Discrimination is bad for your health – and your kids too

Think about the last time you left the house. Did strangers on the street acknowledge your presence with a smile or avert their glance? Chances are that the answer depended on your age, gender and, of course, your race.

There is no shortage of evidence that racism persists. Despite the fact that science has demonstrated that racial groups are defined by society rather than biology, an individual’s experience from the moment they are born is colored by the color of their skin.

Recently, high-profile incidents have focused attention on how people can be treated differently by authority figures, such as police officers, because of their race. However the majority of discrimination experiences are much more subtle.

In fact, subtle bias may actually be more mentally damaging than overt bias. This is because overt bias can be more easily dismissed as ignorant. However subtle bias is able to “get under the skin” to influence physical health.

Racism affects physical health

In recent years, there has been a growing amount of research highlighting the effects of racial discrimination on not only mental health but also physical health. Discrimination may influence physical health through changes in stress physiology functioning.

As an example, in African-Americans experiencing racism has been associated with higher evening cortisol levels, which are considered unhealthy. Similarly, a study among Hispanic youth found that racism experience was associated with higher cortisol levels across the day.

Cortisol and other hormones in the stress physiology system are important for maintaining immune, reproductive and cardiovascular health. Therefore changes in this system as a result of discrimination experience can adversely affect everything from your body’s ability to fight infection to your ability to become pregnant.

The quantity of evidence supporting the relationship between discrimination and physical health is staggering. And yet discrimination may have even greater impacts than was initially recognized.

Racism can affect health across generations

It is increasingly accepted that a woman’s mental and physical health in pregnancy influences her baby. Maternal health may influence offspring through exposure to hormones in pregnancy.

For example, women with high stress hormones give birth to infants with lower birth weight. Since being born small increases risk for developing poor health in adulthood, factors impacting maternal stress hormones in pregnancy could also affect long term offspring health.

While racial discrimination has well known impacts on adult health, less research has focused on the potential for racial discrimination to influence health in the next generation. However the studies that have been done suggest that there can be very important effects.

For example, racial discrimination has been associated with lower birth weight. One particularly interesting study, reported a decrease in birth weight among children of California women with Arab sounding names in the year following 9/11. The author attributed this finding to an increase in racial discrimination experience among these women.

I recently published an article that evaluated whether racial discrimination influences maternal and offspring stress physiology among a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of women from Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland is an interesting cultural context to explore the effects of discrimination on health because it is very ethnically diverse; 39% of all residents were born overseas.

I tracked women who were in the late stages of their pregnancy. What I found was that women who experienced discrimination had higher evening stress hormone levels in late pregnancy, consistent with a pattern of chronic stress.

When I followed up their infants at six weeks of age, I found that their children had elevated stress response to vaccination. These findings suggest that experience of racial discrimination may actually have biological impacts lasting across generations.

What do we do about it?

Understanding the link between discrimination experience and poor health is an important first step towards raising awareness of this issue. But something obviously needs to be done in order to improve the health and well being of all members of society. Continuing to identify and call out the institutional and interpersonal experiences of discrimination is a necessary first step.

Interventions aimed at increasing social support and ethnic identity will likely increase resilience to discrimination experience. Efforts should not focus solely on these “buffering” interventions, however, as this effectively translates into placing responsibility on the victim rather than on the perpetrators of discrimination.

Tools, such as the implicit bias test, exist to help people identify their own biases that they may be unaware of. Recognizing the potential for subtle bias is necessary before anything can be done to address it.

Story by Zaneta Thayer

Repost from The Conversation US

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Fighting discrimination for four decades

AFTER leading a multicultural stand against the government’s plans to axe Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act last year, Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim will speak at a conference next month marking 40 years since the establishment of the Act.

Wertheim is one of three Jewish presenters scheduled to appear at the conference organised by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Over two days, the sessions will look at how the legislation has evolved, what it has achieved, its ongoing role and what legal outcomes have been achieved under it.

