Q188. "Women's issues" have been talked about a lot in the 2012 presidential campaigns. One issue has been the hiring of women in leadership positions in society. Draw a causal loop diagram to represent the following relationships.
The more "gender bias" the fewer qualified women there will be.
More qualified women means more women in positions of power.
The more women in power, the less "gender bias" in society.
Assuming we start with social bias and not many women in positions of power, how is this system likely to behave?
Now let's modify things a bit. Let's suppose we solve the "supply" problem and break the link between bias and the number of qualified women and that the latter grows significantly. We change our model slightly:
Societal bias produces social blindness to existence of qualified women.
This social blindness means fewer women will be in the pool that is considered for positions of power.
The fewer women in the pool, the fewer end up in positions of power.
And, as before, the more (fewer) women in power, the less (more) "gender bias" in society.
Draw this causal model.
Now let's add another causal relation: the fewer women in positions of power, the more NGOs emerge to promote women's participation in government, etc. The NGOs hit on a strategy called that the men in power call "binders of women" — whereby they do the legwork needed to show the men the qualified women that their bias made them blind to.
Add the NGOs and the binders to our causal model. Identify a balancing loop that might portend the achievement of improved gender diversity in positions of power.