What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women

Conscious “excluders,” who despite various corporate interventions, continue to treat some folks differently due to their social group membership, may help explain the recent stagnation in progress toward gender equality in organizational leadership. While excluders’ excuses for such behavior vary, the outcome is quite consistent: Excluders disadvantage women’s employment opportunities, perpetuating inequality in various ways. The authors present five concrete practices to try to keep excluders out of your organization in the first place and to identify and appropriately deal with those who are already there. This story of exclusion isn’t exclusive to gender diversity. These practices can detect the bad apples who exclude women, mothers, childfree women, people with disabilities, members of racial and ethnic minorities, mature employees, LGBTQ+ persons, etc.