This past summer, Professor Joan C. Williams of the University of California, San Francisco and her team at the Equity Action Center launched a ground-breaking collaborative gender study with the American College of Bankruptcy and the Focus on Gender Committee. Over 900 professionals in 80 restructuring advisory firms in law, financial advisory, and investment banking participated in the resultant survey. These results were presented at an "Interrupting Gender Bias in the Restructuring Industry" event on November 14, 2024 at Kirkland & Ellis in New York.
The American College of Bankruptcy was a partner and participant in the gender study, and its Fellows now have free access to the gender study and the toolkits which are customized to the restructuring industry and can be accessed directly through this Report Link. You can find the toolkits at the end of the report.
In addition, the Equality Action Center has numerous other toolkits available at www.biasinterrupters.org. These toolkits are resources for interrupting bias in hiring, performance evaluations, meetings, access to opportunities, family leave, remote and hybrid work, flexible work, and compensation, among others.
Fellows are also encouraged to review the linked materials as they enter evaluation season at their firms. (Please remember that reading this two-pager out loud can level the playing field.) Identifying Bias in Performance Evaluations Guide. Or, if you prefer, here is a 2-minute video . If your process includes self-evaluations, don’t forget to hand this out to anyone writing a self-evaluation.
Additional resources include:
Career-enhancing work: Assignment Typology Worksheet
Office housework: Office Housework Worksheet
Bias in meetings: Bias in Meetings Worksheet
Hiring and recruitment: Identifying Bias in Hiring Guide
The tools provided with your membership will get you started. If you would like a more customized engagement with Equality Action Center, please contact the center directly through the following link, where you also will find descriptions of their offerings and associated costs: https://biasinterrupters.org/services/.
You may click here to view the November 14th presentation at Kirkland.