We may hardly know it ourselves, but each of us carries around stereotypes about some group or other, and being unaware doesn’t make them any less harmful, especially in the workplace.
African-Americans and women are the groups most likely to encounter stereotypic barriers at work, research has shown. But no one is exempt. Latinos and Asians, immigrants, disabled, gay, transgendered and older workers have all been negatively impacted by assumptions.
“They’re not gross stereotypes as much as they are assumptions about competence, value and credibility,” said Sandra Slipp, co-author of “Voices of Diversity” (Amacom, 1994, $22.95). “These are very hard to overcome.”
Stereotypes can infect a company’s culture, feed biases that hold workers back and enforce discrimination. Stereotypic assumptions can block access to a job, a promotion or key assignments. For example, often women are automatically not considered for a promotion when it involves relocating overseas.
In this case, the stereotype “Women won’t relocate for advancement” becomes a major barrier, said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a non-profit research organization working to advance women in business. In fact, a Catalyst survey found that the main reason few women take jobs abroad is that they’re never asked. The survey also found that 29 percent of men turned down a relocation offer, compared to 20 percent of women.
Harassment cases rise
Some stereotypes can lead to outright harassment. Ideas about how men and women should look, dress and act have led to “gender profiling” and an increase in male-on-male harassment claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
“There is a lot of gender profiling going on in the workplace in which individuals are picked out and presumed to be gay based on how they express their gender,” said Riki Wilchins, executive director of GenderPAC, a national organization working to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotyping. “A lot of times, the gender profiling is wrong.”
Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent are the newest categories of workers for which people have developed biases and fears, especially since the attacks on America.
Even white males may be stereotyped as cliquish and chauvinistic, Wellington said.
“I don’t think for the most part we’re talking about people with deep-seated racist, sexist ideas,” Slipp said. “Most people like to think of themselves as being fair. I think they have to be educated. There’s a lot of discomfort people have to overcome.”
Identity issues
Much of the discomfort has occurred in the last 20 years as America’s workplaces have become increasingly more diverse. The biggest jump has occurred in the number of Hispanic workers, which rose to 11.1 percent of the total labor force in 2001 from 6 percent in 1981.
With job discrimination claims showing no sign of decline (the total number of complaints filed with the EEOC against private employers climbed slightly to 80,840 last year from 79,896 in 2000) and doubts surrounding the effectiveness of diversity training, diversity advocates are looking less at group solutions and more at helping individuals come to grips with their own identity issues.
“Mandates don’t wash away behavior patterns. Now, the question is, `How do people change their behavior?'” said Carl E. Van Horn, a professor at Rutgers University and author of the study “A Workplace Divided: How Americans View Discrimination and Race on the Job.”
Van Horn said his workplace study showed that most people are not opposed to diversity. But it is unrealistic, he said, to expect a cultural change overnight. “That is built up over time, especially in terms of racial issues,” he said.
A new approach
Changing behavior, some say, requires a change of heart.
At the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, a new course and lecture series called “Managing Differences and Conflict” attempts to help students identify the stereotypes they carry and reflect on whether they could be part of the problem.
Dean Carolyn Woo hopes the course and lecture series will provide a deeper explanation for why we see one another the way we do.
“A lot of times, we tend to look for solutions outside ourselves. It starts with you. All of us form stereotypes. Otherwise, we cannot understand the world. But all of those mental models have limitations,” said Woo, a Chinese-American (who, by the way, is far from being too timid to speak out, yet another stereotype).
Woo said that diversity programs have heightened awareness and helped to create hiring and promotion programs, but that is where many of them stop.
“They don’t get to the issue of how our own assumptions contribute to the issues surrounding bias and discrimination in the workplace,” she said.
Renee Tynan, an assistant professor of management and a social psychologist who teaches the Notre Dame course, uses social cognitive theory to show students the damaging effects of stereotyping so they can become better managers.
We are primed to look at other people in terms of similarities and differences, Tynan said. This is called “confirmation bias.” Identifying with a group helps people overcome feelings of inadequacy.
The course doesn’t purport to unlearn the practice of identifying people by gender or skin color, she said, but to help students think in terms of an inclusive workplace where individuals are free to differ, and be different.
“A workplace that focuses on constructive conflict minimizes destructive conflict,” Tynan said.
Arianne Westby, a 26-year-old graduate student who said she grew up in a diverse neighborhood in Portland, Ore., said the lecture series has shown her the path to communication.
“It opens up a new way of thinking about people and expands acceptance and understanding,” Westby said.
Changes in attitude
Tynan uses Denny’s restaurants as a model for how stereotypes got a corporation into trouble, and how removing racial biases from its culture is helping it become a better company for minorities and women.
In Denny’s case, the stereotyping was by servers, black and white, of African-Americans customers being bad tippers. The servers tended to cater to white men in business suits. Formal discrimination charges followed, which Advantica, Denny’s parent company, settled.
“We’ve done a lot to eradicate that stereotype,” said Ray Hood-Phillips, chief diversity officer for Advantica.
Companies have successfully navigated the path to diversity when the tone is set at the top. Others have failed because the message fizzled at mid-level management. Tynan says that is why her lesson is so important.
“We’re really teaching them how to be good managers, to structure a workplace in such a way that people will be treated with dignity,” she said. “A manager has a tremendous amount of power in that regard.”
