The Gender Riddle in Learning and Development

I like to think of myself as an example of a successfulwoman, both in business and in my personal life. I like to think that I’mteaching my kids that women are just as smart and strong and capable as men. So imagine my disappointment when none of mysix children nor my extremely supportive husband could solve this riddle: “Afather and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son isrushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeonsays, ‘I can’t operate—that boy is my son!’ Explain.”

I posed this riddle at dinner one night and not one of mylovely family thought that the surgeon could be the boy’s mother. The responsethey settled on is that the boy had two fathers, which gets partial credit, butstill reinforces how deep our cultural gender biases run: that it’s more likelythat the boy was the son of a gay couple, which reinforces that surgeons aremen, than the likelihood that his mother could be a surgeon. Sadly, it’s notjust my family; most people overlook what should be an obvious answer (seeReference 1).

Some personal history

When I started my own company in 2008, I didn’t know how bigan impact my gender would have on my professional interactions. It quicklybecame apparent that my anatomy was used as a barometer of my ability.

In one of my first presentations at a learning conference, Iwas rated highly by one attendee for my knowledge, passion, and presentationskills, but was rated poorly by the same attendee for “not looking like a CEO.”In a conversation with one of my male sales execs at another event, a malefounder of another company, after ignoring me for most of the conversation,asked my employee, “And what does she dofor you?” (He replied with a smile,“She’s my boss.”) More professional conversations than I can count led to meninviting me for a drink or out for a date, or in some cases, more inappropriaterequests.

As a woman who founded a company that intersected with thetech and gaming industries, I learned how to respond to unwanted advances andindecent proposals. I learned how to avoid situations where my intentions mightbe even slightly misconstrued. I learned how to navigate the minefield of beinga female in male-dominated environments.

The learning industry should be different, but is it?

While the tech and gaming industries are notorious for theirgender bias and harassment issues, the learning industry has much more femalerepresentation and leadership. In many organizations, female executives arecommon in HR and training. As a function that focuses on development and growthof individuals, learning professionals are often viewed as the “teachers” ofthe organization.

With more equal representation in our industry, you’d thinkthat gender bias and discrimination wouldn’t be as big of an issue.Unfortunately, even in organizations and industries that are women-dominated orgender-equal, women still make less money than their male counterparts (seeReference 2).

Why is this? One reason is that culturally, women are vieweddifferently than men, even when our behaviors are the same. There are numerousstudies that look at how differently women and men in leadership roles areperceived (see References 3, 4, and 5). This can manifest itself in men andwomen being evaluated differently in performance reviews (Reference 6). Thiscan look like women being judged more critically both during and afternegotiating a salary (Reference 7).

It is death by a thousand cuts when the perception ofwomen’s capabilities color every meeting, every email, every presentation,every project. These pervasive cultural opinions inspire new words, like“mansplaining” and “booth babes.” Recently, the worst of these attitudes havebeen seen in full-on attacks on women; if you have the stomach for it, search“gamergate” on Google or the hashtag #gamergate on Twitter.

An action plan we can all live with

Gender bias and harassment is alive and well, both implicitand explicit, and affects women’s ability to succeed in leadership roles. Sowhat can we, as training professionals, do?

I’ve been in many conversations with learning industry peerswhere we’ve talked about learning and development (L&D) leadership having a“seat at the table.” Some opinions reign that training is viewed as a costcenter, as too “touchy-feely,” too focused on nurturing the organization andnot focused enough on solving the problems in the business. L&Dprofessionals often resist calculating ROI, thinking that the impact oftraining can’t be determined in complex environments where many factors are atplay. We fail to make the connection between our training initiatives andbusiness outcomes. We don’t take credit for or market our successes.

Why not? There’s nothing that says that we can’t be focusedon nurturing and developing individuals AND measuring and promoting businessimpact. In fact, as organizations evolve and collaborative work environmentsare the ones succeeding, the gap between the perception of male and femaleleaders is narrowing, with one study reporting women leaders are starting to beperceived as more effective than men (Reference 8).

So too should the perception gap between L&D focus andbusiness outcomes be closing. Learning and development can have just as muchimpact on a company’s success as marketing or research and development (R&D)or project management. We need to start recognizing the unique opportunity andadvantage L&D provides to an organization and back up our successes withdata. Let’s embrace who we are and use it to our advantage.

What about the gender bias that women in our organizationsface every day?

We need to think beyond compliance training in our effortsto create egalitarian organizations. It’s our role to be vigilant. We are the teachers;let’s lead by example. We are the developers of employees; let’s setexpectations and hold our organization to them. We can work with HR to ensurethat employee evaluations and feedback aren’t gender biased. We can create safespaces to talk and grow and learn as individuals so that the collectiveorganization is better for it.

Gender bias and harassment will likely happen; it is our jobto educate and improve our organization to create a culture where we can callthese things out and say, “This is not okay.”

It is not an easy answer. It requires all of us to band together,to check our assumptions and to question our intrinsic beliefs. Let’s worktowards a world where gender bias isn’t the punch line of a riddle.

(Editor’s Note: This is the second article in our discussion ofwomen in eLearning.)