Managing bias with free resources

Unconscious biases are those triggers that without our control influence our actions. They might be the job you expect someone to have because of their appearance or the intelligence you anticipate a candidate has due to their accent.

For under represented minorities in the work place biases have real and lasting negative affects - work is attributed to another colleague, skills are down played and interviews are unsuccessful. This can be due to any manner of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, appearance, age or other diversity dimension.

When we move away from seeing diversity as more than just a pipeline issue bias management is an effective tool in finding the unfair and negative actions people commit due to their biases. For many companies today it is one of the most important trends in people management.

At Google unconscious bias training is taken very seriously with over 25000 employees having attended training. The Google bias workshop is available for free on YouTube:



Facebook is also now releasing all of it's managing bias training online. You can watch from their page via Vimeo at http://managingbias.fb.com/ Their online training is comprehensive and covers stereotypes, likeability, performance expectations and the business case for inclusiveness.

Consumer Electronics Association petitioning to adopt an anti "booth babe" dress policy at CES

I personally am one of the people that finds booth babes insulting, for one thing as a high spender on consumer and industry hardware I am often ignored by booth staff for the crime of being a woman. Even assuming that this weren't true often marketing staff at trade shows are hired for their attractiveness rather than their knowledge of the product that they're representing. It's antiquated sexist and all in all lazy marketing and I'd like to see less of it.

Events like the Penny Arcade Expo have put the question to its attendees directly in the past and now have a ban on Booth Babes. Marketers fight for attention through other means - competitions, giveaways, high tech installations and interactive displays and no one is worse off for it.

CEA president Karen Chupka offered the following


“What does the concept of the Booth Babe say about women? It says that women's place at any tech-related event can only be as an attractive decoration to sweeten the event for the men,” former Eurogamer.net writer Florence noted. “It says that women aren't truly welcome in that world, because the moment you objectify something it isn't part of anything. It's just there. It's just something else to be consumed. Fundamentally, it depicts a woman as a product.

"What does the concept of the Booth Babe say about men? It says that we objectify women to such an extent that we will think nothing of attractive women just "being there" while we watch. It says that we are exactly what a corporate entity believes us to be. It makes us a predictable, easily defined and easily manipulated stick-man on a company whiteboard. It cheapens us. It cheapens all of us. It cheapens the event, and everyone at it, male or female."

I will not lie this started a heated discussion on the #pax IRC channel but what I find positive is the number of men that feel as strongly about this as the women. What do you think? Sign the petition on Change.org if you'd like to see less booth babes at CES and start the conversation about removing them as a necessary part of trade shows.

Sign the petition to enforce a dress policy at CES on Change.org

What Male And Female Scientists Say About Women In Science

Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier and His Wife (Wikimedia)

Men

• “morphological differences and biological differences [make men better at] hardcore math and physics.” — male assistant professor, genetics
• "[There are] some brain differences between men and women that explain it." — male grad student, biology
• “On balance [women are] just less interested in math.” — male professor, biology
• “Physics is more difficult for girls and you need a lot of thinking, and the calculation, and the logic. So that’s maybe hard for girls.” — male grad student, physics
• “Science has been a male-dominated field for a substantially long period of time, and it’s going to take a while for that shift to change.” — male grad student, biology
• "Women have to make a choice [because] the woman ends up being the primary caregiver if they have children.” — male postdoctoral fellow, biology

Women

• “I think women ... want to have more of a sense that what they are doing is helping somebody. ... Maybe there are more women in ... biology [because] you can be like ‘Oh, I am going to go cure cancer.’” — postdoctoral fellow, biology
• "Physics is more abstract and biology is more concrete. Women are less likely to like abstract things.” — female associate professor, physics
• “[A friend of mine] was always told, ‘Oh, you’re not good at math,’ until she found herself getting As in a multivariable calculus class. You know, she was scared of math all through high school.” — female grad student, physics
• “Male-dominated departments are really unpleasant for women. [...] Men can be huge jerks in those situations.” — female associate professor, biology
• “I know a lot of women who are in chemistry and physics who are excellent at what they’re doing, but are often sidelined or ignored by their colleagues because there’s just not very many of them.” — female assistant professor, biology
• “It’s not going to be solved until we figure out how to help mothers figure out how to do the career and the kid thing.” — female associate professor, physics

More at http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/what-male-and-female-scientists-say-about-women-in

A primer on Sexism in the Tech Industry

Net Magazine have printed a great primer covering concepts for sexism in the tech industry including common terms used by geek feminists and a link to a number of efforts to combat this issue (including our friends over at the Ada Initiative)

Not everyone is always on the same page when it comes to the terms we use in these debates, so let's start there:

