Masculinity as a way of life has eaten deep into the culture of our institutions, organizations and even the way objects and tools are being designed and It showed in the Leadway Pensure’s Job requirement post. The unconscious bias that the role is meant for a male personality was probably what lead to what people might see as an error.
While the world does not favour any gender in the realm of things, people favour people and people are prone to certain workplace bias that hinders the opposite gender from being comfortable.
In the course of hiring new talents, certain roles are being stereotyped as roles meant for the masculine gender and such roles include those in Engineering and technology-related fields. It is true that these roles have a limited number of female applicants but that does not account for the biases shown towards the role. The scarcity of women in these fields can be attributed to childhood conditioning.
Both genders are born into a society that has socially conditioned you to accept what the society suggests is normal and those who refused are seen as rebels. Maybe, being a rebel is not a bad thing as many has seen. The acts of subscribing to social norms can sometimes box the abilities possessed by an individual.
The girl during childhood days is introduced to toys, dolls and cartoons engineered to condition the early thoughts of what it means to be a girl. This sort of differentiation is out to create certain traits that the girl or boy child would pick up.
The kind of family the girl child is born into also helps develop the character and ability of that child. While a well enlightened and free will kind of family would be accommodating and supportive of the choices made by the girl child right from childhood to adulthood, most families would be against certain traits.
A girl who picks certain traits that are classified as masculine in nature is seen as Tomboy. This labelling at times pulls them down and forces them to accept the social norms with the support of pressure from family, friends and society and those who resist this are seen as rebels but these rebels are some of those who go on to accomplish great feats in their various chosen careers.
These Girls classified as Rebels find themselves in areas such as Engineering and technology-related fields but constantly encounter workplace barriers that try to cripple their impact and productivity rate and they also face biased recruiter during the recruitment process.
One of such biases faced is the unconscious bias in which stereotype is held about a certain group of people or gender unconsciously and this happens due to the act of categorizing people.
What is called unconscious bias can be seen in Leadway Pensure’s recruitment post for a female software developer. The software developer was addressed as “he instead of she” and this shows the level at which unconscious biases take place unintentionally and while these can be dismissed as a mistake, it shows the level at which biases cloud our decisions and judgements.
With the unconscious biases having taken place in the recruitment post by Leadway assurance, there is a tendency that it would encroach either into the actual recruitment process or workplace activities. While a public apology meant seem appropriate for the post with aid of people passively seeing it as an error, this kind of situation might repeat itself in another way.
There is would be a need for Leadway assurance’s workplace practices and recruitment exercises to be evaluated with the diversity and inclusion mindset and principles at the heart of the process.
Gender-neutral practices should be deliberately injected into the culture and training carried out on how to identify and fight off gender biases and other forms of workplace biases that hinder productivity.