Wertheim will address the topic “Freedom and social cohesion: a law that protects both”.

“In contemporary Australia there is widespread acknowledgement that discrimination and vilification that is directed against people because of the colour of their skin or because of their race or national or ethnic origin is morally wrong,” Wertheim said. “It violates the most elementary principles of justice and our sense of a fair go. Because of our own history, the Jewish people understand this all too well.”

Pratt Foundation Research Chair of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University Professor Andrew Markus will speak on the topic “Negotiating change in the immigrant nation: public opinion and the transformation of Australia”.

Markus authored the 2014 report Mapping Social Cohesion for the Scanlon Foundation, in which he reported that five per cent of the population experienced discrimination once a month, with those of non-English speaking backgrounds reporting the highest incidence.

University of Technology, Sydney sociology Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, who is a strong advocate for multiculturalism, rounds out the Jewish contingent.

His topic is “Who are the racists in cyberspace? Understanding how to build communities of race hate and the implications for resilience in target communities”.

Story by GARETH NARUNSKY

Repost from Australian Jewish News

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‘Racism alive and well’

THINK Australia is not a racist country? Think again, says one local Aboriginal rights campaigner.

While millions will celebrate Australia Day on Monday, for many the day has become filled with exclusive and nationalistic undertones.

Outspoken Aboriginal rights campaigner Marianne Headland-Mackay will mark the day in Canberra and take part in a community walk through the capital.

“We live in a great country that deserves to be celebrated, but celebrate it properly and with respect to all the people who live here,” she said.

Ms Headland-Mackay said the notion of Australia Day was unintentionally prejudiced and was not inclusive for Aboriginal people or immigrants.

She said January 26 remained an insulting day for many Aboriginal people.

“It is the foundation of a nation built on genocide policies against the first nation people… it’s when our land was stolen,” she said.

“Let’s make it another day like marking Federation.”

Ms Mackay Headland said racism was alive and well in the community.

“We could be walking around the shop in a public place and someone will turn around and call us a black ###,” she said.

“Whenever we go to the shops, as soon as they see you security follow you, especially if you have a pram. “We are always followed and searched, I end up leaving out of frustration.”

A 2012 University of Western Sydney study of more than 12,000 people found while 84.4 per cent of Australians believe racial prejudice exists here, just 12.4 per cent admit they are prejudiced against other cultures.

Ms Headland-Mackay said that when she goes shopping with white ‘wadjula’ friends, she gets singled out by security.

“We cop it on the train from people, when we go to a boutique they are on us, following us, straight away,” she said.

Ms Headland-Mackay was among a group of Nyoongar activists who set up a short-lived tent embassy on Heirisson Island in 2012.

“It soon became unsafe for us to camp anymore,” she said.

“People in boats would shout, ‘go home you black ####, get a real job, send your kids to school.

“It’s not just us, Muslims and asylum seekers are also subject to racism.”

Murdoch University Associate Professor Anne Pedersen, a social psychologist, said while explicit racism was on the decline, racism still exists in Australian society.

“Explicit or old-fashioned racism has decreased over the years, although it is still out there in some circles,” she said.

“But symbolic or casual racism still exists. Many people don’t see casual racism as being racism though, just having a joke.

“A problem arises because when people believe that their views are consensually shared, they are more vocal with their views.”

Brand MHR Gary Gray said Australia was multicultural and tolerant and built on ancestors from across the world.

“This diversity of backgrounds which we all come from enriches both our society and our culture,” he said.

Support for Muslims with the #illridewithyou hashtag on social media following the Sydney siege was a “clear signal” Australians would not accept discrimination.

Ms Headland-Mackay said Australians did not realise the prominence of racism.

“Just ask foreigners that come here,” she said. “I was yarning with an Irish lady the other day and she was blown away by how open racism is and everyone accepts it.”

Ms Mackay praised younger generations for their openness to other cultures and said it was usually older Australians who made racist remarks in public.

