This week marks the International Women’s Day – a day that I always want to celebrate in some way. Last year I shared with you my experience of being a woman at CERN in the 1990s. 

As I was exploring a new angle to gender diversity at CERN – a topic that my predecessors in the Ombud’s corner have explored at length – I stumbled on an interesting Harvard Business Review article. The article asks a very pertinent question: what to do about excluders, i.e. employees who, despite numerous corporate interventions, continue to treat some people differently based on their perceived visible or invisible trait(s) or social grouping, in particular women? 

You may have come across an excluder in the workplace. Perhaps a senior colleague who refuses to supervise any female doctoral student, or a section leader who – despite having no women on his team – complains that he has no chance of promotion now because “they all go to women”. You might have met a manager who chooses not to hire young women because “they get pregnant and leave”. Or it could be a colleague who insists that women should still perform the lion’s share of caregiving “because that’s how it’s always been” and “they’re just better at it”. You may also have met a silent excluder who does not express such beliefs but whose actions reflect them nonetheless.

Excluders, especially when they are influential people, are immune to the active promotion of diversity and inclusion. 

Not only can their biases and behaviours negatively affect an individual applicant’s hiring or promotion success, but they may also influence the development and implementation of work–family policies. They may do this, directly or indirectly, via top-down influence and role-modelling behaviours.

Unconscious bias and inclusive leadership interventions are particularly effective for employees who are already less biased and are motivated to improve diversity in their organisations. I’ve often heard comments at diversity-related talks and workshops along the lines of: “These events are always attended by the same people, who already support diversity at work, but we don’t seem to reach new people who would really benefit from them.” 

There are, according to the Harvard Business Review article, several effective ways for organisations to thwart exclusion:

• Establish a clear definition of exclusion that includes specific individual behaviours (e.g. inviting the same, incomplete part of a team for lunch or after-work drinks) and organisational behaviours.
• Make inclusion an explicit hiring criterion. For example by asking candidates to speak about their specific experience with and approach to working with individuals from diverse communities.
• Make inclusion an explicit performance criterion. For example, ask supervisee feedback on whether their manager creates an inclusive climate.
• Give inclusive leaders visibility and publicly reward them as much-appreciated role models.
• Encourage reporting of exclusion behaviour. The CERN Ombud, for example, is a safe and fully confidential channel to turn to for reporting such behaviour. We can discuss appropriate ways to respond to such behaviour – even if it’s not always easy. The Ombud can report any noted trends of exclusion to the appropriate level of management, without ever compromising the confidentiality owed to the member of the personnel concerned. 

Exclusion is not only about gender. Excluders can convey subtle and ambiguous discrimination toward people of various backgrounds. The practices listed above can also help detect colleagues who exclude women, mothers, childfree women, people with disabilities, members of racial and ethnic minorities, senior employees, LGBTQ+ persons, etc.

Our collective actions to encourage diversity and inclusion in our workplace are essential. To ensure their success, each one of us has the potential to role-model inclusive behaviour, whatever our status or seniority in the Organization. While in March we celebrate women’s myriad contributions to society, diversity in all its forms is central to a collaborative and thriving international work environment. 

If you have not yet done so, check out the Gender and Equality Plan page and sign up for the diversity- and inclusion-related learning opportunities at CERN advertised there.

Laure Esteveny 

Note: This post was inspired by the article entitled “What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women”, which appeared in the November 2021 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

I want to hear from you – feel free to email ombud@cern.ch with any feedback or suggestions for topics you’d like me to address. 
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