(Newswire.net — May 20, 2019) — The fact that more businesses are now setting targets for inclusion is generally celebrated as a positive thing, with more and more people accepting that it’s necessary to bring about change. The simple fact is that people in power have an unconscious bias towards hiring those they see as being more like themselves – plus they often give first preference to people in their friendship groups. This makes it more difficult for traditionally disadvantaged minorities to gain ground. The increasing existence of targets, however, leaves us with another question: are they being met?
Gender
In recent years, leading US business schools have reported that they’re finally starting to achieve their targets of having at least 40% of each class made up of women, something that is increasing levels of optimism about the future. In the workplace itself, however, the news is not so good. The 2018 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, which undertook research across 279 companies, found that the advancement of women has slowed to a standstill and men are still much more likely to receive management level promotions. We can all think of women who are making a big impression at the top – Sheryl Sandberg, Yang Lan and Lady Barbara Judge – yet overall, women still aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
Why is this? There’s a well-known observation in sociology that when a minority group reaches around 30% it is perceived by members of an established group as being unduly large and influential. To put that in simpler terms, once 30% of a committee or board is made up of women, men start to feel that women are taking over and certainly don’t see them as needing help anymore. This makes it difficult to get past that sticking point and achieve true equality. The same goes for other traditionally disadvantaged groups.
Race
While being a woman remains a disadvantage in the workplace, the situation looks bleakest for women of color, and men of color still don’t find themselves progressing up the ladder as fast or as far as white men. African American women are particularly likely to suffer from microaggressions, from overt demeaning remarks to general questioning of their competence, which can have a damaging effect on their mental health as well as impeding their career progress directly. Despite two decades of affirmative action which has helped many individual careers and provided young people with more diverse role models, there are still significant problems to be solved.
Disability
The employment of people with disabilities is one area where the US government has made considerable progress – internally. As a direct employer, it exceeded its 2015 target of increasing employees from this group by 100,000. Unfortunately it has struggled to persuade employers more widely to take on equally ambitious targets. The situation is complicated by barriers in the education system which may need to be tackled first as people with disabilities currently have significantly lower qualifications on average and are therefore effectively excluded from many roles.
LGBT
With the Equality Act rarely out of the headlines these days, most Americans will have some awareness of the challenges facing LGBT people in or seeking employment. Some companies, including big names like Google, IBM and Microsoft, are now setting targets for the recruitment of LGBT people and there is some evidence that people are migrating to seek out these roles, but it is still too early to be sure how this will develop. Meanwhile, the exclusion of transgender people from the armed forces has cost the community an estimated 14,700 jobs in one stroke.
Increasing inclusion
While this article looks at the big four areas where discrimination is rife, there are other groups of people who face discrimination and some organizations are setting targets in other areas in order to tackle it. This often centers around the achievement of business as well as wider social goals – for instance, a business that makes sure to hire people right across the age spectrum is likely to be better at understanding and adapting to different age demographics, while one that is careful to incorporate people from different religious backgrounds can more easily persuade customers that it’s listening to a wide range of concerns.
With these advantages in mind, policies of inclusion are likely to become increasingly refined over time as we move towards a world in which everybody really does have an equal shot in the workplace. The use of big data is also helping by making it easier for employers to monitor hiring and promotion practices in large organizations in an efficient and neutral manner. Progress may take time, but cultural and technological changes are making way for it.