The role of unconscious bias in workplace promotions and its impact on women’s empowerment

By ‘Tony Leke

Faith Nwadishi is a civil engineer in one of the multinationals in the nation’s capital, Abuja. Working in a male dominated profession, she is confined to the desk while her male counterparts are always in the field.

However, upon several complaints that she needs the experience to become a better engineer, she’s sent to the field but with the proviso that a male colleague accompanies, ‘protects and supervises’ her.

“When doing road construction, you have what you call manholes on the ground.

We have a situation where your male colleague thinks he is doing you a favour by telling you when you shouldn’t enter the manhole, citing labour laws”, she tells our reporter.

Nwadishi’s case bears a very close resemblance to Adaora Onyebuchi, a female police officer in Zhidu Community, Lugbe Abuja. Regulations 122,123,124 and 127 of the Police Act (Cap P19), laws of the federation of Nigeria, “restrict us (female officers) to desk duties, prevent us from drilling under arms, make us apply before getting married and discipline those of us who get pregnant”, she narrates her excruciating experience, lamenting the chasm between male and female police officers.

Faith and Adaora are not alone. They represent the millions of women in the Federal Capital Territory facing unconscious bias in their work places. From engineering, cinematography, firefighting, software development, aircraft piloting, manufacturing, mining, surveying, architecture among others, cases abound of stereotypes confronting the female workers across public and private sectors in the FCT.

Worse still is that on a daily basis women are confronted with sexual predators in their offices, thus creating an unsafe and uncomfortable working environment. The unfolding story of allegations of serial sexual harassment of a married, pregnant staff, Mrs. Simisola Ajayi by the suspended Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Ibrahim Lamuwa, readily comes to mind.

Ajayi, had a petition dated May 29, 2024, addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar,, accused the suspended permanent secretary of serial sexual harassment. Writing through her lawyer Femi Falana (SAN), she called for a thorough investigation into the actions of Amb. Lamuwa.

In like manner, a 2020 report by the Nigerian Women’s Trust Fund reported that 62percent of women in Abuja, the nation’s capital, experience sexual harassment in public spaces.

Also known as implicit prejudice or attitude, unconscious bias, the University of California San Francisco defines unconscious bias as “social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness”.

It manifests in several ways when women are confined as second class citizens in the work place, when associating leadership qualities with masculine traits, or assuming that a woman will be less committed to her job after having children.

According to the World Economic Forum, Nigeria is ranked 130th out of 146 countries in the 2023 global gender gap report. This, it attributed, to its pervasive gender disparity, with a score of 0.637, or 63.7percent. The report benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across major dimensions of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, political empowerment, as well as in several other categories

The report noted that compared to men, women in Nigeria have lower educational attainment levels. “The percentage of female students in junior secondary schools is 49.8percent, while the percentage of female students in colleges of education is 32.7percent, the lowest in all educational levels.

“Despite having one of the highest female literacy rates in West Africa, Nigeria still has a higher male literacy rate than females. The literacy rate for men is 71.26percent, compared to 52.66percent for women,” the report stated.

Also, the World Gender Gap report 2022 reveals that Nigeria ranks 123rd with a score of 0.639 out of a total of 146 countries. Nigeria, the document revealed, has less than 65percent wealth equality. It gave the factors responsible for the inequality in wealth to include; gender pay gaps, gender gaps in financial literacy, life events that influence women’s participation in paid work and ability to accumulate wealth.

Of the four sub-indexes: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, health and survival and political empowerment has the widest parity gap across all regions of the world.

Nigeria ranked 50th in economic participation and opportunity, 134th in educational attainment, 97th in health and survival, and 141st in political empowerment.

According to the report, gender gaps in wealth accumulation can be attributed to the underlying gender gap in the labour force. “Although the margin between the male and female labour force in Nigeria is not wide and has also gotten better with increased labour participation of women over the years, the payment for labour of women is relatively low compared to that of males across all occupations,” the report indicates.

In like manner, data obtained from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) showed that fewer female folks were recruited into the organisation compared to their male counterpart and this is reflected in the ranks of officers of both sexes in the three years reviewed. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, the percentages of female Superintendent cadre were 26.53, 26.82, and 27.97 percent respectively. The Female Inspectorate cadre was 31.11 per cent in 2018 but rose slightly to 31.32 per cent in 2019 and dropped to 30.82 per cent in 2020. Males also dominate the Females Assistant Cadre positions for three years. For instance, in 2018, the Females Assistant cadre was 22.61 percent as against 77.39 per cent of males, 22.88 percent females as against 77.12 per cent of males in 2019 and decreased to 22.31 percent females compared to 77.69 per cent of males in 2020.