“We are all people, no one is better than anyone else,” she said.

Story by John Dobson

Repost from inmycommunity

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The cycle of anti-Muslim discrimination in France is likely to worsen

Muslims in France and the French host population are locked in a discriminatory equilibrium. This is the conclusion, summarized in our soon-to-be published book, of a six-year research program that investigates whether and why Muslims are discriminated against in France.

In 2009, we organized behavioral games in Paris in which “rooted” French (French with no recent immigrant background) interacted with Muslim and Christian immigrants. With the exception of their religion, these Muslim and Christian immigrants were similar. They hail from the same two ethnic groups and the same socio-economic class in Senegal and migrated to France at the same time (the 1970s) and for the same economic reasons.

Our behavioral games allowed us to compare the level of trust and altruism that rooted French exhibit toward Muslim immigrants and their Christian counterparts by having them play simultaneously a trust game and a dictator game.
The research shows basic bias against Muslims

Our results show that, while the rooted French do not distrust Muslims any more than Christians, they are less altruistic toward Muslims.

Put differently, rooted French discriminate in a “non rational” manner against Muslims. When given a common task, they are less cooperative toward Muslims (particularly those with recognizably Muslim names) even when they do not expect any particular hostility from the Muslims with whom they interact.

Moreover, while increasing the proportion of Muslims in French society might reduce such prejudice due to increased opportunity for interaction, our results suggest the opposite.

When we increased the proportion of Muslims in our game environment there were measurable signs that the discriminatory attitudes of the rooted French were heightened. The expected increase of the Muslim population in France (from 7.5% in 2010 to 10.3% in 2030), our research suggests, will not improve anti-Muslim prejudice, other factors remaining constant.
Discrimination evident in the workplace

The anti-Muslim discrimination we reveal is not confined to the lab.

We accompanied our behavioral games with a correspondence test comparing responses to a Senegalese Christian (Marie Diouf) and to a Senegalese Muslim (Khadija Diouf) job applicant who submitted the exact same CVs, with two differences only: one job and one volunteer experience.

One of Khadija’s past positions was with Secours Islamique (Islamic Relief) and one of Marie’s was with Secours Catholique (Catholic relief). Also, Khadija did voluntary work for the Scouts Musulmans de France, whereas Marie did the same for the comparable Catholic organization, Scouts et Guides de France.

Our findings reveal that a job applicant in France is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback when she is perceived as Muslim instead of Christian by the employer.
What about religious norms?

Is there a factual basis for the sense of cultural threat rooted French experience when interacting with Muslims?

In his research, Berkeley political scientist Steven Fish shows that the average Muslim respondent is more religious than the average Christian respondent. The average Muslim score (on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 means that God has the least importance in one’s life and 10 means that it has the greatest importance) is 9.5. For the average Christian it is 8.1.

Our own survey, conducted in France among the group of Senegalese Christian and Muslim immigrants mentioned above, confirms that Muslims are distinctive from their Christian counterparts in terms of religiosity. Their mean score on the 1 to 10 scale is 9.0 compared with 7.6 for their Christian counterparts and 3.1 for the average rooted French respondent.

But Muslims are distinctive in other ways also.
What about women?

Steven Fish’s work showed that Muslims are more likely to agree that “a university education is more important for a boy than for a girl,“ to think that “when jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women” and to support the idea that “men make better political leaders than women do.”

Our research confirms that Muslim immigrants in France differ from their Christian counterparts in gender attitudes. Senegalese Christian immigrants and rooted French show greater altruism toward their female game partners than toward their male ones but the opposite is true for Muslims: they are more generous toward men than women.

Muslims in France not only attach more importance to religion than do the average French, but they also support more conservative views and behaviors towards women.

They are perceived by the French host population as a challenge to France’s century-long commitment to the separation of church and state (what the French call laïcité) and its 50-year struggle for gender equality.

