How bias-aware people can create better workplaces

This is our third bonus episode of Battle Tactics for your Sexist Workplace.

You may notice that there is no audio to listen to here. That's because our bonus episodes are available to listeners who support BTSW and our home station, KUOW, with a one-time contribution of $20.

In this week’s bonus episode, we address a problem at the root of everything that we talk about on the podcast. Sexism, yes, of course, but more specifically, implicit gender bias — those pesky, intrusive, often unconscious thoughts that influence our behaviors. And since we live in a sexist society, a lot of these biases are, honestly, pretty terrible.

So what do we do about them?

Our guest this week is Lily Zheng, a diversity and inclusion consultant and co-author of “Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination.” And she has a surprising answer to this question: instead of trying to get rid of your biases, she said, “befriend” them, because we can’t deal with our implicit biases until we feel comfortable acknowledging them.

Zheng gave us concrete tactics we can use to create bias-aware and inclusive workplaces and talked about how she actively cultivates hope. She asked us to "think about productive things that we can do to move us from where we are to where we dream we can be."

Together, she said, “We can make gender into something that’s awesome instead of something that’s terrible.”

Produced for the web by Christy Scheuer.