Addressing Stereotype Threat

On a personal level, my struggle with imposter syndrome is daily and real. I constantly feel on the verge of being found out as not as good as everyone thinks I am, and not deserving of any praise. This week we were introduced to the idea of Stereotype Threat, or the idea that people can feel themselves at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group through their own behavior - even if they don't believe those stereotypes to be true! As I sort back through my academic and professional experiences, I'm trying to identify any experiences with Stereotype Threat, and I'm not sure I can come up with any personal instances; however, that doesn't dissuade me from believing that this a very real phenomenon.

Our introduction to Stereotype Threat focused on the academic impact, for obvious reasons: it's easy to document and has a noticable, measurable impact. What I'm most curious about with Stereotype Threat is how it could permeate into the workplace. If you're the only woman in the room, do you feel like you should hang back & ask fewer questions, because women shouldn't be assertive? How about in the tech world, where as a software engineer have to deal with difficult concepts? Do women & people of color in these roles perform demonstrably worse than their white, male colleagues, because they feel that they should be less adept at the work? I don't know if that would ever be measurable; I do see that fear of being viewed as "pushy", "bossy", or "aggressive" in relationship to a negative gender or racial stereotype could curtail someone's behavior at work, and cause them to speak up less.

So how do you address this? If you feel like someone's holding themselves back, do you force their participation, giving them an out? Do you comment on how their behavior is opposed to those stereotypes to emphasize the degree to which their not doing this? That all seems vaguely patronizing and inappropriate, honestly.