But this sense of a cultural threat is not rational. As French political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj have shown, the average Muslim’s higher level of religiosity has nothing to do with the Islamist position that religious principles should be the foundation of governance. Nor do their more traditional views on gender roles call for the repression of women.
Discrimination leads Muslim community to withdraw further

Yet, this sense of threat felt by the so-called rooted French feeds irrational anti-Muslim behavior. And this behavior, in turn, encourages Muslims to withdraw from French society.

Our survey results clearly indicate that Muslim immigrants detect more hostility in France toward them than do their Christian counterparts. Consequently, they have few incentives to abandon their own cultural norms to identify more closely with French culture and society. This withdrawal further feeds anti-Muslim discrimination in France.

Distressingly, the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the attack on a kosher supermarket can only reinforce this vicious cycle of discrimination.

The attack by a few has strengthened the misguided belief that Muslims as a whole constitute a major threat to France.

To break this cycle, actions must be taken to increase public awareness that “being a Muslim” is not equivalent to “being a Jihadist.“ Mobilizing the Muslim population in France to coalesce at least around the “I am neither Koachi nor Coulibaly” slogan if not around “I am Charlie” would also help unravel France’s worrisome discriminatory trap.

Repost from The Conversation US

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O-level generation ‘face age discrimination’

The Government’s ‘older workers tsar’ suggests holders of the pre-1988 secondary school qualification should consider deleting them from their CVs and substituting GCSEs instead

Older job applicants are being advised to disguise O-levels on their CV because they may suffer age discrimination for holding old-style qualifications.

Ros Altmann, the government’s tsar for older workers, said there were cases of older people altering their job applications after suffering “constant rejection”.

O-levels, widely regarded as the gold standard in secondary level qualifications, were scrapped in 1987 and replaced with GCSEs the following year, meaning the youngest O-level cohort is now 43 or 44.

Holders of the predominantly examination-based O-levels have remained untainted by suggestions of grade inflation which have so badly damaged the reputation of GCSEs.

But the O-level generation is now finding themselves at a disadvantage as they enter their mid-forties.

“There are ‘CV skills’ courses which suggest to older people looking for jobs that they call their O-levels GCSEs [because] O-levels equals ‘old’,” Miss Altmann told the Sunday Times.

“I don’t condone telling outright lies, of course, but if you are having to face this kind of unfairness then maybe one needs to look to play the game.

“This generation will want to be scrupulously honest and if they are asked questions wouldn’t dream of missing information out deliberately. This honesty counts against them.”

Miss Altmann is an economist and pensions expert who was made the Coalition’s business champion for older workers in July last year to boost the number of over-50s in work.

She said many employers would weed out applications from older people even though they are not allowed to demand an applicant’s date of birth.

However, earlier career histories and the date or type of qualifications listed on a CV provided an easy way for some employers to calculate an applicant’s age.

Older applicants facing age discrimination have been advised to include modern technological aspects to their CVs such as file-sharing links and video clips in a bid to disguise their true age.

News Courtesy: telegraph.co.uk

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Discrimination of Crimeans on part of EU inadmissible — Russian ForMin

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Discrimination of Crimeans and Sevastopol residents on the part of the European Union for politicized reasons is inadmissible, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday in connection with the European Council’s decisions on Crimea and Sevastopol.

“We consider absolutely inadmissible any discrimination of Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for politicized reasons,” the ministry said.

“Brussels should realize that Crimea and Sevastopol are an integral part of the Russian Federation,” it said. “In this connection, we would like to remind the EU of our legitimate right to properly react to its so-called restrictive measures regarding all Russian citizens and legal entities without exception.”

Repost from ITAR-TASS

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Tamil Catholics call for end to ‘untouchable’ discrimination

“Untouchable” Catholics in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on Monday urged the Vatican to eradicate caste discrimination within the Indian Church.

