Breaking Bias: Strategies for a More Inclusive Tech Industry

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, where we talk about issues of underrepresentation and have difficult conversations. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

Hello, Samah.

[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello, Michelle.

[00:00:23] Speaker A: So before we even get into today’s topic, we were just laughing before this because I always start with, like, hello, Samah. And Thijs at Yoast, who does our post-production, right, puts everything together and gets it ready for us to put online. He thinks that’s funny. So, like. And he sings to you. Sometimes you sit in the office, and he’ll be like, hello, Samah. And so last week, you told me this after we finished recording. So when I uploaded it, I did a little video, or not video, little audio for him. I was like, hello, Thijs. And I guess he liked that because he responded with an audio. Hello, Michelle.

[00:01:02] Speaker B: I love it.

You were awesome. And he’s awesome, dude. He’s a really amazing person. Yeah.

[00:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, I’m just so grateful for all the work he does. He is so knowledgeable and just.

[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, easy.

[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:01:15] Speaker B: And he makes it so easy. So we love you guys. We love you guys. Thank you.

[00:01:19] Speaker A: Thank you. Thijs.

[00:01:23] Speaker B: He’s gonna cut it and replay it. You know, he’s going to have fun with it.

[00:01:28] Speaker A: He’s just going to sleep in his ears at night.

Anyway, you found a great article online from the Harvard Business School for us to talk through this week. And the article is called 5 Strategies for Overcoming Unconscious Bias in the Tech Industry. Interestingly, and I’m going to let you kind of run this, but I want to tell you that yesterday I shared a different article with a guy friend in tech who said, is this stuff really still going on? I thought we were past this, and I was like, oh, dear sweet child. No, no, dear sweet white man, no. I wish he had said, do you still experience this stuff? I’m like, yes, just this week, as a matter of fact, I gave an idea to somebody weeks ago who is now presenting it as their own idea. And I was like, whatever, I don’t really care. But. Because it wasn’t something that I needed to own, but at the same time, like another white man passing my idea off as his own kind of thing, you know? But like, oh, yes. Oh, yes, darling, yes, yes, yes. It still happens. So. And you came up with this article, and I was like, oh, yes, yes, yes. It’s still happening. And it isn’t just you and me thinking it’s happening with a Credible source like the Harvard Business School also. So tell us a little bit about why this article is important to you and tell us a little bit about it.

[00:02:53] Speaker B: Okay. First, I wish we only had issues now is this. But as you said, we have a lot. But the unconscious bias intake means a lot to me because, of course, lets me a little bit about it. It’s, of course, what does it mean? Often hold hidden stereotypes or make judgments without people realizing it. This kind of thing, of course, affects our decisions and actions. The spies can show up in areas like hiring, promotion, performance reviews, and product development. Even like, how can I say like the hiring bias? It’s based on your name people sometimes their CV scans are also rejected by some promotions. Sometimes women who have children or women want to get pregnant, or women are pregnant. Usually, they are not the first choice for promotions. Of course, there is a lot of technology, such as face recognition. A lot of them are biased against people of color or people from different ethnicities.

I found this article honestly because it’s a little bit of outdated research, but I don’t mean it’s outdated. It’s only one year ago, but it’s still happening because I was checking online a lot of information saying that it’s still happening in 2024, and there was a link for this article. It’s kind of five steps or five areas to focus on how to get over this bias. Of course, in the article, they go a lot a lot of details, and we will link it to our description.

But of course, the first one that I love it just becoming aware of it because a lot of people don’t know if it doesn’t happen. And of course, some people have this rule if it doesn’t happen to me, it doesn’t happen at all.

[00:04:54] Speaker A: Which is why I think that so many men in our industry just, you know, especially the ones that do respect us, right? So if a man does respect us, he gives us credit where. Where credit is due, he assumes that other men are like him and are doing the same thing. So you can be a perfectly wonderful person. You can have already addressed your bias personally without realizing that, yes, it’s still happening in the tech industry, and not everybody is as nice as you are.

