A leadership group focussed on diversity and inclusion is asking workplaces to take a hard look at unconscious gender bias as part of International Women's Day.
Global Women chief executive Miranda Burdon told TVNZ1's Breakfast their campaign "It's not that hard" was created to bring this conversation to the fore.
“We wanted to highlight in a lighthearted manner the bias that exists in all workplaces. It’s prevalent throughout New Zealand, so we just wanted to actually bring it to the fore and give people a conversation starter.”
She said both men and women hold bias and generally default to a certain mindset.
“Bias comes from the way we have been brought up, our expectations in life. Some of the things we have played on are the expectations we have as to who might take minutes in meetings, what does the CEO look like, who’s the person that will leave work if the family has a child."
Ms Burdon said the point of the campaign for International Women's Day is to be aware that we’re making these decisions based on ingrained behaviours.
"The first thing is to be aware of them and then start calling them out.
"It’s a conversation starter that enables you to say 'hey do you realise what you just did', you didn’t even think about these other people, or do you realise who you keep asking to do that.”
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