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25 Perspectives 4 (2017)
Can Bias Interrupters Succeed Where Diversity Efforts Have Stalled

handle is hein.journals/prspctiv25 and id is 20 raw text is: Can Bias Interrupters Succeed Where Diversity Efforts Have Stalled? By Cynthia L. Cooper You might want to get to know this term: bias interrupters. In brief, they are new guidance-toolkits-aimed at improving diversity in the work- place. If the hopes for them bear out, bias interrupters may accomplish change in the legal profession where other efforts have disappointed. The ABA Commission on Women in the Profession (CWP) is taking a leading role in pioneering this fresh, targeted approach to dealing with the damaging and stubborn effects of implicit bias in the legal workplace. But the idea for bias interrupters, first described by diversity expert and law professor Joan C. Williams, came about only after she took two left turns on the well-trod path of diversity programming. Five years ago,Williams, a Dis- tinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings Col- lege of the Law in San Francisco, and the founding director of the Cen- ter for WorkLife Law at Hastings, all but threw in the towel on organi- zational change on diversity. It was, she says, progressing at the rate of an extremely lazy snail. Despite studies and trainings, the parity needle was barely moving in the legal field for women or people of color.The number of women equity partners in law firms, for example, grew by only 2 percent in a decade, reaching a mere 18 percent in 2016. There would be a 'women's initiative' or a 'diversity initiative' and 'let's have a budget and get some speakers in here.' That kind of accepted toolbox has now been shown not to be very effec- tive,Williams says. Implicit bias embedded in cultural messaging and expectations, it turns out, was more difficult to root out than the efforts to quell it. If you have implicit bias constantly transmitted through your basic business systems, it doesn't matter how many programs you put on,Williams adds. With outcomes so limited,Williams shifted her attention from organiza- tional change to individual solutions. I said, whatever, let's just give women the tools to navigate through the bias that's not changing. In 2014,Williams released a book, What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know, 4 Perspectives Published in Perspectives, Volume 25, Number 2, Summer 2017. © 2017 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

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