Why aren’t we seeing more progress in ending gender diversity in senior leadership?

The primary reason is most diversity initiatives are premised on a fundamental misconception: The assumption underlining most of these initiatives is that if we address individuals’ biases, leadership diversity will follow. But women are not held back by individuals’ beliefs alone. Entrenched systems, processes and practices make leadership diversity so hard to achieve, and it is these systems that we need to change.

Identifying more effective approaches is a good place to start.

Good Intentions Aren’t Enough

Nearly 98% of American companies offer some type of gender DEI program and are earmarking additional resources to expand training budgets. According to Gallup, most companies (85%) have anti-bias training, nearly three-quarters (73%) have focused DEI training for managers, and more than half (52%) have mentoring and sponsorship programs. 

Yet despite this dedicated focus, very few organizations can report meaningful progress toward increasing the proportion of women in their senior leadership ranks, much less building truly inclusive workplace cultures. As a result, these companies are not realizing the financial gains that gender diversity can deliver.

DEI programming is big business, an $8 billion market in the United States alone. But three fundamental flaws underscore many of these programs: “de-bias” individuals, and ignoring the root of the problem.

Putting Theory in Practice

Most training sessions, either through workshops, videos, role-playing exercises or moderated discussions, focus on teaching people about their own prejudices (thoughts based on a person’s upbringing and background) and biases (comfort and discomfort, likes and dislikes, familiarity and unfamiliarity). The expected outcome? When people are armed with their newfound awareness, they will ensure that prejudice and bias no longer influence their decisions. As a result, such anti-bias training is expected to reduce the discriminatory barriers women face.

It’s a great theory. Yet in practice, while learning about how discriminatory biases hold women back is important, it has proven ineffective in actually changing  individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, anti-bias training does little to change discriminatory workplace systems, processes and practices.

Knowledge Is Power

The most common types of training are in place to protect companies from lawsuits and demonstrate an organization’s ongoing commitment to diversity. Yet the coursework doesn’t necessarily move the needle to dismantle biased outcomes.  

People who undergo anti-bias training simply don’t shed their biases. Researchers have studied this issue countless times over the past 80 years, with nearly a thousand studies published on the topic. Many reveal that while people learn quickly how to respond correctly to a questionnaire about bias, knowledge retention remains elusive as the lessons and subsequent positive effects rarely last for more than a day. Additional studies report that anti-bias training can reinforce the behavior or even spark backlash, as people often rebel against rules in order to assert their independence or demonstrate individuality.

When researchers from Harvard reviewed 985 DEI programs, comprising different approaches to anti-bias training including sensitivity training, dialogue groups, workplace diversity initiatives and cognitive training, they did not find any evidence that the programs reduced the biased behavior of the participants. In fact, researchers posited that the studies do “not reveal whether, when or why [anti-bias] interventions reduced prejudice in the world.”

Even more startling, a study of 17 promising prejudice-reduction strategies revealed that only eight reduced unconscious biases, but even then, success was fleeting. Researchers discovered that the effects of the anti-bias training vanished after 24 hours. It’s not surprising that none of these programs delivered any measurable changes in the participants’ explicit biases or actual behaviors.  

Providing people with the information they need to make good (unbiased) decisions doesn’t do much to stop them from making bad (biased) decisions. As public health expert Victor Strecher, of the University of Michigan, puts it, “We’ve known for over 50 years that providing information alone to people does not change their behavior.” Many people still smoke, despite knowing the risks of tobacco use. Children exposed to drug education programs aren’t any less likely to try illicit drugs. Providing people with information about workplace sexual harassment doesn’t reduce its prevalence. And increasing people’s awareness of the role of unconscious bias in fueling workplace gender inequality and stereotypes and biases does not reduce their biased behavior. In the simplest of terms, people can’t be trained out of their biases.

Despite these facts, companies continue to host these kinds of “top-down” training modules. It is not that anti‐bias training in and of itself is useless, but to be effective it must be part of a comprehensive and multifaceted approach. Personnel management decision-making must change, exclusionary behavior must be eliminated and leadership training must be gender-neutral.  

A Holistic Approach to DEI

When people truly understand the underlying causes of systemic gender discrimination within their organizations, they are more likely to take action to address it. But increased awareness alone does not drive change. It’s only when companies make a major commitment to change career outcomes — a commitment requiring the same resources, as any other other fundamental change initiative — that real change occurs. 

One example is when companies can remove all indications of, and references to, candidates’ social identities in the materials managers receive to make personnel decisions. When orchestras developed a system of “blind auditions,” the gender diversity of these organizations increased substantially. In the 1963 season, for example, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had only three women among its 101 musicians, while the New York Philharmonic had none. Today, after the widespread adoption of this screening practice, the participation of women in major symphony orchestras stands at about 36%.

Clearly, screening candidates’ social identities works. 

Joining Forces 

Of course, DEI training needs to address, recognize and counter individuals’ unconscious biases. But this needs to be done in conjunction with more structural changes designed to prevent the systemic discrimination inherent in current workplace systems, processes, and practices. When systems change, the context within which people evaluate, make decisions about, and behave toward their colleagues also changes. And as these changes occur, decision-makers are far less susceptible to the influence of their unconscious biases. 

In other words, organizational change leads to behavioral change. The two go together, and one cannot happen without the other.