Is unconscious bias impacting tech equity?

Sammy Pahal, Managing Director at UK PropTech Association, discusses how we can all tackle unconscious bias in Locale's 'Tech Equity in Real Estate'. In order to truly understand the power of unconscious bias and explore the impact this could have, not just in the PropTech industry but for all those interacting with the built environment, we first need to recognise that it exists in all of us.

For example, studies have shown that 90% of Westerners associate negative concepts with the elderly, 75% of white respondents and 50% of black respondents show an anti-black bias, and 75% of men and women readily associate “women” with “family” rather than “career.” So, the question is not Do I have unconscious biases? but rather ‘Where could these unconscious biases lie, and what impact could this have?’

Tackling unconscious bias in the built environment starts at the very beginning in planning and design. Traditionally local citizens were informed of proposed developments through town hall meetings. PropTech has been changing the way that this has been done through digital citizen engagement tools, which have proven to engage more of the ‘hard to reach’ groups e.g. young people or those whose first language may not be English.
Post-Covid, spaces are being redesigned to maximise use and provide better experiences for those in the buildings – whether it is the home, office, or retail. Data is central to this; however, gender differences are still not necessarily accounted for.

Whilst we can use real-time building data to trigger an adjustment in the temperature and airflow of buildings to increase comfort levels, these are different for men and women. A study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change claimed that the majority of office buildings use temperatures that were set with men in mind. The “thermal comfort model” that sets the ideal temperature for air conditioners and central heating systems, and that has provoked so many arguments in its time, was developed back in the 1960s, using Fanger’s Thermal Comfort model through an analysis of the resting weight of a 154lb (69kg) 40-year-old male.

PropTech also has the potential to make property investment and ownership more equitable. From peer-to-peer and crowdfunding platforms lowering the barrier to property investment and innovative solutions to help citizens downsize or get onto the property ladder through rent-to-buy models. However, whilst PropTech can help the property industry to become more equitable, are our unconscious biases limiting the accessibility of the very products and services that are making the property industry more equitable?

In a work environment, biases can affect policies, workplace culture and hiring, but perhaps more surprisingly, it also affects marketing, product design and the implementation of technology. Notable examples include Amazon scrapping their recruitment algorithm because it had effectively taught itself that male candidates were superior or how Amazon, Apple, and the UK’s passport photo checker have all been accused of faulty, biased design. So why is it that these tech giants did not identify these biases in the first place? Often, the data going into these systems and informing decisions is not representative of different groups of customers/consumers, or the programming of these systems/tools is not designed to consider differences.

In technology industries in particular, developers and product designers tend to be mostly male and white. In marketing teams, the demographic tends to be mostly female and white. How does this shape our products and marketing? As human beings, we tend to attract what is similar and familiar to us.

Recently I spoke with a member of the association who was surprised to discover, through an audit of their marketing collateral, that the images they were using in their campaigns and website were mostly white females. This bias may be harmful in closing off audiences that may benefit from the products and services the industry can offer – particularly if ambitions are to scale into different regions and go global. To mitigate the risks and impact of unconscious bias, we need to

1. identify possible biases within the business which could be shaping the products and solutions and
2. look at the way in which we engage with and represent all different types of customers and stakeholders – considering different age groups, genders, ethnicities, cultures, and skillsets.

Only then can we truly have an equitable and tech-enabled property industry and spaces that we can all utilise and enjoy.