Erasing Institutional Bias

Chapter Three

Occupational Bias

In the book that preceded this one, Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships across Differences, the very first exercise we featured was called Job Association. We listed a handful of occupations then left a blank space for people to write the first word or phrase they associated with the named occupation. The examples included teacher, doctor, lawyer, politician, and used-car salesman.

People typically make associations with jobs and job titles. Sometimes they are limited to gender expectations and sometimes, as in the case with used-car salesman or politician, people’s assumptions include values-based judgements of character. A great example of this is the oft-told riddle about the man and his son who ...