• Feminism: the simple belief that women deserve to have the same social, economical and political rights as men, be treated equally and fairly, and given equal opportunities. Modern (third-wave) feminists make it even simpler: fair and actual equality for all, regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, religion, age, and sexuality.
• Privilege: Receiving benefits in life, however subtle or invisible they may seem to you, simply for belonging to a group you didn't work hard for to get in. In today's Western society, being male, white and straight gives you three huge privileges over everyone else. More on that in a bit.
• Positive action: Often incorrectly labelled 'positive discrimination', positive action is a measure imposed (usually by government) to enforce a change in the ratio of certain groups in systems. This act is the acknowledgment of the scientific and historical evidence that natural social progress moves too slowly, requiring overseeing entities to intervene (temporarily) as a way of speeding up this progress – so that we may actually enjoy the improvements in our lifetimes.
• Discrimination: Prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
• Prejudice: Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Since positive action is based on both reason and actual experience, the label 'positive discrimination' (and the subsequent cries of "it's still discrimination!") is inaccurate and deceitful.
• Meritocracy: A culture or society in which power is given to people based on their proven abilities, as opposed to wealth, background, privilege, and so forth.
• Rape culture: The assessment of how today's society makes light of rape – a physically and emotionally painful, and often traumatic and violent crime – which significantly contributes to the mistreatment of women by making their mistreatment a seemingly accepted practice. Rape jokes and their ilk contribute heavily to this

More at http://www.netmagazine.com/features/primer-sexism-tech-industry

Love your Sysadmin like they love your systems on SysAdmin Appreciation Day!

Sometimes their jokes can be a little left of field, and sometimes you roll the dice and hope you haven't hired a Bastard Operator From Hell, but SysAdmins do a lot of hardwork in the hours that you and I don't want to be working.

This Friday is SysAdmin Appreciation day, so why not take some time out to appreciate your under appreciated, late night keyboard jockeys and 24/7 on call saviours?

Buy them a slab of caffeinated drinks, an unusual Rubik's cube, a bottle of good Scotch whiskey, even that weird old computer you've had at the back of your cupboard for 10 years will probably make their eyes light up. Later remember safe and warm in your bed at 3am that it's not you on call that night out in the cold with blinking terminals peering out at you.

http://www.sysadminday.com/

Missed Girl Geek Dinners at Google Sydney? Watch the speeches on YouTube

Recently I was involved in helping run a Girl Geek Dinner event at the Google Sydney office and we had an overwhelming response and a great night. It even made the official Google Australia blog!

If you weren't able to attend or watch the Livestream you might be interested to know that both the key note speech from Mary Gardiner from the Ada Initiative and lightning talks from some of our female Google software engineers and the organiser of Girl Geek Dinners are available on YouTube. Apparently I'm in them, complete with bad jokes.

Keynote:



Lightning Talks:



Love this? Live in Sydney? Come to our next event! You can read all about Girl Geek Dinners on the official blog.

Girl Geek Dinners Sydney is back

The first major event for the year is booked in for March 10th at UTS.

To help celebrate International Women’s Day we have organised a fun-filled event full of tech talks and a special section on softer skills as requested by some of you last year.

Technical talks:

• Recent cyber attacks and information security
• Pia Waugh will be coming from Canberra to discuss the National Broadband Network
• OzGDI Jscript teacher Cathy 

Career and soft skills:

• Salary negotiation: Find out what you are worth and get it
• Smash the glass ceiling: What has really worked for Lynn Kraus, partner at Ernst & Young (with a Q&A so have your questions ready)
• Coaching: Emily Baxter, girl geek turned life coach will give a short talk

What: Girl Geek Dinner
Where: Aerial UTS Function Centre, level 7, UTS building 10. Enter at 235 Jones St, Ultimo Foyer, take the lift to level 7.
When: Thursday 10 March 2011. Talks start at 6:30 but don’t miss the nibbles and drinks first from 6pm!

More at: http://www.girlgeeksydney.com/

Social Media Women Australia

Social media really speaks across roles in business today; not just for the geeks social media has gained the eye of Marketers, sales people, brand representatives and digital strategists looking to reach out to the public and start the two way conversation.

The great news is there are a lot more roles out there for women in Social Media and we'd like to see even more.

If you're in Sydney you can sign up to be at the next Social Media Women event in person:
http://socialmediawomenmarch.eventbrite.com/

The next event is all about International Women's Day and it's 100th Anniversary and contributing to one of the greatest achievements in social networking; Wikipedia.

Date: Tuesday 8 March 2011
Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
Venue: The Supper Club at the Oxford Hotel,
134 Oxford St, Darlinghurst.

Fear not if you're not nearby you can follow the campaign on Twitter follow #women4wikipedia and join in the weekly Twitter Chat Monday nights 8pm AEST (Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney); 7pm Brisbane; 7.30pm Adelaide; 5pm AWST Perth/WA; 9am UTC/GMT.

New women in Open Source Non Profit: The Ada Initiative

The Ada Initiative is a new non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.

The Ada Initiative is focused on helping women get careers in open technology through recruitment and training programs for women, education for community members who want to help women, and working with corporations and projects to improve their outreach to women.

As well as supporting women in the Open Source comunity and technology careers the non profit will offer free diversity consulting services to organisations wishing for assistance.

Want to know more? Friend The Ada Initative on Facebook, Follow them on Twitter or Subscribe to the blog!