The Band of Sisters is breaking down gender bias in the workplace, one step at a time. It's a group of six executive-level women with experiences across more than 20 industries, shedding light on the importance of inclusive leadership, diverse workplaces, and comfortable environments. Their new book titled "You Should Smile More: How To Dismantle Gender Bias In The Workplace" gives a guide on just how to do that. Lori Marcus, one of the co-authors, joined Cheddar's News Wrap to tell readers what they can expect from the new book. 

Cheddar's News Wrap

New Book Tackles Gender Bias in the Workplace

Welcome back to Chester's news wrap The Band of sisters is breaking down gender bias in the workplace. One step at a time. It's a group of six executive level women with experiences across more than 20 industries shedding light on the importance of inclusive leadership, diverse workplaces and comfortable environments. And now the trailblazing group is out with a new book titled You Should Smile More How to dismantle gender bias in the workplace. Here to tell us all about it is Lori Marcus, one of the co authors of the book, Laurie, Thanks for coming on, I'm so glad we're talking about this. What can readers expect from this book? Absolutely, thank you for having me today. So we're really starting a conversation and we're talking to companies and people at every level in their career about how to dismantle what we call everyday gender bias. And let me just define it. These are the little micro indignities and barriers little things that happen every day that women face every day and over time, they just build up and they can create a really unwelcome advice that really limits productivity and success. We're not talking about the Big Me Too moments or anything like that. We're talking about little things that people normally don't even want to bring up because they sound so small one at a time, but over time, little by little by little they add up and they really serve to undermine women's effectiveness. So how can organizations recognize and effectively respond to gender bias in the workplace. Yes, so part of what we've set out to do in this book and it's very practical. So we're not, I mean we cite a lot of research but we're not here just to kind of a pine on the problem. What we're really here to do is to create awareness for three distinct groups. So women who are facing these issues, allies that are, you know, people that are in the room, anyone that's in the room can go from being a bystander to an ally and really bosses. And so what we're trying to do is to create awareness at all levels of these little situations and then what we do is we give them language so people can talk about them. So we talk about things like, you know, great idea, Greg or awkward chivalry or incentives or Susan, would you take the notes? And so it's this combination of making people aware of them and then we give really practical advice. As I said, if you're the person that's experiencing these things, if you're a person in the room and you want the language and the tools to be an an ally or if you're a boss and what I would say about the last part of that is most people don't even realize that these are things. So there's this really kind of dual pronged effort, like I said to create awareness that these exist and they matter. And then like I said to give tools and language and resources to help overcome these. Can you talk about the importance of engaging male leaders in the conversation and how to call men in versus calling them out because there is a distinction there. Absolutely. I love that expression about calling people calling men in and here's the reality is we started out writing this book and we were talking to women and then we quickly realized that first of all, nobody needs another book where we tell women how they can solve all the problems themselves. So part of it is, it's just math. If you think about, you want to Create change and you want to accelerate change, you not only need to invite the women into the conversation and like I said, give them practical tools, but you also need to invite statistically the men who you know primarily are in the most powerful seats in corporate America and then the 50% of the people sitting in the room who are likely to be men. So women can't get there on their own nor should they have to get there on their own. So we must absolutely bring men into the conversation and we try and do it in a way with a little bit of humor. Most of us are marketers by training so we use a lot of language and storytelling, but as you said, we try and bring them into the conversation. It's not about cancel culture. It's not about calling people out or making people feel bad. It's about creating awareness and then like I said, tools and language to help people deal with the situation. Lori I have about 30 seconds but I do want to ask you do you think any progress has been made when it comes to uplifting women in the workplace and just making them feel more comfortable at work? I think that we have made progress. Definitely the numbers would suggest about representation. We've made progress. I think the issues that women face in the workplace are still, we still face many of the same situations that I face 30 years ago as a founder of the Women's Resource Network. I would say the situation is a little bit more nuanced today, so we're making progress but we still have a long way to go and our goal is to really use our efforts to accelerate change. Thank you for making that answer so efficient. And Vice Laurie Marcus, co author of the new book, you should smile more how to dismantle gender bias in the workplace. Really enjoy this discussion. Lori, thank you