No abstract

Despite increasing numbers, women faculty are still underrepresented at higher ranks and in leadership positions in the professoriate. Recent research suggests that gendered microaggressions, a particular expression of subtle gender bias, have a powerful, cumulative negative impact on women faculty's access to research support and advancement. Bystander interventions are a promising avenue to mitigate their impact. However, little is known about the factors that encourage and/or present barriers to bystander action around microaggressions in the academic work environment-arguably, critical information required in order to design an effective workplace intervention program. A series of 12 semistructured interviews were conducted to explore faculty's current action (or inaction) in response to witnessing microaggressions. Employing a social-ecological lens, findings suggest that facilitators and barriers to bystander action exist at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. Implications for the development of workplace bystander intervention programs in the academy are discussed.

No abstract

Microaggressions present significant barriers to the entry and advancement of individuals from marginalized groups within the workplace. Their ubiquity, coupled with their harmful impact, creates an urgent need for organizations to mitigate them to foster truly equitable and inclusive work environments. In this paper, we present a bystander‐focused approach to address this particular form of workplace bias. Informed by the empirical literature and grounded in socioecological principles, we underscore the importance of a systems‐change approach to the development and implementation of any bystander program. We describe ways to incorporate social–ecological sensibilities into the substance of the training itself by outlining our “Get A (Collective) GRIP” framework. This framework emphasizes the need for active bystanders to employ an ecological scan that includes Assessing what happened, determining one's Goals for intervening, considering the Relationships among those involved in the incident (target/s, transgressor/s, and witness/es), taking into account the Institutional context in which the incident occurs, and being attuned to structural issues and Power dynamics within the context. Finding ways to address microaggressions that embody systemic analyses has transformative potential for the workplace and doing so through activating bystanders to alter local social norms is an area that has tremendous promise in this regard.

A s psychologists interested in pressing social issues-such as discrimination, poverty, sexual violence, and health disparities-we, like others in our field, are not simply interested in understanding these phenomena for the sake of basic science. We also want our research to identify and promote strategies that can mitigate harmful social conditions and provoke social change. In addition to working with organizations aiming to influence policy and legal decisions (see Chapters 4 and 6, this volume), we often work with organizations that are tackling social justice issues "on the ground" in our local communities. Through working with community-based organizations (CBOs), we have seen firsthand the vital role they play in the health and well-being of communities. We have witnessed how their strong community ties often provide them with nuanced