(Nov 16): INSEAD Business School had a perennial problem with its MBAs. The grades of female students consistently lagged those of men. So a professor did an experiment: She had all students, male and female, take a test to affirm their core values – and managed to improve the grades of the women by 89%.

While the test had no effect on men, grades for women MBAs rose to men’s levels at both campuses, in Singapore and in Fontainebleau, France, according to Zoe Kinias, the professor originally from the US who devised it.

The test turns out to give women "an invisible shield" against feeling undervalued in environments where there are majority men, Kinias said in an interview at the INSEAD Singapore campus where she teaches organizational behaviour.

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