Why Are Even Women Biased Against Women?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Women are sexist too. Even avowed feminists are found to be unconsciously biased against women when they take 'implicit association' tests. Mary Ann Sieghart asks where these discriminatory attitudes come from and what we can do about them. Evidence for women's own sexist biases abounds. In one example, female science professors rated the application materials of ostensibly male applicants for a lab position considerably higher than the identical documentation of ostensibly female candidates, in an experiment with fictitious applicants where only the names were changed. The reasons for the pervasive bias seem to lie in the unconscious, and in how concepts, memories and associations are formed and reinforced from early childhood. We learn from our environment.. The more we are exposed to sexist attitudes, the more we become hardwired to be sexist - without realising it. So what to do? Does unconscious bias training help? Or could it make our implicit biases worse? A good start might be to tell little girls not that they look so pretty in that dress, but to ask them what games they like to play, or what they are reading. And so teach them they are valued not for how they look, but for what they do.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
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| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Hello and welcome to a shiny new series of analysis, the series which tries to understand the ideas behind the news. |
| 0:46.0 | If you haven't yet subscribed to our podcast feed, well, what are you waiting for? |
| 0:50.0 | I'm the editor Hugh Levinson, and a little while ago I was talking to the journalist |
| 0:55.0 | Marianne Seagart. She was starting work on a book about bias against women. I asked her what she thought |
| 1:01.4 | was the most surprising aspect of her research and this program is based on her reply. |
| 1:07.0 | I hope you enjoy it. I've been a feminist all my life because I get infuriated by how often men are biased against women. |
| 1:19.0 | Yet even I probably have an unconscious bias against other women too. |
| 1:25.0 | Are you surprised by that? |
| 1:27.0 | Well, I certainly am. |
| 1:29.0 | And that's what this program is going to be all about, |
| 1:32.0 | women's own bias. How does it show itself? Where does it come from? |
| 1:36.8 | And what can we do about it? |
| 1:38.8 | It's not just me. |
| 1:43.0 | Hollywood actor Anne Hathaway recently admitted to implicit sexist bias |
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