The judiciary's traditional rule-based approach has been successful in reducing overt discrimination against women and people of color. It has been less effective in addressing more subtle and complex forms of workplace inequity. These second generation forms of bias result from patterns of interaction, informal norms, networking, mentoring, and evaluation. Drawing on the potential of recent Supreme Court decisions, Professor Sturm proposes a structural regulatory solution to this problem of second generation employment discrimination. Her approach links the efforts of courts, workplaces, employees, lawyers, and mediating organizations to construct a regime that encourages employers to engage in effective problem solving. This approach enables employers to combine legal compliance with proactive efforts to improve their firms. This Article details three case studies that reveal some of the building blocks of a successful structural approach.
The Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program is a model for substantially increasing the number of underrepresented minority students earning doctoral degrees in the physical sciences. The program presently leads the nation in master's degrees in physics for African-Americans, and is one of the top ten producers of physics master's degrees among all U.S. citizens. The program is on pace to become the nation's top producer of underrepresented minority Ph.Ds. in physics, astronomy, and materials science. We summarize the main features of the program, including two of its core strategies: Partnering a minority-serving institution and a major research university through collaborative research, and using the master's degree as a pathway to the Ph.D. We discuss our methods for recognizing and selecting for unrealized potential in students during the admissions process, and for cultivating this potential to develop successful scientists and leaders.
Negotiations can operate as powerful engines of inequality, often because of the institutional and social context placing women and people of color at a systemic disadvantage. Yet, negotiation literature and practice has paid little attention to the question of how to reshape the context within which negotiations proceed. This article provides an approach for connecting individual level negotiations with institutional interventions that reshape the context for those negotiations, so that women and people of color can fully and fairly participate in the interactions and decisions so crucial to their advancement. It first lays out the systemic underpinnings of negotiated inequality, identifying structural disparities in information, networks, cognitive frames, and ground rules. It then identifies the role of organizational catalysts in reshaping the contours within which negotiations occur, and learning from the successes and failures of negotiations aggregated over time and place. Finally, it identifies a set of strategies for tackling the systemic underpinnings of inequality in the negotiation process, including (1) critical reframing through root cause analysis, (2) generating and mobilizing information, (3) developing social capital needed for effective negotiation, (4) creating and connecting opportunity networks, and (5) developing constituencies of accountability.
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