Cultural,
Historical, &
Gender Issues
Embedded Files
"To disregard an individual's culture and the value their perspective brings is to disregard the individual entirely" (Richardson & Ingoglia, 2020).
Cultural, Historical and Gender Issues Definition
The organization is able to move past stereotypes and biases related to race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or geography. Decisions based on policies and procedures within the organization are responsive to ALL racial, ethnic, and cultural needs of those within the organization.
Guiding Questions:
Instructions: Before watching the video below, answer the following questions with your specific site in mind.
What does it look like when a site recognizes historical trauma?
How does a site honor traditional cultural connections, and how are they incorporated into policies and procedures?
To Overcome Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues, Leaders Need to:
Uncover by:
Uncover by:
Identifying Bias: Implicit biases can be unlearned once they are recognized.
Leaders should identify biases that might shape our behaviors:
Affinity bias: People who favor people with similar backgrounds, experiences, or personal traits.
Attribution bias: People who tend to excuse behaviors as a response to circumstances.
Confirmation bias: People agree with evidence that backs up initial belief
Fighting Stereotypes:
Substitution: A useful technique to identify bias.
Individuation: Seeing people first, no group is a monolith.
Slowing Down: Take time to clear bias within decision-making.
See the Resources Page for implicit bias surveys
Identifying Behavior Differences:
Extroversion: Highly social people and seeks out others to work with.
Ambiversion: Equal degrees of extroversion and extraversion, approximately.
Introversion: More comfortable focusing on inner feelings, thoughts, and ideas.
Identifying Values and Areas for Growth
Leverage opportunities to enable people to understand and value the differences in others (Farmer, 2020).
See the Resource Page for SWOT analysis tool to help you identify areas of growth
Repair by:
Repair by:
Being Educated on Cultural, Historical and Gender Differences
Staff come from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, it is important to provide education about cultural and historical traditions of the community being served as well education on the staff serving the community.
Allowing for Flexibility with Schedules
Honoring days off for cultural celebrations
Allow mental health days to destress
Work with time off to allow staff to balance work/ life loads
Promoting Team Building
Increasing engagement
Focus more on productivity
Demonstrate effective communication
Encourage collaborative leadership
Set team standards
Leading with Empathy
Listen and be present in conversations
Show humility and self-awareness
Invest in building and maintaining relationships
Set standards and give feedback
Build a culture of empathy
Transform by:
Transform by:
Promoting an Inclusive Staff, That Can Learn From One Another: Different cultures bring different work habits, organizational skills, and conflict resolution strategies that can strengthen and transform the site. It is important that a leader can promote a more inclusive staff by:
Leading transformative process that fosters communication as the foundation
Engage the staff in the organizational planning process
Train all staff members, not just a few
Create a safe, and inviting environment
Prevent secondary traumatic stressors, like adding additional workloads
Hire a trauma informed workforce if necessary
Cultural Historical and Gender Issues
Wrap-Up
Take a minute to write down your initial thoughts about uncovering the cultural, historical, and gender issues at your site.
What are some current issues at your site?
How will you fight stereotypes and repair relationships?
How can you transform your site to be more inclusive for learning for all staff?
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