Skill has no gender. Bias does.
These words come from an advertisement about a social experiment in which a man and a woman worked as valets. Throughout the experiment, people consistently handed their keys only to the man.
The woman was deemed unfit to park a car, simply because she is a woman.
Her skill wasn’t evaluated or even considered before a decision was made. Her gender alone led people to refuse allowing her to drive their car.
There are countless times when I have felt this—when someone’s bias has been gender-charged, rendering me “other” to the norm. When my capabilities were dismissed before they were witnessed. When assumptions about what I could or couldn’t do preceded any demonstration of my actual abilities.
What strikes me most about gender bias is its invisibility to those who perpetuate it. Those car owners likely didn’t see themselves making a biased choice. It felt natural, reasonable, perhaps even protective of their property.
Yet in that automatic decision lies the insidious nature of bias: it masquerades as common sense.
I think about all the small moments that accumulate over a lifetime—the slight hesitations before I’m trusted with a task, the surprise when I demonstrate competence in certain areas, the explanations offered to me about things I already understand.
When we say “skill has no gender,” we’re stating something that should be obvious. Excellence, talent, and capability exist across the gender spectrum. But until our biases are confronted as directly as in that advertisement, many will continue to act as though certain skills are gendered by nature rather than by our flawed perceptions.
What would a world look like where our skills were evaluated solely on demonstration rather than assumption? I imagine it would be not just more fair, but more innovative, more efficient, and ultimately more human.
