What is gendered feedback and how should we deal with it?
A Week 5 Reflection
May 10, 2015
I had a special moment this week with one of my classmates at DBC. Every week, we pair twice with another classmate. After that pairing session, we enter feedback, and that feedback is sent into a big pool of feedback. All the students in DBC read through at least 7 pieces of anonomized feedback from that pool a week and rate whether the feedback is "ASK" (Actionable, Specific and Kind). If the feedback passes the test, then it is delivered to the student that it was written about.
Some authors write better feedback than others, but aside from the "ASK" ratings, there is no way to comment straight to the author on the quality of the feedback.
So, as a result, one of my classmates made the following public post: I have been noticing a trend on Feedbackinator, and since I can't respond to feedback that I am rating directly, I would like to post an "open letter" with my thoughts. A lot of the feedback that I have been rating in the last two weeks have been very gendered. Using a person's name during a feedback is expressly not allowed, and unnecessary. Further, in my opinion, using any gendered pronouns is unnecessary. "You", the second-person personal pronoun, is my preferred method for writing feedback, especially since it is pseudo public feedback. Beyond that, the obviously gendered feedback always seems to take the same form, "You are an awesome girl, I value your easy-going attitude and you listen so well, but I was both driving and navigating and you should feel free to speak up more." It is a catch-22, be demure and feminine but do that less. If you find yourself writing this, I invite you to look in rather than out. Stop expecting your pair to be different, change how you communicate and pair. Focus on being collaborative, not for your pairs sake, but because it will let you produce better results.His post spurred a lot of discussion, and personally, I was thrilled to see him make this comment. It can be challenging to call this out as a woman because sometimes people say in response "you are too sensitive." Word choice matters. And having a male advocate speak up, makes for a better community for all of us.
Another male advocate furthered the position: "I agree exactly. There's no reason to refer to anything that would identify the person (such as name and gender). The only identifying information that I might mention is to actual incidents during the pairing session, as while that would ruin the anonymity of my feedback, it does increase specificness. Is there any gendered feedback for men like "You are an awesome guy, and I value your assertiveness, but you are asserting yourself a bit too much and not actually letting me participate...so please be less assertive and listen to your pair more"?"
One of the women in our co-hort responded: Come to think of it, every now and then I'll see "Great session, bro" or "awesome work, man". This may be my 'unconscious bias', but I'll assume it was a male-male session. I get it. Probably unlikely a guy would refer to his female pair as "man" or "bro" (though I myself use "dude" and "man" in conversation a lot!). And then my mind wanders, "would I have had the same rapport?" That might sound really stupid, but it's these seemingly harmless micro in-equities that can make women feel "left out." In my assembly language class, I was the only girl in a class of 19 dudes! A natural response might be, "Well, toughen up. To be in the game, you gotta learn to play it right" or whatever. But I think that just exacerbates that which you pointed out - expecting us to adapt, instead of looking inward. I know women in tech has been such a huge topic in the news lately, and I don't mean to be "that girl", but sometimes being "that girl" is the only way to open up discussion.Google has been trying to combat "unconcious bias" in it's workforce of the past couple years. The NYT covered the movement. Also talk about the test. Have any of you read about Google's work with unconscious bias? Think it's powerful: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/exposing-hidden-biases-at-google-to-improve-diversity.html Also, if you haven't taken the Implicit Association Test yet, this was enlightening. I didn't score what I expected. Try not to game it when you take it :)
Honestly, genered feedback goes both ways. Emma Watson, HeForShe speech.
What do you think: Have you experienced "gendered" feedback in your workplace? Have you stood up and supported one of your co-workers before when you saw this type of conversation?