MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Gender Discrimination Still Exists - Now What?

Late last fall, after a semester of classes, a young, white, male MBA student came to me and said, “So, I now realize just how badly women still experience gender discrimination, and it makes me really angry. But I have no idea how to stop it or what to do about it.” His words communicated a genuine desire to combat attitudes and treatment that for many women are all too familiar.

I would have been surprised by his comments had I not witnessed a similar reaction months earlier when interviewing seasoned executives who serve on the boards of large, publicly traded U.S. companies.

In both practice and research, we are doing a better job at bringing attention to the problem. But we haven’t established enough tangible suggestions for how to challenge it. One idea I’ve been exploring: Giving people clearer language to use in their day to day encounters with prejudice.

About the Author

Morela Hernandez is an associate professor of business administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The Darden School is on Twitter at @dardenmba. Links to Hernandez’s work are online at morelahernandez.com.

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