[00:05:22] Speaker B: I totally agree. I just like I had a crazy conversation with my husband. I was talking to him about how in the Netherlands, I was also reading an article about a woman who has to work 47 days per year extra to get paid the same amount as her equal milk collie and my husband. The first thing is happening that doesn’t happen in the Netherlands. The article is wrong. We don’t have that. And he said they’re doing the same job, they should get paid the same, you know. And that is a lot, of course, happening.

[00:05:59] Speaker A: Well, no wonder you married him. What a good guy.

[00:06:02] Speaker B: He’s really Kutchies.

Yeah, I’m sorry if you don’t know me. And if you do, you know I always use weird words, you know, to name things. So I have my own language.

[00:06:13] Speaker A: I love it.

[00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So that is the first step, of course, to become aware of the bias.

There’s. There was a mod. I don’t know if it’s in the US or in the UK. If you see something, say something. And also at work, if you witness it, if you experience it, share it with people. It’s not about becoming, making the work environment negative. No. It’s allowed to talk about it, solve it, and move forward. Of course, all of us sit in the corner; we see the situation from what we believe or what’s happening. But it’s nice also to hear the other people.

The second one is to improve the culture and understanding of the company.

Your ability to respond respectfully to some situations to people from different cultures, classes, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and faiths or religions.

Sadly, there are a lot of companies, and I don’t know if you are pretty sure the same. We have it in June or August. A lot of companies pretend to support LGBTQ+ groups. They’re only focusing on one thing. They also don’t focus on the other. Just other people from different religions, let’s say, or different ethnicities or races. They just want to show, hey, we’re diverse, we’re an inclusive company. This is our focus in this month.

It’s really important to overcome this bias by talking about it and understanding how to improve the culture of the company to become more inclusive. And, of course, let’s be honest, I grew up in the Middle East. We didn’t have a lot of people of color around. We all of us, like, I don’t want to say we kind of olive skin. You know, we were not like Darkstone. We have a little bit of whities, but most of us are olive skin. So I didn’t grow up with people of color, like darker tones, or we don’t have a lot of acceptance for homosexuality. You gain knowledge of those things when you grow in life. And I’m pretty sure all of us are the same. Like when you grow up in a different culture, you travel, you learn, you grow in life, and then you start to learn and to respect, to understand. Different. The differences. I feel I’m talking too much today.

[00:08:49] Speaker A: No, I love it. No, I love it.

I mean, I can. I can add a few things after you’re done with this thought. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:59] Speaker B: And that is important. Of course, in addition to inclusivity and diversity, culture, acceptance, and respect it is really, really important because we can’t say we’re diverse; we’re inclusive. But if we don’t respect each other and welcome these differences, it’s okay to be different and then. And find power in that difference; then there are going to be obstacles to getting over the unconscious bias.

[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:09:28] Speaker B: So I’ll give the mic to you because.

[00:09:31] Speaker A: So you said a couple of things that I wanted to add on to. As you talked about that, we call it equal pay day here. Right. How far into the next year woman have to work to equal the salary of a man the year before?

And. And it’s usually somewhere around 40 to 50 days, depending on the year, etc.

You can break it down even further. So that’s like all women, that’s the average.

[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:09:54] Speaker A: But a woman of color, it’s longer. A woman who is actually a woman who’s Asian is less time they think, you know. Apparently, there is more concern about them being better at things than other women, I guess. But a Native American woman has to work almost two years to make the same salary as a man the year before. So depending on the color of your skin and how your name sounds and those kinds of things, that number gets either a little bit better for some women but mostly a lot worse for other women.

So I just wanted to say that. And I know in the Netherlands there’s. It’s probably not as diverse as we are here, but it’s because we’re such a big country with so many people.

But. But yeah, my guess is that if they broke that down in the Netherlands, you would see something similar as well. Although, I don’t know.

