I have an old book that belonged to my grandmother.

Its title is hard to miss:Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers.

Written by Baptist evangelist John R. Rice in 1941, it reflects a very different era and a very different way of applying Scripture to women’s roles. Rice wrote, “When you bobbed your hair, you bobbed your character, too,” and urged women to “take a woman’s place.”

I keep the book as a special artifact of my family history, but also as a reminder of how much has changed.

The church I am part of today reads and applies many of those same Scriptures very differently. Women lead, teach, serve, and use their gifts in ways that would have been difficult to imagine in the world that produced that little book.

And yet this week I found myself wondering:

What if bias doesn’t always disappear? What if sometimes it simply learns new language?

A comment I wasn’t expecting

I was talking with my medical provider about finding a new physician for my daughter. She had asked me to ask him because she knew how much I liked him and respected him as a great doctor. I asked whether he knew a woman provider (which she had requested) that he would recommend.

His answer stopped me.

He said he didn’t know an excellent woman to recommend because, in his experience, women physicians simply weren’t as available. They “always have things coming up.”

I love my physician, and have been in relationship with him for years. Maybe that’s why I actually found myself speechless in response.

He wasn’t trying to make a statement about women.

But he did.

Availability had quietly become part of the definition of excellence. Women were assumed to be less available because more things interrupted their work, and that assumption became a reason not to recommend them.

That is how bias often works now.

It doesn’t necessarily announce itself. It can sound practical, experienced, even helpful.

Sometimes we answer the question for her

His comment reminded me of something that happened to my daughter.

She was informally invited to consider becoming the head social worker at a local organization. She had the credentials and experience, and the possibility was exciting.

Then in an informal conversation the board chair wondered aloud whether she planned to have more children.

When he mentally calculated her suspected age and current number of children, he essentially answered the leadership question for her:

Oh, then this probably wouldn’t work.

He did not ask whether she wanted the role, how she imagined managing it, what support she had, or what she believed she could handle.

The opportunity simply disappeared beneath an assumption about what motherhood would mean for her availability and ambition.

She went on to find an awesome professional opportunity that came looking for her and is happily succeeding in her career while raising three children alongside her husband.

The assumption wasn’t simply unfair.

It was wrong.

The caregiving burden becomes evidence against women

Last week I wrote about the caregiving and mental load that women still disproportionately carry.

Two readers wrote back almost immediately.

One told me she has long asked her students a wonderfully practical question:

Who cleans the toilets at home?

Another forwarded the newsletter to a friend expecting her second child thinking she’d appreciate it and wishing she was closer to provide help that she knew was going to be needed.

Those responses reveal a frustrating cycle.

Women carry more caregiving responsibility. That can make them less available in certain moments. Their reduced availability is then interpreted as lower commitment or reliability. They receive fewer opportunities, recommendations, or promotions.

And eventually those outcomes can be pointed to as proof that women simply don’t show up in the same way men do.

The structural burden becomes a judgment about the woman.

My internist assumed women physicians would have too many interruptions.

A board chair assumed a woman considering another child would not be able to lead.

Neither man said women were incapable.

They didn’t have to. Their assumptions about caregiving did the work for them.

Bias is not only a problem for bad people

This may be the piece we most need to understand.

Bias is easy to reject when we imagine it belongs only to prejudiced people saying obviously prejudiced things.

Most of the time, it is much quieter.

A hiring manager assumes a mother probably won’t want the travel.

A senior leader decides a woman with young children is not ready for a demanding role without ever asking her.

A physician interprets caregiving interruptions as evidence that women doctors are less dependable.

A colleague describes a woman as “difficult” for using the same directness that earns a man the description “decisive.”

No one has to say women shouldn’t lead.

The result can still be fewer opportunities to do so.

We have come a long way from a book openly telling women to “take a woman’s place.”

That progress is real and worth celebrating.

But seventy-five years later, bias is more likely to sound like:

She probably won’t be available.

She has too much going on.

This role may be too demanding for her right now.

The vocabulary has changed.

The assumption that someone else should decide what a woman can handle can remain remarkably familiar.

Three questions worth asking

• When I describe someone as committed, reliable, ready, or leadership material, what am I actually measuring?

• Am I treating constant availability as evidence of excellence when someone else may simply have fewer caregiving responsibilities?

• Am I making a decision for a woman that I should be asking her to make for herself?

That last question may be the most important.

Sometimes the work of reducing bias isn’t a new policy or another training program. It is catching the assumption before it becomes the decision.

It is questioning the explanation that sounds perfectly reasonable.

It is being willing to say:

Maybe the problem isn’t that she is less committed. Maybe we have built systems, and expectations, that ask her to carry more.

That is why my consulting, coaching, andWomen Leading Boldly groupsorganizing anew this fall do more than help women navigate bias.

We also need to help good leaders recognize bias when it shows up in ordinary conversations, judgments, and decisions.

Women do not need leaders deciding in advance what they can manage.

They need leaders willing to ask them.

Warmly,

Dawn

Research Noteincase you want to read my Grandma's book, too.

John R. Rice.Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers.First published in 1941.

P.S.

I’m still smiling about the reader who asks her students,“Who cleans the toilets at home?”

It may be one of the simplest questions I’ve heard for uncovering invisible work that reveals the most.

And a shout-out to so many wonderful men partners I know like my brother-in-law, Pete, who has always shared caregiving according to his wife, Marilyn.

P.P.S. This Week’s Recipe ☀️

Nana’s Strawberry Satin Pie

This was a summer dessert that my mom used to make regularly when we visited their lake cottage in northern Michigan. Enjoy!

NANA'S STRAWBERRY SATIN PIE