Unlearning Gender Bias in Women’s Leadership
This blog is the third in a series derived from the insights shared by leaders in the public, private and not for profit sector during Ivey’s Learning from Leaders course.
This October, Kate Graham and Mitzie Hunter participated in a class discussion on the need for unlearning, for women to take a seat at the table and to start taking up the space they deserve. Graham is the Director of Research at the Canadian Urban Institute and an Assistant Professor at Western University and Huron University College. In 2020, she was a leadership candidate for the Ontario Liberal Party. Hunter is the MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood. She recently served as the Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development. Prior to this post, she served as the Minister of Education and the Associate Minister of Finance, responsible for pension reform.
The fine line & the broad boulevard
With less than a month to go before the U.S. Presidential election and the broadcast of the Vice-Presidential Debate the evening prior, it was hardly surprising that the class discussion with Kate Graham and Mitzie Hunter began with a question on the televised dynamic between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. In many people’s view, Pence came across as condescending, smarmy, and constantly mansplaining. When asked if they had experienced this behaviour in their political careers, or just as women, both Graham and Hunter began nodding before the question was even finished being asked. For Graham, it was the moment that went immediately viral on Twitter (no, not the fly) that resonated: when Senator Harris was saying “I'm speaking, Mr. Vice-President … I'm speaking.” She contends that this is pretty much a universal experience for women— the ordeal of being constantly interrupted or talked over. In Graham’s opinion, “she did the right thing by calling it out firmly and respectfully, but really, it's not her obligation to make sure that he's not offended by that. I think it's unfortunate that she was put in that position and onus was on her. I mean, there was a moderator there … I think she had to walk a fine line.” Many women experience that untenable situation when trying to use our voice—not only are we interrupted or talked over, but if we have the audacity to point it out, no matter how politely, then we may experience anger or at least some significant eye-rolling and dismissal in response. Another experience that Graham asserts is common to all genders in Western societies is that “we all grew up seeing leaders who look very similar: older, white, straight, affluent men. We've learned that certain voices are more important than others. Each of us has to deliberately unlearn that because it can filter how we perceive other people.”
Hunter’s response highlighted another common experience of women, especially women of colour, which is a subtle, undermining nuance embedded within seemingly benign language. Her observation stemmed from the moment when Mike Pence acknowledged that having Kamala Harris on the Vice Presidential Debate stage “was historic.” Hunter explained, “it sounded like a really nice thing to do, but it jumped out at me because here you have a black woman in politics, who is so accomplished, and while yes, it's her first time on that stage, it's not her first time in leadership. It was almost as if he was reminding people ‘you're the new one here.’ I felt that she handled it really well because she owned her own story.” Harris’s strategic and effective response to Pence highlighting her “newbie” status was to constantly share her credentials throughout the debate and never stop reminding viewers how and why she had earned her way onto that stage. Hunter went on to share that she had personally experienced and witnessed this type of framing related to the presence and credentials of other women of colour. Specifically, she highlighted the media coverage when Leslyn Lewis ran for the leadership of the federal Conservatives. Lewis had extensive academic credentials, including a Juris Doctorate and a PhD from Osgoode Law School, was an accomplished lawyer, and had past electoral experience running as the 2015 federal Conservative candidate for the riding of Scarborough-Rouge Park. Despite this, the headline often read along the lines of “Where did she come from? She came out of nowhere.” But to Hunter “if you look at her credentials … she didn't come from nowhere. There needs to be accountability, from the media and others who are framing these discussions, for minimizing the accomplishments of women and people of colour.”
Hunter echoed Graham’s response that there is a fine line when handling situations like this so women don’t incur additional negativity for calling out a sexist experience or perspective: “… for men, often times, there isn't a line—they have a very broad boulevard that they can stroll down when it comes to [leadership] style, because there is a variety for them. So many times I've seen women running for leadership positions and the conversation dissolves into her outfit or the tone of her voice and we miss the policy, we miss what it is that she is bringing to the table.”
