Williams identifies four patterns of bias that create obstacles to women’s advancement in the workplace, based on interviews with 127 working women, more than half of them women of colour.

Prove-It-Again!

The first pattern Williams identifies is the ‘Prove-It-Again’-bias. This pattern is a descriptive bias, based on assumptions about typical male and female behaviour. Information that supports pre-existing stereotypes tends to be noticed and remembered while information that contradicts them tends to be overlooked and forgotten. Men are judged on their potential, while women are judged on their performance. Women are forced to prove their competence over and over, whereas men are given the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, the best strategy for dealing with the Prove-It-Again pattern is to prove it again. Although women should not have to be more competent to get to the same place as men, Williams argues that women need to understand the forces working against them so that additional pressure created by these biases does not take them by surprise. Furthermore, because this bias is a descriptive bias, it can be undercut by individuating information, by, for instance, presenting success in objective metrics and documenting achievements.

The Tightrope

The second pattern of gender bias Williams identifies is called the ‘Tightrope’. It is also the most commonly encountered bias, as almost three quarters of Williams’ interviewees experienced this pattern. Prescriptive stereotypes dictate that women should be modest, self-effacing and nice—traits that are traditionally associated with femininity. But to succeed in the workplace, people need to display qualities traditionally associated with masculinity: leadership, ambition, directness. As such, women often have to navigate a very tight space between being perceived as too feminine and liked but not respected or too masculine and respected but not liked. Women risk being written off as ‘too feminine’ when they are agreeable and ‘too masculine’ when they are aggressive. Williams argues that men experience this pattern of bias too. Underlying this problem is the assumption that women and men need to conform to a set of expectations that deny important parts of their identity. Williams suggest that in order to navigate the tightrope bias, women should strategically employ masculine and feminine qualities using a strategy she calls “gender judo.” One interviewee, for example, told Williams, “I’m warm Ms. Mother ninety-five percent of the time so when I need to be tough, I can be.”

The Maternal Wall

Women with children are routinely pushed to the margins of the professional world. Williams calls this pattern of gender bias the ‘Maternal Wall’. Once triggered, the Maternal Wall is the strongest form of bias. Motherhood triggers negative competence and commitment assumptions. In addition, Maternal Wall bias consists of assumptions about how mothers should act: they should stay home in order to be a ‘good’ mother. As such, mothers are more likely to be side-lined for being seen prioritizing family over work. This pattern is especially significant in the Netherlands, where many women work part-time. This bias does not just affect mothers; often younger women feel their career opportunities are being limited by the assumption that they will have children in the future. The most obvious solution to this pattern of bias is to implement policies that enable both women and men to be productive at work while retaining some flexibility in their personal life. Unfortunately, these policies work on paper but not always in practice, since gender bias is often implicit.

Tug of War

The final pattern of gender bias Williams identifies is called the ‘Tug of War’. All of these pressures on women mentioned above can lead them to judge each other. Advancement in a male dominated workplace can take the form of a zero-sum game, with only one position for a woman at the top.

Unfortunately, the four bias patterns Williams describes show that organizations are changing slowly. We are living and working in a world shaped by deeply embedded assumptions about gender roles, and women need tools to navigate this world as they find it.

See www.biasinterrupters.org for more information on gender bias and how to interrupt it.