SOURCE: NSCDC

Further investigations also revealed that besides having recruitment policy that disenfranchised women in the years under review, the NSCDC had a combined budget of N259,910,000,000 (N79.26 billion for 2018, N89.17 billion for 2019 and N91.48 billion for 2020 respectively).

According to gender activists, these gender-discriminatory practices can result in women being passed over for promotions, despite their qualifications and performance, leading to a lack of diversity in leadership positions and perpetuating the gender gap in pay and opportunities as well as influence perceptions of women’s abilities, leading to biased evaluations and fewer promotion opportunities.

Nwadishi who doubles as Deputy Coordinator, Civil Society Leaders Forum on Social Protection and Sustainable Development, said stereotypes against women in the workplace arise from a variety of factors, including social and cultural norms, lack of diversity and exposure, implicit assumptions as well as historical and systemic factors.

She noted that lack of family-friendly policies, unequal pay, and limited opportunities for advancement can promote unconscious bias at the workplace and negatively impact women’s empowerment.

“People in the workplace have been indoctrinated to believe that the man is the head of the house and woman the neck. And so when you have somebody in position of authority who has that kind of belief, he unconsciously, not knowing that it is the wrong thing to do because he feels justified. Because growing up, he has been told the man should be favoured over the woman.

“That is even supported by our labour laws in Nigeria. It describes where a woman should work.

“These are unconscious actions that come from the consciousness of the fact that the woman should not be elevated over that man. These things hinder the progress of women and halting the enabling environment for a woman to work and display her full potentials,” she lamented.

On her part, award-winning journalist and social worker, Edoamaowo Udeme attributes the blame to women themselves for abdicating responsibilities when in positions of authority. “The women themselves created that bias. A lot of women get to particular positions and where they are supposed to take the lead, they unconsciously hand over the position to the men. You haven’t heard women say, ‘Go and do it. You are the man?’ It is actually not their fault. It is the background where they are coming from. Their parents didn’t empower them to stand up as a woman”.

On how the situation can be reversed, Udeme submitted that the advocacy begins from the home front as well as the foundation levels in our educational institutions.

Her words: “Empower your children at home. Let them know that a man and woman are equal. Give them the same gender roles in the house”.

Speaking at a media training in Abuja, Executive Director, Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI), Adaora Onyechere Sydney-Jack urged the government to prioritize gender mainstreaming in policies and programmes, allocate resources for women-focused initiatives, and create an enabling environment that supports women’s empowerment.

The training, she said, became necessary in order to dig deep into accountability question surrounding women’s involvement in Nigeria economy, governance and politics among others.

The Executive Director also called for inclusive legislation, even as she was upbeat that the five gender bills currently at the National Assembly would sail through.

However, with a cumulative percentage of women in the two chambers of the 10th National Assembly being below 5percent, some analysts have described this as a tall order.

Sydney-Jack also harped on the need for the Mass Media to be at the centre stage of holding government to account in gender-related issues.

“Regardless of how anybody wants to look at it, I think why we are where we are is because of the conversations that we are having. Whether we have had actualisation in terms of outcome could now be pegged to legislation. And I think that we should go back to see how we can continue to raise voices around legislation where we can have Affirmation Actions for women, where gender policies can be reviewed and reenacted and brought on board and again put eyes on the Executive. Mr President can also look at an executive bill which will enhance actualisation through that protocol of engagement, enforcing that this bill is a necessity, considering that it is an emergency that we have less women at the parliament, less budget-friendly interventions for women and most importantly, that there are more women displaced due to insecurity,” she stated.

The broadcast journalist called on all stakeholders to prioritise the conversation on gender inclusion. “It is not an alternative. It is not a side conversation,” she stressed.

An Abuja-based gender activist, Doris Obieche advocated a more inclusive and equitable work environment through diversity and inclusion training, blind hiring practices, objective evaluation criteria, mentorship programmes, targeted development opportunities, anti-bias training for managers among others.

This investigation is for the GENDER, THE AGENDA project for Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI) supported by the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), and the MacArthur Foundation.