Your gay voice and gay look could hurt your career
We’ve all been told to be careful what we say at work, but now it seems some think we need to be cautious with how we say it because your gay voice and gay look could hurt your career. A study out of the University of Surrey in the U.K. showed that men and women were less likely to be employed in leadership positions due to the sound of their voices.
Stereotypes about your gay voice are being heard loud and clear
Who would have thought that the sound of someone’s voice would be a determining factor in people being hired and promoted or not being hired and promoted? It’s true, according to a 2017 study out of the U.K.
The study asked participants who acted as hiring managers to rate potential candidates for a fake CEO position. The hiring managers were asked to provide, on a scale of 1 to 5, the employability of candidates and to provide salaries the hiring manager thought were commensurate with the position and the candidate’s qualifications. The potential candidates were assessed and selected using voice and image samples from a pool of heterosexual and homosexual candidates.
The results were quite surprising.
For male candidates in the group, the sound of the voices played a critical role in the outcome. It turns out that men who “sound gay” were perceived as being less suitable for the position. In addition, those perceived to be gay were less likely to receive higher-paying salaries than those with “masculine sounding” voices. The results for women were similar. When a woman was perceived as gender non-conforming or less feminine, she received lower marks for employability and salary.
We might ask, what if the non-conforming seeming candidate isn’t gay or lesbian? Is it fair that they would be punished for their natural traits? Does this even matter?
Setting the stage for discrimination against your gay voice
It’s redundant but necessary to reiterate that in 30 states in the United States, it’s still not against the law to fire or not hire someone because they are perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. The same goes for providing equal compensation.
With this stereotyping, it’s highly likely that in these states and others, worthy candidates with the right credentials and experience to help a business succeed are being passed by or underemployed. What does that do for a company’s bottom line? Why would a company want to miss an opportunity to have the best candidate?
According to Dr. Fasoli, who conducted the above study, “It is revealing that despite all the work to lessen discrimination against the LGBT community, people subconsciously typecast an individual before getting to know them. This study highlights that it can be a real problem in the workplace and for people’s career prospects.” This is why every chance we get to advocate for ourselves and our careers, we must take them.
Solving the unconscious bias against your gay voice, gay look, and all differences
As Dominic Barton of McKinsey & Company, a global leader in management consulting, stated, “We have a mission statement with two equal parts. The first is to have a lasting impact on our clients, and the second is to attract and retain the best talent. We can’t do either if we aren’t attracting a broad set of the best available talent. Therefore, we need LGBTQ people to feel comfortable with McKinsey & Company being a good workplace.”
How do companies ensure all employees feel supported to bring their whole and authentic selves to work and give 100%? The key is to help all employees overcome unconscious bias.
Today, though, we’ve learned to rely on our minds’ unconscious abilities. We don’t have the same environmental dangers we once had, which can lead to negative unconscious bias.
True, there are good unconscious biases. These protect us from today’s real threats, such as seeing a figure at the end of a dark alley, heightening our senses to possible danger. The negative aspect of that unconscious bias would be to assume that someone of a particular gender or ethnic background is more dangerous than another.
Where bias exists against your gay voice and correcting it
According to Google’s Unconscious Bias training, there are four primary areas where this bias can exist. This tells us why we encounter bias in voice and facial features. These are taken directly from Google’s employee training;
Four things in the workplace commonly trigger unconscious biases. Task: We associate specific jobs with a particular type of person. Numbers: When looking at a group, like job applicants, we’re more likely to use biases to analyze people in the outlying demographics. Clarity: When information is lacking, our brains fill in the gaps with what we expect. Perceiver: A heightened emotional state can keep the conscious mind distracted.
As the first two items point out, we can form a bias around the type of person we feel is suited for a job or make assumptions about specific outlying demographics regarding applicants. Surrey’s study appears to have played a role in this.
So, how can this be fixed?
As with most problems, the first step is recognizing an issue. The second is taking steps to understand the issue, and the third is putting practices in place to help employees at all levels be aware of the problem. In the case of the Surrey study, it seems fitting that hiring managers and recruiters are prime candidates to receive such bias training first. If there is a culture of unconscious bias of not promoting or hiring because of someone’s differences, then removing that barrier and hiring a diverse workforce would show others that these unconscious biases are unwarranted or undesirable in the workplace. Additionally, we must be our own most prominent advocates.
As Google’s training points out, there are also added benefits. “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.” Todd Sears of OutLeadership calls this Return on Equality regarding LGBTQ inclusion in the workplace. He and his organization have reiterated the billions of dollars being lost by corporations worldwide due to blatant or unconscious discrimination.
The obvious question is, are you and your company willing to eliminate unconscious bias to start hiring the best candidates and allowing all employees to thrive?