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Professionalism Bias
The study of code-switching is really important work, which I found to finally define and put words to what I had faced in other countries that I lived in where there was a very specific standard of what “professional” looked like. And this is called professionalism bias, or very narrow definitions of what it means to be a leader, to be successful, to be authentic in the workplace.
Code-switching is essentially what so many communities of color have to go through and have to change about themselves to conform to these very narrow definitions of professionalism. Changing your manner of speaking, your hairstyle. A woman of color who wears a hijab in her home, but when she comes into the workplace, she doesn’t wear the hijab. Various things about you to fit into, again, a very narrow definition of what it means to be professional. And research has found that code-switching is really exhausting for professionals of color, specifically. It takes a real mental and psychological toll on professionals who have to code-switch every day to feel like they belong in the workplace or they can belong in the workplace – only to often find that even when they code-switch, they cannot.
Common Gender Biases
Prove-it-again bias specifically relates to how, no matter how established you are, no matter how experienced you are, no matter how exemplary you are, for women of color, you constantly have to reestablish your authority and prove that you are good enough and that you belong, even when on paper you are a stellar candidate.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first ever Black female Supreme Court Justice, when confirmed, faced, again and again, constant questioning and pushback against her exceptional credentials, right? It really brought the “pet-to-threat” phenomenon to mind to me. When women of color, Black women, are brought into an organization – and especially if they’re the “token,” the only, or one of the very few – there’s a lot of excitement about what they’re going to bring into the workplace: the diversity, the different points of view. So, they come in as the “pet.” And as they get more established, as they are in any position to make real change, to really do what they were brought in to do – make decisions, lead, really bring up diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, create a more inclusive workplace and society – they start becoming the threat. They start facing pushback.
This is very much tied to the narrow tightrope that many women, most women – and again compounded for women of color – that we face, where we walk a very narrow tightrope between being respected and being liked. Again, linked to the gender schema that we see all throughout society where there’s a very narrow definition of what’s “acceptable behavior” for women. That’s very narrow in corporate settings, and even more narrow when you think about it from a standpoint of women in leadership positions. And often even when they feel like they have found ways to navigate that narrow tightrope, they constantly face prove-it-again bias where they have to constantly reestablish their reason for being there.
Identifying Biases in Action
The “Flip It to Test It” framework was developed by Kristen Pressner, who is a pharmaceuticals executive, and essentially found that often when you flip it to test it, you can identify biases in action. So, for example, when a male employee asked her for a salary raise, she was more likely to give him the consideration and consider that request much more seriously than when a female employee asked for a salary raise. And she was so surprised to learn that she, too, like all of us in society, had been conditioned with gender bias. So, Kristen Pressner developed a really, really fantastic way to test situations where bias could be present. And that is, if we use a word to describe, for example, a female employee, we flip it and think about whether we would use the same word to describe a male employee’s behavior in the same situation.
For example, often, unfortunately, the stereotype is that women are emotional or are not leaderlike. But when you flip that and you talk about men being emotional, you would never use that terminology to describe a male employee in the workplace. “Flip It to Test It” may not always operate when it comes to, for example, I, as a woman of color, am often called articulate, but a white woman who is from a Western background certainly would not be called articulate. But even if she is, it wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a microaggression, whereas for myself, as a woman of color, it is.