Understanding bias
Learn about bias, how to avoid bias, and how to add sensitivity into your every day writing practice.
When we are writing, it’s important for us to actively avoid biased language and write with sensitivity. Your audience will most likely be a diverse one that includes people of all genders, races, sexualities, classes, etc. Therefore, your writing should be inclusive of that audience.
What is bias?
Bias is the inclination or prejudices that one individual may have for or against someone or something. Bias can be conscious or unconscious. Unconscious biases may show up in your writing if you are not careful. Therefore, it is important to understand what bias is and how it appears so that we can remove it.
Avoid bias
Since bias is often unconscious the only real way to avoid it is to learn what it looks like. You should...
Stay away from generalizations
It is important to stay away from statements that assume facts about a group of people that may not be true. For example:
Women do not do math.
This is a biased statement because this is not a fact that is true for all women.
An unbiased statement would be:
In a survey done in 2022 with women aged 21—35, 35% of responders said that they did not use math in their day-to-day lives. ...