谷歌如何改變"無意識"的性別偏見

Google, like many tech companies, is a man's world.

和很多高科技公司一樣，谷歌(Google)也是一家男性爲主的企業。

Started by a pair of men, its executive team is overwhelmingly male, and its work force is dominated by men. Over all, seven out of 10 people who work at Google are male.

這家公司由兩名男性創辦，其高管團隊絕大多數都是男性，而且公司員工也以男性爲主。總體而言，在谷歌工作的人中，每十名就有七名是男性。

Men make up 83 percent of Google's engineering employees and 79 percent of its managers. In a report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, Google said that of its 36 executives and top-ranking managers, just three are women.

在工程技術人員中，男性佔83%；在管理人員中，男性佔79%。去年，在向公平就業機會委員會(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)提交的一份報告中，谷歌表示，其36名決策層和高層管理人員中，只有三名是女性。

Google's leaders say they are unhappy about the firm's poor gender diversity, and about the severe underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics among its work force.

谷歌高層表示，公司的性別多樣性較差，而且僱員中黑人和西語裔的比例嚴重偏低，令他們感到失望。

And so they are undertaking a long-term effort to improve these numbers, the centerpiece of which is a series of workshops aimed at making Google's culture more accepting of diversity.

因此，他們正在開展一項長期性的工作，來改善這些數字，而其中最主要的部分，是一系列旨在提升谷歌文化多元性的研討會。

There's just one problem: The company has no solid evidence that the workshops, or many of its other efforts to improve diversity, are actually working.

只是有一個問題：該公司並沒有可靠的證據表明，在提高多樣性方面，這些研討會以及諸多其他努力確實發揮了效用。

In some ways Google's plan to fix its diversity issues resembles many of its most ambitious product ideas, from self-driving cars to wiring the country for superfast Internet.

從某些方面來看，谷歌針對多樣性問題開展的計劃，類似於其很多雄心勃勃的產品項目——從研製無人駕駛汽車，到用超高速互聯網連接全美。

Google says its plan isn't one-shot. It points out that it has been trying to improve its diversity for years by sponsoring programs to increase the number of women and minorities who go into tech, and meticulously studying the way it hires people in an effort to reduce bias.

谷歌表示，這個計劃不是一次性的。公司指出，多年來，它一直試圖提升內部的多樣性，途徑包括支持一些增加高科技界女性和少數族裔的項目，以及認真研究自己僱傭員工的方式，以減少偏見。

In May after pressure from civil rights leaders, the company published a report documenting the sex and race of its employees "to be candid about the issues," Laszlo Bock, Google's executive in charge of human resources, wrote at the time.

今年5月，在民權領袖對谷歌施加壓力之後，公司發佈了一份關於員工性別和種族的報告。谷歌負責人力資源的高管拉茲洛·博克(Laszlo Bock)當時寫到，這是爲了“對有關問題做到開誠佈公”。

Google's disclosure prompted a wave of similar reports across the industry, with Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and other tech giants issuing similarly dismal numbers about their work forces.

谷歌披露這些信息之後，高科技公司紛紛效仿，Facebook、蘋果(Apple)和雅虎(Yahoo)等科技業巨頭也發佈了相應的報告，其中的數字同樣令人失望。

Google's diversity training workshops, which began last year and which more than half of Google's nearly 49,000 employees have attended, are based on an emerging field of research in social psychology known as unconscious bias. These are the hidden, reflexive preferences that shape most people's worldviews, and that can profoundly affect how welcoming and open a workplace is to different people and ideas.

谷歌的多元化培訓研討會始於去年，在公司近4.9萬名員工中，參加的人數已經超過了一半。研討會的依據是一種名爲“無意識偏見”的研究，屬於社會心理學中的一個新興領域。“無意識偏見”是隱蔽的、反射性的偏好。它們塑造了大多數人的世界觀，而且可以深刻影響職場對不同人和不同理念的迎和開放程度。

Google's interest in hidden biases was sparked in 2012, when Mr. Bock read an article in The New York Times about a study that showed systematic discrimination against female applicants for scientific jobs in academia. The effect was so pervasive that researchers theorized the discrimination must be governed by unconscious cultural biases rather than overt sexism.

