Reacting to Subtle Discrimination

As discussed in Section , women are often the victims of subtle subconscious bias. For example, a woman may find that comments are primarily directed to men in a group, unintentionally leaving her out. If the woman does not feel comfortable directly confronting the individuals in question, there are more diplomatic methods of calling the behavior to the person's attention:

• In a meeting of three computer science students, the sole female found herself ignored by one of the male participants. Whenever she asked him a question, he directed his answer to the other male present. (See page of this report.) After the meeting, the woman took him aside and mentioned that she had noticed he had directed his answers to [John] and asked, in a concerned way, whether she had done anything to cause this behavior. When he replied that she had not done anything wrong and began to apologize, she dismissed his apologies by saying that she was just relieved she had not given him any negative signals. He continued to apologize.

  The indirectness of her approach allowed the man to save face while still communicating the point. It appears to have been effective, because, when she saw the man later in the day, he made eye contact and spoke directly to her.

• At a social occasion, a young woman found that a male relative directed serious discourse almost exclusively to her brother and not to her. When the woman was alone with the relative, she said to him, `I hope I haven't given you the idea I'm not interested in your opinions on [X]. I noticed you directed your comments about it to [John]. I want you to know I am interested in what you have to say on the subject.' The male relative replied, sincerely, that he had not realized she was interested in the topic and would include her in the future.