Premier dispute resolution web site Mediate.com has demonstrated its support for raising awareness of gender bias in ADR. Showing leadership and its commitment to social justice issues, Mediate.com has created a new section on gender, as well as a page on gender bias links. This is just one more reason among many to visit Mediate.com, the top web site for news, information, and resources on ADR and negotiation.
Other features that make this site outstanding include:
To my good friends at Mediate.com, thank you as always for your support.
Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, Mediation Channel, and the Blogs of all other women who are making and recording the history of the United States of America every working day, that March is designated as Women’s History Month. Every woman blogger and every male blogger whose life has been enriched by the presence of women in it is requested to issue a proclamation each March, calling upon their fellow bloggers to observe March as Women’s History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.
This resolution, calling upon “the people of the United States to observe March as Women’s History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities” was passed by Congress in 1987 and successive years since then. For more information about the origin of National Women’s History Month, or the activities of the National Women’s History Project, visit the National Women’s History Project.
This blog is celebrating National Women’s History Month by drawing attention to a series of posts on implicit gender bias in ADR. The first two posts are written by me, and the subsequent five by my colleague, commercial mediator and author Victoria Pynchon:
Victoria Pynchon’s series on gender and bias:
Yesterday I pointed readers to an electrifying series by commercial mediator and arbitrator, Victoria Pynchon, which rips the lid off the ADR profession’s secret and unacknowledged shame: the absence of women and minorities from the prestigious ADR panels:
Not content to merely name the problem, my colleague today proposes solutions in “Combatting Implicit Gender Bias in ADR“.
Turning to Americans for American Values for ideas, Pynchon identifies the cure, a detailed action plan, which you can read in her post. It’s going to take strong medicine to cure what ails us.
It takes guts to do what she Pynchon has done. She warns readers “that the topic of implicit gender bias is ‘toxic’”,with the potential of poisoning her market against her and costing her opportunities. Her post stands as a challenge to other women – and men, too – in ADR to break the silence and speak out. In solidarity, I stand shoulder to shoulder with my colleague on the West Coast. I issue a call to arms of my own:
It’s time for ADR membership organizations to make the vanquishing of implicit bias a local and national priority – and actually do something about it. The ABA Section on Dispute Resolution has a diversity committee, but it has apparently posted nothing new on its site in two years. This is also a committee limited in size with membership by appointment only. How about opening it up to those of us out here hungry for change and ready to act? The Association for Conflict Resolution has a diversity committee as well – what is it doing right now to actively battle implicit bias and improve access to business opportunities for all ADR professionals? What about the numerous regional and state associations for ADR professionals? NE-ACR? SCMA? TAM? This problem affects your membership – what will you do to make a difference? State bar associations with ADR committees, where are you on this? Exert your influence. And let the rest of know what needs to be done so we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.
There’s been time enough to talk. It’s time at last to do.
As I was getting ready for the start of the mediation training I was teaching, one of the participants, just arrived, approached me to tell me to get him a cup of coffee. Despite my power suit and the flip chart markers in my hand, he had mistaken the lead trainer for a member of the support staff.
If you think that this is an isolated incident in the life of an ADR professional who happens to be a woman, think again. Challenge yourself by reading commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon’s gutsy series on gender, race, and diversity in the ADR profession:
“Negotiating Prejudice at U.C. San Diego”
“Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals?”
“Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and in ADR”
Then do as Vickie suggests and take the awareness-raising tests at Project Implicit, an ongoing research project inquiring into the implicit biases that affect our judgment. What associations do you draw about identity, capability, and role?
The hot-button issue of mediator credentialing and credentialing seems to be on the minds of many folks in the ADR field these days. It has generated discussion, here and on other blogs (including Tammy Lenski’s, Vickie Pynchon’s, F. Peter Phillips’s, and Philip Loree’s).
Although I have not ruled out my support entirely for public credentialing for mediators in private practice, I have concerns aplenty not only about the wisdom and necessity of such schemes, but also about the challenges in establishing workable and meaningful ones – concerns which I would need to see fully addressed before I’d give my thumbs up.
Public credentialing of mediators will necessarily involve some kind of evaluation process – which raises a whole host of vexing questions. Among the many that I anticipate is one that particularly troubles me: given the realities of implicit bias, and the difficulties still facing women and minorities in gaining visibility in the upper reaches of our field, what would be done to ensure that any evaluation of mediators is free from it?
While sorting through the email that piled up while I was away on vacation during the first 10 days in August, I came across a message from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession announcing that the latest issue of the electronic version of Perspectives, their quarterly magazine, was now available. It got me thinking. In that issue is an article by employment attorney Consuela Pinto, “Eliminating Barriers to Women’s Advancement: Focus on the Performance Evaluation Process“.
Emphasizing the importance of awareness-raising, Pinto sets out her recommendations for creating a bias-free evaluation process – recommendations that may transfer readily to a very different profession, mediation. I particularly like Pinto’s tips for evaluators:
- Get educated about gender bias and examine your own biases.
- Base your comments on actual performance and not potential.
- Comment only on performance during the period under review.
- Base your assessment on factual examples of behavior.
- Weigh individual competencies similarly for all evaluatees regardless of gender.
- Avoid using derogatory, disrespectful, or overtly biased comments.
- Avoid basing comments or scores on the evaluatee’s adherence or failure to adhere to traditional gender stereotypes.
- Review completed evaluations for consistency and objectivity.
Photo credit: Dominik Gwarek.
