It can be difficult to create change by only reacting to bias when we see it, or even to recognize bias while it is happening.

What if we focused on fostering inclusion?

Proactive Allyship

Proactive allyship refers to efforts to increase inclusion (e.g. inviting marginalized coworkers onto key projects).

This can look like:

Amplifying women’s contributions
Advocating for more diversity on your team
Asking new employees if they have any accessibility needs before they start
Including all teammates in social functions

In our simulator, we demonstrate this by using a green arrow.

So, if Hong invites Imani to join a team working on a new project based on her expertise, it can look like this.

When someone is the recipient of proactive allyship, they are surrounded by a green circle, indicating that they are resilient to future gender bias actions, and will not be pushed out of the network

Proactive allyship builds resiliency

Note!

Our simulator also assumes that proactive allyship actions always build resilience to gender bias. In reality, this is not always the case.

Even if gender bias does not reduce inclusion (as we are assuming in our simulator), these experiences can still result in psychological harm for women.

Proactive allyship actions are not a complete substitute for addressing systemic causes of bias at the institutional level (for more information, see Schmader, Bergsieker & Hall, 2020).

Try It Out

This time with our simulator, you can use the sliders to adjust the levels of allyship and choose between proactive and reactive.

See what happens at Ada’s company if 10% practice proactive allyship.

Compare Scenarios with the Snapshot Feature

Use the SNAPSHOT feature to compare what happens when you change variables in the simulator.

Take a snapshot of the graphs you generated using the icon below.

You can run another simulation, and compare snapshots by clicking the icon below.

Overall:

Proactive allyship mitigates bias before it happens, reducing exclusion from networks even when a person encounters bias
Being proactive can foster inclusion & a small amount of proactive actions can have a disproportionate impact

Over time, proactive actions can set a norm for organizational culture.

These actions can be more accessible to take as they do not depend on a person seeing bias in real time, & are often more focused on growth & inclusion than confrontation*

*De Souza et al. (forthcoming); De Souza & Schmader, 2022

A Moment with Ada

“Hong just sent an email announcing the new project team, and Imani is in charge of leading performance specifications! Being in this technical leadership position is really going to help her get that promotion she’s been wanting.”