I was minding my own business, eating my lunch alone at a table when two women asked to join me at my table. The conversation that would unfold for the next hour or so went way beyond my expectations.Before I went to this convention, I thought that gender bias in the game was mostly as a thing that didn't have any real effect on my life. Today, I can't stop seeing it everywhere - I mean everywhere. In this episode, I want to talk about women and gender bias in the game and in life. What is gender bias and how is it affecting not only the women in our world, but the men, our children, and the entire game. I don't know if this episode is more for my men or women listeners, but I promise you, it's worth paying attention to. Let's talk about it. What is Gender Bias?Unfair difference in the way women and men are treated.Understanding the definition of Gender Bias is easy. But I think actually understanding and appreciating gender bias in real life and the effect that it has on us - men, women, and children alike - is a whole other ball game. I've known the definition of gender bias for years. But as with most hot button issues, I didn't think it applied to me, so I honestly just considered it one of those many social problems that someone else was better at dealing with. I was wrong. As a manager of employees, I felt like I always stood ready to address a gender bias or sexism issue if it ever came to my attention, but it rarely showed up explicitly. When it did, I was there to do my part in dealing with it, but honestly, I thought it was another of those issues that the media and social pressures were blowing out of proportion. There is so much noise about groups being unfairly treated these days, they're enough to make anyone curl into the fetal position and cry uncle. So... I live my life and put the noise on ignore. Again, I was wrong. Please: support the show and join our community as a Patron through my Patreon pageMy History with Female Gender BiasAs with most things, I think it's useful to know where I'm coming from when I talk about this. My perspective is likely different from yours because my exposure has been different. I'm a 6'2" man who's had many successes in life. I've climbed to the top of several career ladders. I have a great family. I don't fear walking alone at night. And I have had what I believe are many healthy professional relationships with women employees, peers, and supervisors over the years. My mother is a feminist. She grew up with four older brothers in New York, and from the stories she told me, her life was a testosterone heavy environment. My uncles were scrappers. Gender inequality affected her profoundly, and to this day, she and my sister are pretty adamant about the idea that whatever men can do, women can do better. To them, it doesn't matter what. Women can pretty much do anything better than men. As a boy and later as a young man growing up, the continual refrain became pretty annoying actually. I felt like I got it already and wondered what they wanted me to do about it. I never felt like pay inequality or glass ceilings made sense. I won a lot of work related awards and I've been beaten by women who were clearly better the job than I was and genuinely celebrated their success. As a Treasurer and member of the board of directors for a fire department I was a member of as a young man, I was the lone voice advocating for two women to join the department in the late 80's, early 90's when women were boxed out of the fire service.I spent a lot of my life working in operational environments, and I treasured having a female partner. I'll talk more about that in a few minutes, but to me, male/female partners were more balanced; a yin and yang working together in harmony. I was medical operations and I found that we reached and connected with more humanity together than we ever could as single sex teams. I felt that gender bias was not my problem. I thought the rest of the world would catch up one day or it wouldn't, but I was Switzerland. I'm not Switzerland anymore. The Moment That Started This JourneyI was minding my own business last week at the Annual United Soccer Coaches convention. I was taking a break from sessions and other events that I will gladly tell you more about in future episodes. I was eating my lunch in a comfy spot - by myself at a table. Gender bias in the game was the farthest thing from my mind. Two women approached and asked if they could join me. One woman was my age or older, clearly accomplished as a coach with many wins and successful business ventures under her belt. She had experience, confidence, and a friendly but efficient manner. She smiled easily and took the initiative with what was to come over the next hour.The other presented as physically attractive to me, intelligent, and younger than both of us. She was recently fired from her coaching job, and after some time, I got the idea she was trying to connect with the more experienced coach in search of some mentorship. She admitted she was looking for some female to female mentorship, which made good sense in the context of her concerns. We three chatted for a while and the conversation was to me more interesting than any I had heard in a while. For whatever reason, I was being granted the privilege of access and insight into personal struggles and insights into both of these women's careers. As a many time mentor myself, I was both grateful and deeply interested in this discussion as it unfolded. I listened, asked questions, and offered some of my own background and experience. At one point, I caught myself man-splaining the different personality types. I have a long history with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I've taken the test many times over the years. It was used as a component of our pre-marriage counseling. I applied it in graduate school in a 3D, interactive model I made mapping personality types to careers, to Peter Senge's Five Disciplines, and to Steven Alter's work system model. The model I made showed how we might use personality types combined with works from Senge and Alter to plan and execute organizational development change management projects in culturally different organizations. I also used type indicators to help structure the adult teams I've managed over the years into highly functional units. I connected with both women on the basis of personality. Evenly split between Introverted and Extroverted, I related easily to the two women's personalities. One, the older one, was typed ENTJ. The second, the younger one, was typed INTJ. While I tend to lean more towards the introverted side as I mature, I know both types intimately - including their strengths and struggles as a man. Listening to how these same strengths and struggle play out in life as a woman was deeply fascinating to me and I found myself not wanting our discussion to end.All personalities morph and mature. One woman, the older one, has the personality type I more readily identified with when I was younger and climbing the career ladder. The second woman, the younger one, has the personality I more readily identify with today. Both personality types are strong, intuitive, thoughtful, and organized. Both are also rare. As rare types, these types tend to struggle connecting with or being understood by many of the more common other 14 types.For a man, these personality types simultaneously and naturally lead to leadership and being misunderstood. These same personalities that lead to leadership in men are often ridiculed and condemned in women. When a man is resourceful, assertive, and takes the lead, they can be (but are not always) celebrated. When a women does exactly the same thing - even when she does it better - she can labelled with bad words and rejected. The younger woman had recently been fired from her coaching job. From what I heard, she not only did a great job as a coach, but she probably did it better than her peers and her supervisor. The result, combined with her intelligence, got her labelled and outcast. Of course, I acknowledge I only had one side of the discussion, but this pattern is something that fits with what I know of her personality. The older woman was clearly as asset to the coaching community who had accomplished some really great things with her life. She currently coaches at a well-known university and runs a nonprofit that does great things on top of that. She is well spoken, a natural leader, and someone I immediately liked and respected. She relayed story after story of her life struggles against gender bias in the game. She's had to work twice as hard to get half the credit. She compromised in ways I couldn't imagine I would ever compromise and she rose above ignorance and sexism. As I listened to these two women speak, in the back of my mind, I was taking inventory of the heroes and mentors in my own life. I wondered if I accounted for the extra effort women in this field needed to put in to overcome... if I accounted for the additional challenges that women had to overcome... would I have more women heroes? Over the next few days, I decided I would. Impacts of Gender Bias in the GameBased on feedback I've been getting and the reading I've been doing, I see several impacts that gender bias is having on the game. I'll break them into broad categories: Those that affect women, those that affect men, and those that are affecting our kids. This list is not meant to be exhaustive and may evolve over time. Affects on Women“I was not valued as a qualified female, MOM, coach. I’m one of very few female coaches within my current outdoor club. I am the ONLY female coach at my Futsal club. I was the ONLY female coach at the previous club. It’s a challenge to say the least.”Libby Mascaro Fewer women in the game. When women don't feel comfortable, that they need to fight for everything they get, are undervalued or aren't having fun,