谷歌對隱蔽性偏見的興趣產生於2012年，當時博克在《紐約時報》上看到一篇文章。文中稱，研究顯示，向學術機構申請科研崗位的女性遭受了系統化的歧視。這樣的情況非常普遍，因此研究人員推測，這種歧視肯定來自於無意識的文化偏見，而不是公開的性別歧視。

Mr. Bock wondered how such unconscious biases were playing out at Google. "This is a pretty genteel environment, and you don't usually see outright manifestations of bias," he said. "Occasionally you'll have some idiot do something stupid and hurtful, and I like to fire those people."

博克想知道，“無意識偏見”在谷歌如何發揮影響。“這是一個非常有教養的環境，你通常不會看到直接表現出來的偏見，”他說。“偶爾也會有幾個白癡會做出愚蠢有害的事情，而我會解僱那些人。”

But Mr. Bock suspected that the more pernicious bias was most likely pervasive and hidden, a deep-set part of the culture rather than the work of a few loudmouth sexists.

不過博克懷疑，更有害的偏見很可能是普遍但隱蔽的，處於文化的深層部分，而不是幾個大嘴巴的性別歧視者胡說八道。

Improving diversity wasn't just a feel-good goal for Google. Citing research that shows diverse teams can be more creative than homogeneous ones, Mr. Bock argued that a diverse work force could be good for Google's business. Could Google investigate how biases were affecting people's work — and, more important, could it change its own culture?

提高多樣性不僅是爲了讓谷歌感覺良好。博克稱，研究顯示，多樣化的團隊會比同質化團隊更有創意，因此他認爲，多元化的員工隊伍也有益於谷歌的業務發展。那麼，谷歌會研究偏見如何影響人們的工作嗎？更重要的是，它會改變自己的文化嗎？

Google's human resources group, which goes by the name People Operations, functions like a graduate school research lab, with staff scientists who are constantly analyzing the company's internal operations. Mr. Bock asked one of these researchers, Brian Welle, to begin a project on hidden biases. After a few months, Dr. Welle came up with a 90-minute lecture targeted specifically at a skeptical, scientifically minded Google employee.

谷歌人力資源團隊名爲“人力運營”(People Operations)。它的運作類似於研究生院的實驗室，由團隊中的科學家對公司的內部運作進行持續分析。博克責成團隊中的研究員布萊恩·威勒(Brian Welle)開展了一個針對隱蔽性偏見的項目。幾個月後，威勒博士準備好了一個90分鐘長的講座，專門以不輕信的、有科學頭腦的谷歌員工爲受衆。

Google offered several anecdotes that seem to indicate a less biased culture as a result of the training. Not long ago the company opened a new building, and someone spotted the fact that all the conference rooms were named after male scientists; in the past, that might have gone unmentioned, but this time the names were changed.

谷歌提供的一些事例，似乎顯示這種培訓減少了公司文化中的偏見。不久前，谷歌一棟新大樓投入使用，有人發現，所有的會議室都以男性科學家命名；而在過去，此事可能就會被忽略，但這次，谷歌修改了會議室的名字。

During one recent promotion meeting in which a group of male managers were deciding the fate of a female engineer, a senior manager who had been through the bias training cautioned his colleagues to remember that they were all men — and thus might not be able to fully appreciate the different roles women perform in engineering groups. "Just raising the awareness was enough for people to think about it," Mr. Bock said. The woman was promoted.

在近期的一次晉升會議上，一羣男性經理要決定是否提拔一位女工程師。一位參加過偏見培訓的高級經理告誡同事，要記住，他們都是男性——因此對於女性在工程團隊中扮演的不同角色，他們可能無法完全領會。“只要提高意識，就足以讓人們去思考，”博克說。該名女性獲得了晉升。