[00:10:46] Speaker B: Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And in the Netherlands, I think there are a couple of things happening.

First, the Netherlands is, I think, smaller than Ohio. We have only 17 million people, which is nothing. It’s a small city in the States.

What happened is that the women 20 years ago could not. If you work in the bank, you will get fired if you have kids because of your thinking. But also, until now, women who have kids have worked fewer hours. They’re the ones who sacrifice a little bit in their career or to follow their dream; most of them stay with the kids because the Daycare is ridiculously expensive, and that was something. The government was supposed to work on it, but they pushed it another three years. But all the time, they ask for more women in the workforce. However, women with children cannot leave their children at home alone. When you put the child in the daycare, it can cost you €2,000, approximately monthly. That’s a lot of money. So. Yeah, it’s a lot of money. So yeah, I don’t want to make fun of it. We have different kinds of it, you know.

[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, same.

[00:11:54] Speaker B: But. But it is still crazy that we need to argue about having a better daycare system so we have more women in the workforce and also, at the same time, equal pay. Just.

[00:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it was crazy.

[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:12:08] Speaker A: The other thing that you said was that, and this is true, right, Depending on how ethnic your name sounds in different areas, you may not even be offered an interview.

You may not even be considered or screened for a job, no matter how qualified you are.

This makes me wonder, since AI, like things like ChatGPT and those kinds of things, and so many of our algorithms now are based on computer learning from things that are stored already on the Internet, if those unconscious biases like that are automatically built into some AI filters. So, for example, a company that’s getting thousands of applications every day, they’re using an AI-type sorter to determine if somebody has the right words that they’re. That they need to mention. As far as education and things like that, is it also? Could it be happening? I have no idea. I’m just posing the question that some of those have been trained to have the same bias that people who have physically sorted those kinds of things in the past have too. Are we training AI to have the biases that this article talks about? And I’m wondering, I don’t know. And it’s possible. And if that’s true.

[00:13:34] Speaker B: I love your question, but I think it depends on the people who are building that tool. If that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, if that people think that, yeah, they should add it because I’m pretty sure, let’s be honest, if a pilot, a guy named Osama, has applied to work as a pilot, I think it will give a red alert for his cv, you know, or whatever. Or Isha, if she applies for a job, the first thing they will scan is If she’s veiled, she’s Muslim, you know, those things. I think it depends. Maybe I’m not sure. Also, I’m just guessing from my Brain. It’s the people who are building the tools. Are they designing also? They move their bias or the way they think to this tool to do the same things. Or they’re going to focus only on the skills and the years of experience and indication. It’s a. We should.

[00:14:28] Speaker A: We should dig into this for a future episode to see how biased AI might be. Yeah, I. I think I just sent you down a rabbit hole that you’ll be looking at for about a week.

[00:14:39] Speaker B: I’m just going to be. I’m going to enjoy it.

[00:14:43] Speaker A: Wait till you hear this, Michelle. I know the DMs between us will be crazy, but I think the very first one is the most important, which is recognizing that we all have biases.

This is funny because before you even posed this, I had created something and posted it online.

Say, this is my quote, right? I just make stuff up and put it on the web.

We all judge others. It’s human. That is our human nature. That is our survival skill, is judging others from way back when right? But we must strive to judge others through a lens of gentleness and empathy because the world needs humans who practice kindness and humanity. Right? So.

And that is understanding that I, you know, I.

I grew up with parents who judged others visually very much. Right?

Whereas, like, we would be in a restaurant, and my mother would not so quietly say, can you believe what that woman is wearing? She’s practically poured into that outfit, right? Or yellow and purple, she looks like an Easter egg. I mean, these are things that I remember her saying in my past.

So, I have had to overcome that bias. For example, I used to look at women who dressed scantily or in too-tight clothes and think to myself, “Gosh, that looks terrible.” But now I look at women who dress that way and think that is their personal expression.

