30 / Rotman Management Spring 20 19
Iris Bohnet
Albert Pratt Professor of Business
and Government and Academic Dean
of the Harvard Kennedy School; author,
What Works: Gender Equality By Design
(Harvard University Press, 2016)
THE GOAL IS NOT TO change peoples’ mindsets; it is to make it easy
for them to get things right by redesigning the world we live in.
For example, in most hotel rooms, you might have noticed that
the latest front-door entry cards do not only control access to
the room; they also turn off the lights when you leave. This is an
example of an effective way to make it really easy for people to
do what is right for the environment — and all it takes is a bit of
design and a bit of technology. Unfortunately, behavioural de-
sign with respect to diversity and inclusion has not reached this
stage yet, but that is the goal.
In terms of using behavioural insights to influence con-
sumer behaviour, many companies are already doing this. For
example, Coca-Cola has gendered versions of its products. A
few years ago, it realized that men were not buying Diet Coke.
They did some research and found that ‘diet’ is not a word that
resonates with men; so, they introduced Coke Zero to appeal to
health-conscious males. As this example indicates, we are using
more behavioural-insights rigour in our marketing departments
than in our HR departments. I am on a mission to ensure that we
use the same kind of tools and analytics to inform practices and
procedures throughout organizations.
We now have data analysis and algorithms that can help to
predict how certain adjectives in a job posting can increase or
decrease the chances that women or men will apply for a par-
ticular job. If you can reach not just 50 per cent but 100 per cent
of the talent pool with carefully chosen language, that is an ex-
ample of a simple and cost-effective thing to focus on. There are
start-ups out there working to develop these tools. They are still
a work in progress, but they will very likely become widely avail-
able in the next five to 10 years.and for everyone around them.
We have also done some research into men’s engagement
in the #MeToo movement, whose conversations men have been
mostly absent from. We invited 2,000 men to participate in a
Campaign for Consent and Healthy Relationships, and as part of
that research we asked them whether they had concerns about
their own past behaviour towards women. We weren’t surprised
to find that 61 per cent of participants said they had concerns.
Couple that with the recent findings from GQ magazine, which
polled 1,000 men between 18 and 55 and found that 47 per cent
of them had never talked about the #MeToo movement with
anyone. When you combine these two stats, one of the conclu-
sions we should consider is that many men are not coming for-
ward or participating in these conversations because they fear
that what they have done in the past will come back to haunt
them, and that they might be called to task if they speak publicly.
These are just a few of the issues we face in addressing is-
sues of masculinity. The work we do is about encouraging men
to think about the actions they can take to promote positive
values and to think about their own behaviour, actions and lan-
guage as a starting point to becoming change agents in their own
sphere of life.Humberto Carolo, continued