I read an an article criticizing start-up conferences. It said they are completely dominated by men. There was even an all-male panel talking about women in start-ups!

This article will be about sex bias. We ALL have biases based on sex. I’ll relate it to political biases at the end.

I read an article about how companies led by women do better. Start-ups led by women do better as well. And this article says, “female-led startups, in general, bring in higher revenue and are profitable more quickly.” How can this be?

It might not be that women are better than men. There are so few women in startups that maybe the majority of these high-performing ones are the top of the top. On the other hand, maybe they are on average better. I don’t know…

I do know I’m biased. In my biased view: Men tend to focus in on things. Women tend to be more able to see relationships. I imagine if you’re more conscious about relationships, you’re more apt to see things from others’ points of view, giving you a broader and more balanced perspective. Maybe men, seeing fewer points of view, tend to make more mistakes.

In my biased view, women also have stronger emotional reactions than men. And they’re also aware of them, so they are more experienced at controlling them at work. Men with emotional reactions are more likely to not even realize they’re excited or impatient or defensive, and will more easily let their emotions dominate their behavior and the room. And we’re expecting men not to be emotional, so we listen to men’s emotions like they’re warranted, not just some man being emotional.

This article says: “…male and female leaders are liked equally when behaving participatively… But when acting authoritatively, women leaders are disliked much more than men.” It’s point is that we expect men to be authoritative, so we put up with it. It’s normal to us. But when women do it, it’s weird, so we tend to react negatively. Being authoritative is something leaders do. Our cultural habituation makes us disapprove of women when they act like leaders. We’re just sexist.

Another part of my bias is that women seem to have more empathy. They seem to pick up more on what’s going on with others. I wonder if this could mean that when dealing with men and women, they tend to hear the person more loudly, as opposed to the cultural messages from their gender. Maybe women tend to be a bit less biased.

When I remember about my biases, I usually stop and look for them. I often find sexist thoughts that have creeped in to color my world. That’s good, either enabling me to let them go, or at least discount them.

It’s similar to how PeopleCount intends to handle political bias. Admit it, look for it, and then compensate for it. We can ask people with a wide variety of viewpoints for feedback. Admitting it, we can be accountable for it. Maybe we can even do a weekly report on biases we found and how we addressed or corrected them.

No one’s perfect, even us. But our bread and butter is accountability. So we’ll start with being accountable for handling our bias.