In a petition delivered to the Vatican embassy in Delhi, a group of Tamil Catholics belonging to several dalit organizations and a Tamil political party called for Vatican intervention.

“The dalits have a separate cemetery and are not allowed to enter the cemetery for upper caste Christians. Similarly, they are not allowed to attend the Mass conducted for the upper caste community members and have to attend a separate Mass,” said Kudanthai Arasan, president of the Viduthalai Tamil Puligal Katchi party, which is allied with India’s ruling party.

Dalits, or untouchables, are the lowest caste within Hindu society. Huge numbers of dalits have converted to Christianity and Islam over the decades, though the religions offer limited protection from societal prejudice.

“Dalits are the majority in the Christian community and still they are not given proper representation in the church at any level,” said Vinod Kumar, secretary of Viduthalai Tamil Puligal Katchi.

According to Kumar, dalits make up 70 percent of India’s Christian population.

Activist Franklin Caesar, who accompanied the group to the Vatican embassy, told ucanews.com that the Indian Church talks about unification but makes few true efforts to improve the situation.

Even within Hinduism, said Caesar, dalits have been allowed into the inner sanctum of the temples but are still blocked from such areas inside churches.

“The Christian converts from the upper caste rule the Indian Church and the dalits do not get promoted,” he added.

At a protest held before the delivery of the petition, the group handed out pamphlets condemning Pope Francis’ scheduled visit to Sri Lanka next month.

“The Pope should not go to Sri Lanka during election time. Why is he going there?” said Kumar.

The elections are scheduled for January 8, 2015.

Kumar said that the pope’s January 13-15 visit to Sri Lanka will be a boon for its president Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose regime has been accused of widespread human rights abuses including those committed against ethnic Tamils during the country’s civil war, which ended in 2009.

Rajapaksa is seeking an unprecedented third term and Catholic leaders have warned that the visit will be used as propaganda.

“The Pope’s visit will help Rajapaksa win the elections as the latter wants to justify to the world that he is a good man,” Kumar said, adding that Christians in Sri Lanka could be easily influenced to vote for Rajapaksa due to the pope’s visit.

“Inviting the pope to Sri Lanka is a planned strategy by Rajapaksa which the pope has fallen into,” he added.

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Story by Ritu Sharma

Repost from ucanews

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End the anti-secular, anti-Arab discrimination in Israel’s schools

The figures revealed Monday by Lior Dattel in TheMarker, along with other recent reports about the way the Education Ministry allocates funds to the country’s schools, raise the question of whether the ministry has really made it a goal to provide high-quality, equal education to all Israeli students.

The ministry’s figures show that both elementary and high schools in the state religious system are given clear preference over both the secular Jewish schools and the Arab state schools. Nearly all the elementary schools that received exceptionally high per-student budgets were religious. Funding for each religious student is about 15 percent higher than for secular students (15,300 shekels, or $3,900, compared to 13,100 shekels). In some cases it is over three times higher. Students in Arab schools (13,800 shekels per student) are also discriminated against compared to students in the state religious schools.

Moreover, elementary schools affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties (the Maayan Hinukh Torani and Hinuch Atzmai systems) receive more per student than secular state schools, despite being private institutions that do not teach the full core curriculum.

These figures have been known to the ministry for years, but no genuine measures have been taken to solve the problem. In fact, until Shay Piron became education minister last year, the ministry didn’t even agree to officially publish this data.

One of the main reasons for the funding gaps is that allocations are actually per class rather than per student. This benefits religious schools, where class sizes tend to be smaller.

Piron promised to institute differential budgeting, giving more money to worse-performing schools (that is, for Arabs and secular Jews in the periphery) than to stronger schools. He even pushed through a partial plan which increased classroom hours for weaker students but did not address the ministry’s distorted budgeting mechanism.

Judging by the allocation of funding, one might conclude that the patchwork of independent school systems that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion officially amalgamated into a unified system in the 1950s still exists in practice. But instead of the state nurturing the secular state school system, which is supposed to represent most Israelis, it is allowing that system to fall behind.

