Empathy: The First Step Towards Inclusion was co-written by Dr. Adetoun Yeaman and Dr. Sreyoshi Bhaduri.
Even as the world grapples with the debilitating COVID-19 pandemic, the past few weeks have found many in our communities struggling with the repercussions of another long, vicious pandemic that of racism. Some of us had the privilege to switch off the news and take a break from social media. But for about 25% of the United States, which includes people of color, even stepping away to seek respite and bolster mental health is a privilege that few can afford. In these times, more than ever, empathy is an important skill which can help individuals work towards better inclusion.
Empathy is the ability to see the world through anothers perspective. Casually, empathy is defined as the act of putting oneself in another persons shoes. Through being in another persons shoes, an individual may have the opportunity to gain a deeper or more meaningful understanding of what someone else may have lived and experienced. This ability thus allows individuals to be sensitized to others needs and sufferings. The way past indifference and towards allyship aimed at inclusion is illuminated primarily through empathy. Author Chinua Achebe, in his collection of essays, hints at lack of empathy being a result of an unimaginative brain.
Like any other professional development skill, empathy is one that needs to be developed and once developed, continually honed. For engineers, this skill is twice-blessed; it allows engineers to connect not only with the people they impact but also the individuals they work with, as they work in teams to solve problems, engage in design and innovate on technologies. While empathy is a human ability, possessed by everyone, studies suggest it can be enhanced or diminished in various instances.
In the United States, empathy found prominence in conversations on race and racial disparities through the works of Kenneth Clark in the second quarter of the 20th century. There has been more recent discourse on empathy and its importance in the engineering field in the 21st century. Many intentional efforts are being made to incorporate empathy into engineering curricula and prepare future engineers to be more empathic. Some conceptualizations of empathy relevant to engineering include the framework for empathy in design, which describes empathy as a process of discovery followed by immersion, connection and detachment; and the model of empathy in engineering, which presents empathy as a way of being, a practice orientation and a learnable skill. People can learn to be empathic!
Empathy is a good starting point on the journey to inclusion in engineering. However, empathy alone will likely not be enough, and at times, may be grossly inadequate. The argument against empathy puts forth the rationale that differences in power dynamics disallow individuals to truly put themselves in anothers shoes or understand their lived experiences. These power dynamics are exacerbated when people interact with individuals who have significantly diverse lives because of intersections of race, gender or socio-economic status, among others.
Consider as an example, a manager, M, who needs to decide among two team members, A and B, to lead a high-visibility project. A, although better skilled than B for this project, is also a new parent. M was a new parent once and puts themselves in As shoes. M recalls their own lived experiences as a new parent and remembers how difficult managing time was for them during those days with the new baby. Empathizing with A, M may then decide to give the project to B, intending to not add unnecessary stress for A. However, while this act may arise from empathy-backed intentions, the outcome may not always be for the better. As lived experiences are different from the managers (Ms). Going beyond empathy, and asking A to decide for themselves, while giving them the option to back out, may have been a better solution since it allows more autonomy for the employee who is directly impacted by such decisions.
Thus, empathy alone may often not be enough for inclusive decision-making or working in teams. However, empathy is a good first step sensitizing individuals to struggles that others around them may be facing and informing considerate decision making.
We must be careful to not stop at empathy alone. Empathy helps us get to allyship, where we are sensitized towards and lend support to those who have been systematically marginalized and disadvantaged. However, true inclusion can only happen when we go beyond empathy and extend allyship to accompliceship,where, in the latter, we actively partake in dismantling oppressive structures.
Inclusion can be thought of as a journey of a thousand miles, and empathy its first step.
Are you actively honing your empathic skills today?
Dr. Sreyoshi Bhaduri is a SWE Member and a board member of the SWE New York and Long Island section. Dr. Sreyoshi Bhaduri leads Global People Research & Analytics at McGraw Hill, where she works on research leveraging employee data from across 45 countries to generate data-driven insights for policy decisions impacting organizational effectiveness, culture, and talent. Dr. Bhaduri has interdisciplinary expertise with a Ph.D. in Engineering Education and Masters degrees (M.A. and M.S.) in Statistics and Mechanical Engineering, from Virginia Tech. Her research areas include women in STEM, inclusion, and diversity initiatives within the tech industry, as well as employing innovative, ethical, and inclusive mixed-methods research approaches to uncovering data-driven insights to meet the challenges of the 21st-century workforce. Dr. Bhaduri has been recognized as an Academy for Teaching Excellence fellow and a Diversity scholar at Virginia Tech, and was inducted in the National Bouchet Honor Society at Yale.
Dr. Adetoun Yeaman is an Engineering Education Post-doctoral Fellow at Wake Forest University. She earned her doctorate from Virginia Tech. Her dissertation research focused on how empathy plays out in the experiences of undergraduate engineering students in service-learning courses. She received her M.S. degree in 2013 in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering and her B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2011, both from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a strong interest in the ways that people interact and the role that engineering and technology play in society. To this end, she continues to look for ways to promote social competencies of people, such as empathy, within engineering education and practice. Her research interests include empathy in engineering, design education, spatial visualization and multimedia learning. In her new role as post-doctoral fellow, she will be contributing to the development of an emerging engineering curriculum that incorporates research-based practices on character and human virtues.
Read more:
Empathy: The First Step Towards Inclusion - All Together - Society of Women Engineers