A number of years ago I was introduced to the term“micro-inequity.” The term means that in everyday actions and language, peopletend to dismiss, overlook, ignore, or devalue people based on small phrases,actions, and word choice and that, over time, the inequities oppress and discriminateagainst certain types or classes of people. So, for example, if I always say inclass, “Guys, listen, you need to pay attention,” then I am ignoringapproximately 50 percent of my class or sending the message that women don’tneed to pay attention. Or if I present case studies in class and every singletime the protagonist is a white male, I send the message that white males arethe only ones who matter in this field. Or if I constantly refer to scientistsor eLearning developers as male, I am, by my words, excluding females from thediscussion.
Macro-inequities
A large problem with micro-inequities, among many, is thatthey eventually add up to macro-inequities, such as the unintended but veryreal inequity that kicked off this entire series of articles when The eLearning Guildrecorded a number of conference sessions but only one of the sessions was presentedby a woman.
In fact a recent article on the “digitally native news site”Quartz, titled “This mathematical formula shows that all-male panels are sexist,”put forth the assertion that “underrepresentation of women on speakers’ listsdoesn’t ‘just happen,’ despite many conference organizers’ claim that it does.”Instead it is a hidden bias that comes to a point when it visibly shows up asan assembled all male (and often all white) panel. The micro-inequities thatoccur prior to assembling that panel often involve bias toward willingness tosubmit, submission review, career opportunities, publications, language aroundthe field, graduate school opportunities, and other elements that prevent womenand historically underrepresented populations from rising to the level of beingconsidered for the panel. Or that prevent highly qualified women andhistorically underrepresented populations from being chosen for a panel or tohave their sessions recorded.
Ironically, of all the fields I’ve worked in, my perceptionis that eLearning has a high proportion of women in leadership roles. In ourfield, it’s not hard to point to examples of female CEOs, CLOs, well-knownconsultants, entrepreneurs, published authors, influential government employees,and leaders in virtually every area of eLearning, instructional technology, anddesign. All of which makes it more frustrating and puzzling that women areunderrepresented in panels, recorded sessions, and other highly visible venuesand that this gender bias is not always seen by members of our field.
However, there may be a scientific answer for why the biasexists and is hard to combat. A study about men’s perception of gender bias inthe sciences indicated that the men “would really rather not believe there isany sort of gender-bias problem in science, even when confronted with evidencein support of said problem’s existence.” (Melissa Dahl, New York Magazine’s The Science of Us column: “Men in Science Would Rather Not Believe There Is a Gender-Bias Problem in Science”). So evenhelping the field see the gender gap related to eLearning can be an uphillbattle.
As Judy Katz points out in her article “Gender Representation in eLearning,” maybe we need all female panels and allfemale recordings because we often see nothing wrong with all male panels orrecordings.
Proper coaching
So one of the things we need to try to do as a field is toavoid micro-inequities but we also need to do a better job of coaching womenwho want to enter the field and help them to see that they need to seek “reach”positions. My small contribution in this area is coaching students in a master’sprogram of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg,Pennsylvania.
I’ve learned through the years that when a female student visitsmy office and tells me she doesn’t think she is qualified to apply for acertain position, the right answer is not “of course you are, go ahead andapply. You need to be more aggressive.” While it may seem like a right answer,it’s not. Although not everyone agrees with me—see Clay Shirky’s 2010 blogpost, “ARant About Women.”
Helping a person obtain a position needs to be based onevidence of her ability to do the job; telling her to simply be more aggressivedoesn’t help her to defend herself in the interview or when talking to thepotential employer. To me that is just code for “be more like a man.” I thinkthat is a micro-inequity and it doesn’t help. Women can be forceful, confident,and successful without having to resort to “be like a man” to be successful. Theimplication is that if you “act like a woman, you won’t be successful.” Womencan be successful without having to “act like a man” and I know because I’veseen female students and colleagues being successful by just being themselves. Tobe human means we all have a mix of what society calls female or male traits.We need both to be successful in life and business. People who are all one wayor another tend not to be successful. Now all this doesn’t mean women shouldn’tbe aggressive or can’t be aggressive, but a blind dictate of “be moreaggressive” is not helpful.
In fact research indicates that the answer is more nuanced. Aresearch study found that for a woman to be ultra-successful, she needs to simultaneouslypresent herself as self-confident and dominant while tempering these qualitieswith displays of communal characteristics. (See “Researchers: How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace.”) This means coaching women to be aggressiveat all times isn’t good counseling. Studies do show that “all-female traits”are not helpful for promotion or leadership either, so again, the answer is amixture of traits.
Therefore a better recommendation to a woman entering thefield and unsure of her qualifications is to build her confidence in her ownskills by saying “let’s look at your resume and past accomplishments and seewhere you are qualified.” So she can be confident, assertive and, yes, evenaggressive when defending her qualifications.
A careful review with a female student about herqualifications and skills tends to lead to an “Aha” moment where she sees thather skills do align with what is being requested and she can apply withconfidence to the job. Then when talking to the potential employer, she can beaggressive in those areas where is has a strong foundation and can feel thatshe can be successful. This highlighting of skills and abilities canshort-circuit to some degree the “imposter syndrome” which Julie Dirksen talked aboutin her article “Women in the eLearning Field: Beginning a Conversation.”
The linking of skills to the needs of the employer mightseem obvious to an outsider but is not always obvious to someone who has livedher life with micro-inequities. Making links and connections for women in thefield has helped to provide confidence to many of my female students who havethen gone on to do great things.
