Most people conceptualize gender bias in terms of individual behavior –men discriminating against women. This creates a tendency for men to feelpersonally blamed for gender bias. Yet feminist theories emphasize that genderbias is the resulting behavior of a cultural system, not individuals, and this systeminfluences the behavior of both men and women. System dynamics has often beenused to understand the systemic nature of social problems and clarify socialtheory, but has not yet been applied to a feminist theory of gender bias. Using asimple organizational case study, we describe and explore a feminist theory of thesystemic nature of gender bias with system dynamics. The paper introduces keyconcepts, demonstrates how system dynamics clarifies the theory’s systemic issuesand potential solutions, and suggests how this new way to view gender bias mightimprove the collegiality of our personal and professional relationships for the longterm.
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