Either that’s how they want to dress or the only way they can dress, right? If I didn’t have the money to buy new clothes but I had gained weight, I would have to wear the clothes in my closet.

Am I going to judge that woman because she’s wearing what she has, or does she like how she looks in that? Why judge her for that? If that’s her personal expression, it means more power to her, right? And so I no longer.

I’ve removed that from the way that I look at people and make judgments about them. I don’t judge people based on their clothing and their appearance anymore.

And part of that is having Been judged myself, right? As a plus-size person. People assume things about me. I can’t control what other people think about me, but I don’t have to let it bother me. Right. So, I try not to have those same judgments and biases against others. But it takes a long time to undo the things in our heads from years and years of family and culture and advertisement and television and all of those things. So it’s not like you can just read this article and go, oh yeah, okay, well, now I have a bias. Now, I’m going to be aware of it. It does take a lot of introspection as an individual and a lot of attention and education as a corporation.

[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. What we are, we learn it since we’re little kids. Of course, we are our parents. How much do we like it or dislike it? We just copy from them. Of course, we can sometimes change this behavior when we grow old, as you said, like with judgment.

I would also like to add something. There are people like this. I don’t want to say unhidden racism.

No, sorry. The hidden racism. It’s like women who grow, let’s say, in Europe, let’s say in Norway. She’s always around her white neighborhood. If you say someone with a person of color, she will say, oh, you’re going to steal my bag, or What’s he going to do? That is something that brings us to point number three. It just also creates a safe space for learning. Like if there’s something, hey, this is you looking at me weirdly. You’ve made me feel uncomfortable. You make me feel like I’m going to harm you because I look different from you. That’s not okay. But of course, I take the other person’s courage to ask that question even. Let’s go. I’m learning about the pronouns, I’m learning more about the LGBTQ+ group, and what I have. I’m really blessed with amazing colleagues. Like our colleague and friend, Niels shared the other day a tool explanation about pronounced I can ask. And I feel that is my safe environment here, where I can ask questions. I didn’t know it before. I didn’t study it at school, and I know homosexual people from before, but I was not that really friendly close, and I was always scared to ask. But it also depends on whether we start creating a safe space for learning remember, once we were talking, and you were saying, yeah, sometimes you make mistakes.

[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:19:31] Speaker B: And even you say the wrong phrase and then later, okay, we move on and learn it. And also the same. You say something, but no, that’s not okay to say it. Let’s use it differently. All of us, we learn. We grow by learning. And that is important. What is the bias? What is?

What is? What is the effect on other people? Let’s learn it. Let’s. How to unlearn it in our head. How do we do it differently? Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah.

[00:20:02] Speaker A: Well, I’ve also learned one thing. In the past, when you wanted to correct somebody or offer a suggestion for them to learn and grow from things that they’ve said, do it with a gentle correction. Because if you come at somebody who has said something this way their entire lives, they are in a. Excuse me, operating from a place of not understanding and fear. And they might not be afraid. Afraid, right? But that comes from that same brain center as fear. Because you don’t understand something, it’s foreign to you. It. There’s a place of fear there. So if somebody, like my mother in her 70s, mispronounced somebody, and I turn to her, and I go, that is not the pronoun they use, Mom. They use them. Them. She’s going to automatically put up a defense. Right. But if I just put my hand on her.

Oh, I wanted you to. I wanted to remind you that they use them. Them pronouns. Not she, her, or he, him. I know it’s really hard to internalize that kind of, but the more you practice it, the easier it will become. She’ll still feel slightly defensive, but not as much as if I snap at her. Right. Especially if it’s like the fifth time she’s done it because she’s older and it’s a little bit harder for her to remember. It’s a little bit harder for her to understand because it was not a concept she grew up with. And she has now 75 years of internal, unrecognized bias. And so when we gently correct somebody as what? Allie and I once talked about calling people in instead of calling people out. Right. So have a side conversation, a gentle conversation. People are more responsive to that. By and large, there will always be people who are like, I will never respect your pronouns, you know, kind of thing. And they’re just beyond help. But if there are people willing to learn, gentle correction will almost always serve you better than hasty snapping at somebody or something I have already told you; you know, tone of voice carries a lot.

