Some definitions

Bias

Bias is a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another usually in a way that’s considered to be unfair.

Unconscious bias

Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness.

Impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Harassment

Harassment is unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.

Bullying

Bullying is generally defined as unwelcome or unreasonable behavior that demeans, intimidates, humiliates, or sabotages the work of people, either as individuals or as a group. Bullying behavior is most often pervasive, persistent and part of a pattern, but it can also occur as a single egregious incident (adapted from the AURA - https://www.aura-astronomy.org/ - code of conduct). We describe here behaviors linked to bullying.

Racism

Racism is a set of beliefs and practices that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yields superiority and privilege for some, and discrimination and oppression for others. Racism takes representational, ideological, discursive, interactional, institutional, structural, and systemic forms.

Sexism

Sexism is the ideology that one gender is superior to another. This system of ideas may either be conscious or subconscious. It develops through social conditioning, family upbringing, culture and institutional setting. Sexism includes the attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and other types of biases that perpetuate the idea that women are somehow lesser than men.