One of the most critical tasks facing whatever government is elected in March will be to impose order on the Education Ministry and reexamine its criteria for allocating funds. A state that wants to survive must put the rehabilitation of the secular state school system — that is, making it an excellent system that will be a leader in educating — at the top of its agenda.

Repost from Haaretz

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David Whiteley: Super suggestions mostly ‘sensible’

But there is one exception, the Industry Super Australia chief executive writes.

The Financial System Inquiry (FSI) has largely made prudent and sensible recommendations about Australia’s $1.8 trillion superannuation sector, recognising that members’ best interests must be at the heart of our system. This has long been the ethos of non-profit industry super funds.

The FSI, chaired by former Commonwealth Bank chief executive David Murray, rightly recommended maintaining a strong selection process for the super safety net where default super funds are chosen on the basis of long-term investment returns, after fees. This will ensure the retirement savings of millions of Australians who don’t choose their own fund and are covered by the safety net, remain in good hands.

• Consumer groups champion Murray reforms
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• Read the full report here

This safety net of reliably performing funds, overseen by the Fair Work Commission, receives a steady cash flow of around $9 billion dollars a year, which allows for deep economic investment in long-term projects. This is uppermost in the thinking of industry super funds which are increasingly looking to invest in big ticket infrastructure that will both fortify the economy and produce decent returns for members.

We congratulate the FSI for emphasising the importance of long-term investment as a crucial driver of productivity and economic growth, and therefore jobs, wages and super contributions.

Industry super funds believe it is central to the challenge of easing budget pressures and maintaining living standards as we confront the constraints of an ageing population.

One idea the FSI thankfully rejected was allowing banks to sell to business banking services to employers, bundled with employee super. This is a sensible response, as bundling would very likely have come at a cost to member returns and national savings.

On governance, industry super funds do not support the mandating of majority “independent directors” on the boards of super funds. Oddly, the FSI report said there was little evidence to back up its recommendation, and simply asserted that “high-quality governance is essential to organisational performance.”

On that score, industry super funds are carefully and scrupulously overseen by trustee boards made up of employer and employee representatives. This model, common across the OECD, has delivered superior returns on average to members over the past decade. The representative trustee model has been at the heart of a structure that has seen industry super fund members typically better off when they retire.

Industry super boards also draw representatives from a multitude of industries and include a better than average number of women in their ranks. In a financial system struggling for greater diversity on boards, industry super fund boards have always led the way.

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Repost from The New Daily

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When Talking About Bias Backfires Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg on Discrimination at Work

A FATHER and his son are in a car accident. The father is killed and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon says, “I cannot operate, because this boy is my son.”

This popular brain teaser dates back many years, but it remains relevant today; 40 to 75 percent of people still can’t figure it out. Those who do solve it usually take a few minutes to fathom that the boy’s mother could be a surgeon. Even when we have the best of intentions, when we hear “surgeon” or “boss,” the image that pops into our minds is often male.

Our culture’s strong gender stereotypes extend beyond image to performance, leading us to believe that men are more competent than women. Managers — both male and female — continue to favor men over equally qualified women in hiring, compensation, performance evaluation and promotion decisions. This limits opportunities for women and deprives organizations of valuable talent.

To solve this problem, business leaders, academics and journalists are working to raise awareness about bias. The assumption is that when people realize that biases are widespread, they will be more likely to overcome them. But new research suggests that if we’re not careful, making people aware of bias can backfire, leading them to discriminate more rather than less.

In several experiments, Prof. Michelle Duguid of Washington University in St. Louis and Prof. Melissa Thomas-Hunt of the University of Virginia studied whether making people aware of bias would lessen it. They informed some people that stereotypes were rare and told others that stereotypes were common, then asked for their perceptions of women. Those who read that stereotypes were common rated women as significantly less career-oriented and more family-oriented. Even when instructed to “try to avoid thinking about others in such a manner,” people still viewed women more traditionally after reading that a vast majority held stereotypes.

