Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law and Hastings Foundation Chair at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and founding director of WorkLife Law, recently spoke at Argonne about achieving diversity in the workplace.
In her talk, Williams said research over the last 40 years has shown gender bias is common in the workplace, and traditional approaches have failed to produce meaningful change in overcoming it.
She spoke about the need for a paradigm shift and new ways to achieve workplace diversity. One way is through bias interrupters. These are tweaks to basic business systems (hiring, performance, evaluations, assignments, etc.) that can interrupt implicit bias in the workplace, often without ever talking directly about bias.
This worksheet is a reference guide to using the bias interrupters Williams discussed. It outlines the four distinct types of gender bias, the patterns in which they present and suggestions for counteracting them.