challenged the practice. She issued a dissenting opinion in 2007 when the Court disallowed a complaint by Lilly Ledbetter, who had discovered that she had been systematically underpaid for 15 years. One of President Obama's first actions in 2009 was to sign the Fair Pay Act into law.

Incidentally, Justice Ginsburg is also one of the people responsible for the contemporary use of the word gender. Here's her account of one of those days in the office that created repercussions we're still processing today:

In the seventies, I had a secretary, and she said, I've been typing this word sex, sex, sex, and let me tell you, the audience that you're addressing, the men that you are addressing - and they were all men in the appellate courts in those days - the first association of that word is not what you're talking about, so I suggest that you use a grammar book term: use the word gender. It will ward off distracting associations.⁴

The biological differences between men and women do not engender intellectual, social or moral differences. Men and women are the same. These facts ought to be self-evident. Their truth is obscured by the passive weight of tradition, but is also undermined by the active connivance of those who benefit most from the unequal status quo. The fight for equality is a very real fight that is being carried out in every area of human activity, often with little publicity. It's not just on the shop floor or in the call centre that people are striving for change - new ways of thinking are needed at every level, including the commanding heights of policy.

This book will explore where stereotypes and beliefs about the sexes originate and show that the gender inequality we find at work today has not always been present. We will cover the history of gender at work and how it has led to the idea that men and women are different. We will also consider the evidence for whether or not these differences are indeed real.

Our aim in this book is to debunk the view that the gendered world we see around us is the result of the natural differences between males and females; that biology has determined the outcome. We will show that - despite the obvious differences - we are remarkably similar and that therefore the differences we see between the genders at work are due to the world we have constructed. The message in this book may feel a little bleak to some, but it is one filled with optimism: because the gendered workplace has been constructed by us, it is perfectly within our power to deconstruct and recreate it. That is, of course, if we want to.

As the comedian George Carlin said: "Men are from Earth and women are from Earth. Get