Guest blogger Alycia Garcia: My #PledgeforParity

In honor of International Women's Day, we welcome guest blogger Alycia Garcia!

Alycia Garcia studied negotiation and mediation at the University of Oregon School of Law.  She now uses those skills in the entertainment industry and has worked with major television networks to promote production safety. Throughout her career Alycia has maintained a focus on the transformative nature of negotiation.  She hopes to inspire and empower women and girls to use negotiation to achieve their professional and personal goals.

The World Economic Forum predicts it will take until 2133 to close the gender wage gap at the current rate of change.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #PledgeForParity. I pledge to challenge conscious and unconscious bias. One way to do this is to institute blind hiring techniques in the workplace.

Blind hiring is when part of the candidate's identity is concealed to guard against bias. Economists Claudia Goldin and Cecila Rouse studied orchestras in the United States that used gender-blind auditions and found that this technique increased the probability that a woman would be advanced and hired.

Why not adopt a similar technique in your workplace?

If you are a hiring manager, ask HR or another colleague to redact names and gender indications from resumes. You’ll reduce the possibility of unconscious bias, and you could influence other hiring managers to adopt this practice as well. Or, go one step further and volunteer to work with HR to make formal changes to your company's hiring practices.

What’s your #PledgeForParity?