In another study, Professors Duguid and Thomas-Hunt told managers that stereotypes were common or rare. Then, they asked managers to read a transcript from a job interview of a candidate described as either female or male. At the end of the interview, the candidate asked for higher compensation and a nonstandard bonus. When the managers read that many people held stereotypes, they were 28 percent less interested in hiring the female candidate. They also judged her as 27 percent less likable. The same information did not alter their judgments of male candidates.

Why would knowledge about stereotype prevalence lead to greater stereotyping? We can find clues in research led by Prof. Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University. In a national park, Professor Cialdini’s team tried to stop people from stealing petrified wood by posting: “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the state of the Petrified Forest.” Even with this warning, theft rates stood at 5 percent. So they made the sign more severe: “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.” This warning influenced theft, but not in the direction you’d expect: stealing jumped from 5 percent to almost 8 percent.

The message people received was not “Don’t steal petrified wood,” but “Stealing petrified wood is a common and socially acceptable behavior.” We have the same reaction when we learn about the ubiquity of stereotypes. If everyone else is biased, we don’t need to worry as much about censoring ourselves.

If awareness makes it worse, how do we make it better? The solution isn’t to stop pointing out stereotypes. Instead, we need to communicate that these biases are undesirable and unacceptable.

Professor Cialdini’s team slashed the theft rate to 1.67 percent by adding a simple sentence to the sign:

“Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park.”

Professors Duguid and Thomas-Hunt used a similar approach to prevent bias awareness from backfiring.

Rather than merely informing managers that stereotypes persisted, they added that a “vast majority of people try to overcome their stereotypic preconceptions.” With this adjustment, discrimination vanished in their studies. After reading this message, managers were 28 percent more interested in working with the female candidate who negotiated assertively and judged her as 25 percent more likable.

When we communicate that a vast majority of people hold some biases, we need to make sure that we’re not legitimating prejudice. By reinforcing the idea that people want to conquer their biases and that there are benefits to doing so, we send a more effective message: Most people don’t want to discriminate, and you shouldn’t either.

When a stereotype can get you fired why should you speak up? I’m a lesbian. I do not broadcast that fact at work. I’m sure that some…

There should be at least two correct answers to the brain teaser, all confronting biases. The second solution is that the boy has two…

Really when we stop talking about bias perhaps it will go away.

Encouraging people to correct for biases does more than change the way we view others. It also affects the opportunities women will seek for themselves. One of us, Adam, presented data in his classes at Wharton on the underrepresentation of women in major leadership roles and discussed the factors that held women back. He thought a public dialogue would prompt action. But during the next five months, there was no change in the percentage of female M.B.A. students who applied for a leadership position on campus.

The following year, he shared the same data about the shortage of female leaders, with one sentence added at the end: “I don’t ever want to see this happen again.” During the next five months, there was a 65 percent increase in the number of female M.B.A. students who sought out leadership roles compared with those who had in the previous year. And the female students who heard this statement were 53 percent more likely to apply for leadership positions than those who did not hear it that year.

To motivate women at work, we need to be explicit about our disapproval of the leadership imbalance as well as our support for female leaders.

When more women lead, performance improves. Start-ups led by women are more likely to succeed; innovative firms with more women in top management are more profitable; and companies with more gender diversity have more revenue, customers, market share and profits. A comprehensive analysis of 95 studies on gender differences showed that when it comes to leadership skills, although men are more confident, women are more competent.

To break down the barriers that hold women back, it’s not enough to spread awareness. If we don’t reinforce that people need — and want — to overcome their biases, we end up silently condoning the status quo.

So let’s be clear: We want to see these biases vanish, and we know you do, too.

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Story by ADAM GRANT and SHERYL SANDBERG

Repost from New York Times

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