PAINSTAKING PREJUDICES

 FROM DIFFERENCES TO EQUALITY…

Prejudice often stems from stereotypes, or widely held beliefs about specific groups of people. These beliefs are typically oversimplified and tend to foster prejudice and discrimination. The term prejudice is most commonly used in reference to a preconceived judgment of someone due to their social class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal traits. Take an examples of prejudice: A person believes all Hispanic people are lazy but has never worked or spent time with any Hispanic people.

              Hidden Biases in the Workplace, is When we hear about sexism in the workplace it may be tempting to envision an apparently chauvinistic male boss, leering at his female co- workers as they pass by, making snobby remarks toward women in meetings, and doing his best to lowball their salaries. However, this inappropriate figure is just a stereotype of what sexism in the workplace looks like – and like most stereotypes, it is not particularly accurate. Sexism, and most other forms of prejudice, rarely takes on such obvious forms in today’s work environment.

              Stereotypes and prejudices are harmful because they ignore the fact that each individual has his or her own abilities, strengths, weaknesses, desires, thoughts and feelings. Our sex and gender are part of who we are, but these characteristics do not define us. Even if a stereotype is correct in a specific situation, putting someone down or acting in a discriminatory way does not encourage that individual to succeed.

              Few strategies in order to deal with prejudices and stereotypes at an organizational level are:

Travel (somewhere that challenges your worldview), Take a course on prejudice, If you value equality, recognize that unconscious bias is no more “the real you” than your conscious values, Laugh a little. Acknowledge differences, rather than try to fight an uphill battle to ignore them. This strategy is known as multiculturalism, and differs from colour blindness in that it embraces diversity and difference.

             Other Strategies that successfully help to overcome prejudice can include: intergroup contact, cooperative interaction and cooperative learning, interpersonal friendships and cross-group friendships, recategorization, dual identity or mutual intergroup differentiation, dynamic versus static theories of human nature, cognitive retraining, motivating self-regulation and empathy for targets of prejudice. Most often prejudice reduction programs take place on a small scale--in workshops, for example, which bring together people from different groups to help them develop a better mutual understanding.  At times, efforts are made to reduce prejudice among the general population.  This can be done with widespread media efforts and/or public education programs, often implemented during the grade school years.

                   Provide diversity training to employees, supervisors and managers. Expand learning objectives to include diversity beyond the typical race, sex, national origin and religion topics. Encourage open and frank discussions during training by exploring employee diversity in terms of generational differences, work styles, work philosophy and ethics.  Schedule meetings with supervisors and managers to discuss ways they can prevent employee stereotyping within their departments. Remind supervisors and managers that they have a responsibility to maintain fair employment practices. When employers make, decisions based on fair employment practices, the likelihood of discrimination and workplace stereotypes diminishes.

                    Thus, we can conclude that, if the above strategies are taken into consideration or implemented in the organisation settings, it can lead to betterment of the organisation and the employees, thus leading from pieces to peace...!!!