[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s. It’s learning. It’s so difficult because I would say about myself, I was 31 years old before I moved to the Netherlands. This is very difficult for me to unlearn. I would say about the pronouns because, in my native language, everything is female and male. Even the chair, the table, and the verbs are different. And the whole sentence will be different. If you write at the beginning, for example, he or she or they. Even they. Even they. We have a female and a male, and we don’t even use them. Even for two people, we have different pronouns. And for the. So that is sometimes learning and moving forward from it. It takes time, and I’m blessed. People around me even sometimes, once I made a mistake, I said to the person hey, lovely lady. And then some of my nice colleagues sent me a DM Slack saying that that person doesn’t identify herself as a lady. Then it is. It is. Then, immediately, I change it. But I’m really happy if you don’t tell me, I will not know. Then, the other person thinks that he is rude.

[00:23:32] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah. And we’re all learning; we’re all growing.

[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Last but not least, we should turn negative things into positive things. If there’s a bias, talk about it, try to solve it, try to learn it. And it’s very hard to break a habit. But keep trying. And at the same time, I always have trick work. Just exchange yourself with that person for a minute. How would it feel? In funny Arabic, they say if you put your finger in my eye, it will hurt you. But if you put your finger in my eye, it will also hurt me so that it’s kind of the same mutual thing. And that is, sometimes, I just like to switch places for one minute, and that is how that will make me feel. Yeah. And be accepted. The world is changing for the better. I don’t think so, but let’s be positive.

[00:24:34] Speaker A: Some of it is. Some of it is for sure. We have a phrase in English, at least in America, here that says to put yourself in their shoes. Like if you can from that perspective.

But don’t poke me in the eye, don’t poke me.

[00:24:49] Speaker B: It’s going to hurt.

No. Yeah. And yeah.

And also, they shared a fun test.

It’s called IAT, the Implicate association test.

It was developed by professors from Harvard University and the Harvard of Washington and Virginia. It detects subconscious associations in memory. We will share it with everyone. Maybe we can also share it on Twitter and ask people, “Hey, do it.” And just for the fun of it, we don’t want you to share the results, but if you want to, feel free to do so. I think that will be if you don’t want to share it.

[00:25:27] Speaker A: Or just your impression of it would be nice too, for sure.

Very good.

Awesome. This is great. So this is. We have one more show this year. Next week, we will record our yearly wrap-up, and then we’re taking the rest of December off. Excuse me, I’ve got a frog in my throat.

We’re taking the rest of the year off. Samar will be traveling. It is the holidays. It is the end-of-year craziness. And so we are going to take a few weeks off and then we will be back in the new year. So join us next week as we wrap up what we accomplished this year together and the kinds of stories I will go through to see what my favorite and what I liked. Eh, that was all right, I guess.

And we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about that next week. Tell us if you’ve listened this far and have a favorite episode from this year. You can either DM us, you can tweet us, you can blue. We’re not in the blue sky. I’m in the blue sky. But anyway, I’ll get us on blue sky. But anyway, I’m too. I know. So, you have two social media accounts. I’m so proud of you.

So.

So let us know what your favorite episode was this year, and we’ll also talk about that next week. So thank you. So this has been awesome. I love it. I love it when we end an episode, and my face hurts from smiling at you. So thank you.

[00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:26:53] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:26:53] Speaker B: Have a beautiful, productive day or evening. Is anyone listening?

[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Or tomorrow or whatever. Yeah, we’ll see you all next week. Bye.

[00:27:03] Speaker B: Yes. See you. Bye.

[00:27:07] Speaker A: If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode, or just saying hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.