Bringing it to the table
It is not only the media that dissolves women’s contributions and displaces our voices from the table, but the toxic environment that envelops today’s politics. Unfortunately, many women see the scrutiny, unfair criticism, unmitigated lies, and viscous threats experienced by female politicians (and in extreme cases, uttered towards their children) and decide a seat at that particular table isn’t worth it. Hunter confirms that, indeed, when you put your name on a ballot – of any sort, at any level- it attracts scrutiny that can turn personal, gendered or racial. This is particularly true on social media due to its anonymity. But the reality is, usually, the worst of it is conducted by internet trolls with next to no followers who simply wish to bring people down. They are not individuals who are worthy of one’s energy, attention, response, or even reproach. Hunter refuses to share space or amplify such antagonistic and odious voices, but alternatively understands those who choose to publically call out those people for their racism, sexism or general vitriol. Either way, while acknowledging it is a messy space, Hunter encouraged students to get involved in the political arena lest they miss out on the opportunity to impact society and society misses out on the contributions of an intelligent, talented person. Additionally, her advice to those who end up being confronted by a challenging (yet sincere) individual, is to “take a breath and step back. The reason I do this it is to give them space to share their thought. And, you know, once it's all out, maybe we disagree but then we can figure out ‘where do we go from here? What is it that we're really trying to solve?’ You have to be prepared to listen.”
A lesson Graham learned when she was often met with overt anger while knocking on thousands of doors during her candidacy for leader of the provincial Liberal party: it really wasn’t about her. “When I'm standing on someone's door and they're yelling at me saying that all politicians are corrupt, it's not because they're angry with me personally. It's because they feel like politicians have let them down. They feel like politics has not lived up to solving the problem with their kid’s school or their hospital or whatever. And so you try to take it with a grain of salt and say ‘this an opportunity to learn from this person about the things that aren't working. I try to take any good that I can from those conversation and use it to fuel the kind of service that I want to provide if given the opportunity to represent them.”
Taking up space
From girlhood, women are socialized to take up less space—literally. Being thin continues to be the ideal body shape for women and girls, and fat shaming remains rampant in our society. But it is not only physically, but figuratively that women and girls are conditioned to take up less space. As the Minister for Education from 2016 – 2018, Hunter led the change to the Ontario educational curriculum that would address issues of discriminatory gender norms and definitions, bullying, and other biases based on race, ethnicity, religion or gender. According to her, “in terms of gender roles and gender defining, these roles are so ingrained that we have to, as Kate said, unlearn.” Both Hunter and Graham sought to embolden the class’s female students to fully occupy the space they are given, own their ability to bring value to the table, to assert their voice, and embrace their own agency regardless of the risk. Their words echoed those of The Honourable Rona Ambrose who spoke at Ivey earlier in the week in the Thomas d’Aquino Lecture on Leadership. Ms. Ambrose said “Women are … literally afraid to take up physical space by raising our hands or taking control of a room full of people. So to the women in class, make a commitment to yourself to start taking up more space, ask a question, volunteer to lead a team, apply for a promotion you want, introduce yourself to someone that intimidates you. But take risks, small and large.”
Although predominant, both Graham and Hunter acknowledged that the need to take up space was not confined to women alone. Graham acknowledged that constant interrupting can also be experienced by young men who get talked over by those more senior to them – in either age or position. Hunter also encouraged students to view themselves as leaders, now. She said, “There are solutions that we need in the world that you have. It might be understanding and navigating the digital space, or what we should do about climate change or how we really create transformative change in our society. So I would start to own your space right now, not later. We are in a very special time in our history and you are a generation that is learning to lead in the middle of this global pandemic. Society has been turned on its head and the insights and the ideas that you're forming in this moment are important. So, as you're studying, don't discount the solutions that come to you because they may just be the exact thing that we need for our society.”
In closing, if we are going to move our society forward, we need to recognize that gender, especially when experienced from an intersectional standpoint, continues to include heavy baggage. Leadership stereotypes and people’s socialized and (usually unconscious) biases related to how they perceive, hold expectations, and judge women weigh us down and can make it disproportionately difficult when seeking leadership roles. It causes us to carry ourselves and encounter the world in a way that is vastly disparate from that of men, which is why for many women activists, advocates and leaders, Hunter and Graham among them, this needs to end. As a society we need to unlearn and dismantle discriminatory beliefs and sexist societal norms to allow women to take up space at tables of influence, decision-making and power. Our voices need to be unabashedly shared and heard. Hunter stated that she has begun to embrace “the freedom of just saying what I gotta say, when I have to say it, and letting whoever is in the room deal with it.” This sentiment echoes that of another pioneering Canadian woman leader, Nellie McClung, who was instrumental to the success of the 1929 Person’s Case that finally recognized women as legally persons under the law.* When discussing how she dealt with the many obstacles she experienced along the way, she declared “Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.” It is sad that after more that a hundred years of progressive advocacy for gender equality, there is still so much howling.
*In 1929, the inclusion of women in the legal definition of “person” was only extended to white, Christian women. It would take another 40 years for indigenous and racialized women to be acknowledged as persons under the law.