Women often hold themselves back from advancement in their career with self-imposed (often unconscious) subjective barriers.  These barriers include, among others unconscious gender bias, imposter syndrome, “queen bee” syndrome, loneliness syndrome, the return-to-work syndrome, and networking incapability syndrome.  Although these barriers may significantly impact the advancement in their professional career, most women are not even aware of their existence, let alone of the impact that this might have on their professional growth.

Moreover, gender bias influences all relevant decision-making processes, including at the recruitment level.  Indeed, unconscious bias, global inclusion, and diversity are cutting edge HR issues at the workplace as well as in the recruitment processes, calling for human resources to adequately tackle the issue.

Unconscious bias is also relevant at the governmental level.  At the UNIDO conference “Women in Industry and Innovation” in July 2020 (https://www.unido.org/news/women-industry-and-innovation-virtual-conference), it was underlined that governments have a central role in tackling this problem through dedicated training programs, (especially in promoting STEM disciplines), gender-sensitive public procurement programs, facilitating access to finance and productive resources, developing infrastructure and connectivity and overall creating an enabling environment.

This is the same recommendation addressed to the current W20 by the W20 Saudi Arabia, according to which one of the measures to guarantee economic recovery in the post-Covid area is “the promotion of fund comprehensive programs to change gender bias in culture and structures and promote women in leadership positions”.

But what is exactly unconscious bias?
How does it impact women in their career development?
How do we recognize it?
How can unconscious bias be tackled?
What does it take to avoid it in the job recruitment procedures?
What are the tools used by HR to this effect?
What can governments do to tackle the problem? What has been done in other countries?

These and other questions will be discussed at the March 8, 2021 conference.
With the guidance of our moderator and PWA Programming Director, Catherine Costaggiu.

Our speakers will lead you to discover the details about unconscious bias: its definition, how to recognize it, how does it impact women in their career development, and what are the tools used by HR to avoid it in the job recruitment procedures. In this eConference, our panelists will discuss also how can unconscious bias could be tackled and what is the governments’ role in this.

Meet our Speakers

Alessandra Di Cosmo
Head of Learning & Development, Talent Strategy, D&I – VODAFONE

Alessandra joined the HR  community in 2019 as Head of L&D, bringing to the team a 15-year experience in Marketing.

Her personal purpose is “accelerating skills transformation and people development by leveraging her past experience in marketing, customer insights and data analytics”. She is a passionate people manager and a happy mom of two beautiful children

Ekaterina Netchaeva
Assistant Professor – Bocconi University

Ekaterina Netchaeva is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University. She has received her PhD from the University of Utah in 2014 and in 2020 she was a visiting scholar at London Business School.
Her research examines women’s experiences in the workplace, including relationships with colleagues, manager-subordinate dynamics, efforts aimed at achieving greater credibility, as well as consequences of gender bias. This work has been published in Psychological Science, Organizational Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes journals, and others. She teaches courses on Leadership, Diversity Management and Policy, and Collaborative Competencies.

Maura Gallotti
HR Director, Global People & Purpose – Moleskine

With more than 15 years of experience in the HR field, Maura has been working since 2015 in Moleskine as the Global HR Director.

During these years she has developed a strong interest for Generation Y, which she is willing to attract and manage, integrating 2.0 values and strategies with traditional HR tools.

Gracia Dalgalarrando
Columbia University, SIPA – Founder and CEO – WoomUp Chile

Gracia Dalgalarrando is the founder and CEO of WoomUp, a mentoring and networking platform for professional women climbing the ladder. She created this idea while studying for a Master of Public Administration at Columbia University. In 2017 and 2018 she was awarded recognition for being one of the 100 most influential women in Chile.

Participation is open to our members and partners only.

All participants are requested to RSVP by the 8th of March on our website form and will receive all the details necessary to connect to the e-conference the day before the event.

The eConference starts at 13.30 sharp and will last for one hour.

Be sure to register and bring your questions to actively participate in this event.

*This month’s e-Conference is selected as one of the highlights to a THREE day exceptional set of webinars, “Discovering Careers in Coding”. This will give our active members access to a unique benefit for members only will be held entirely online from 8th March at 10:00 to 10th March: three days full of conferences, workshops, and interactive events. Contact programming@pwarome.org if you are interested.