#somethingtosay

The current state of DEI is coming under increasing criticism;  for too much emphasis on social justice; for being overly influenced by identity politics; for its lack of business focus; for its tendency toward groupthink; and for its authoritarian stance on beliefs which stifles employees into silence. Many wise and experienced consultants have dropped the DEI from their work titles preferring to use organisational behaviour, leadership and culture instead.

Language and definitions

In the UK, more than in Europe, we import US ideas and language when it comes to this topic despite having completely different histories of oppression and discrimination. A shift in language may reflect a shift in approach, a gear change, welcome at times of diversity fatigue. When I started out in this sector in the 1990’s it was called equal opportunities or sometimes equality. Then came diversity which was considered more business friendly and less legalistic. This didn’t happen without some debate. Many were concerned that putting all the inequalities under one umbrella and calling it diversity would mean that some groups would lose out – disability particularly. Some noted that the word diversity merely meant difference and conveyed no element of power or inequality. Others felt that gender shouldn’t be considered as a part of diversity given that women are half the population. Inclusion (culture focused) was added to suggest that acknowledging difference wasn’t enough, everyone had to made to feel included. The turn to diversity was embraced by the corporate world, although key organisational issues like the gender pay gap and sexual harassment do not sit happily under its umbrella. Ultimately organisations still have to have an eye on equality and discrimination law. More recently the concept of equity has been adopted by UK organisations with very little debate and so we now have DEI – Diversity Equity and Inclusion.

Criticism

A lot of the criticism of DEI is coming from ‘the freedom of speech’ corner writers like Douglas Murray. The Free Speech Union published a report on how EDI was crippling British business.Many DEI specialists have dismissed these criticisms as ‘right wing’ attacks. However there are a few others like myself who have a lot of experience in the sector and know something is wrong. And we are anxious, unlike Murray et al, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is some really good DEI work that produces tangible benefits to organisations which have been overshadowed by reports of compelled pronouns in emails, prohibiting debate and free speech, endless months and weeks devoted to specific groups and other performative practices which can alienate many employees.

Earlier this year Kemi Badenoch and her team at the Equalities Office published a report called Inclusion at Work which was critical of a lot of the sector whilst acknowledging that work on diversity and inclusion remained important but must be tied more closely to the business. You can find a summary of its recommendations here. This report should have been widely debated by internal and external DEI consultants and managers. Instead it was met with a stony silence or hostility.

 Last month the incoming CEO Nick McClelland of a leading diversity consultancy, Byrne Dean, acknowledged that there was ‘a growing disillusionment with EDI and even somewhat of a counter movement resisting it’. He believes that the disillusionment is because of a gap between pledges and tangible outcomes and says that there ‘must be a core business strategy to work’. I and others think that there is something rather more than disillusionment and lack of outcomes that is creating a backlash. But even the business case argument is being challenged and the popularity of mass unconscious bias training has been on the wane for a while now. There have been several articles written about the failure of diversity policies.

How did we get here? Too much focus on social justice?

Following the financial crash of 2007/8 large US corporates began emphasising their commitment to ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) and a broader concept of stakeholder (stakeholder capitalism) in order to shift the criticism they were receiving about profit and greed. Investment firms began to insist on ESG requirements from their investments. UK firms followed suit.  Strong lobby groups rode this crest and public and private organisations began to sign up to a broader approach to business which encompassed care for the environment and social inequalities. DEI is very much the S in ESG. So diversity and inclusion, once a rather neglected marginalised department of often one part time employee was given far more recognition. Whilst social justice had always been an element of diversity and inclusion, it took on much more importance. It is only now fifteen years on that some people have begun to see ESG as something of a distraction from profitability and the return to shareholders.

DEI as a central tenet of ESG is caught in this backlash.  Some companies  have found that not all their customers agree with some of the causes that they are promoting e.g.Bud Light’s sales fell between 11 and 26% in the month after a partnership with a transgender influencer, and the brand lost its status as the top-selling beer. And only last week Ford announced it was scaling back its DEI policies following on from a number of other US companies. 

Organisations used to limit their diversity efforts to what was achievable, legal and appropriate for their business. They could be ahead of the law in terms of giving more generous maternity leave provisions or have more extensive flexible working practices but they never suggested their role was to be agents of social change. Today identity politics and social justice theory including critical race theory, transgender ideology, intersectionality, colonialism and the concept of privilege have escaped the confines of the university campuses and have seeped into organisations under the umbrella of equity. Flags are waved at marches and on websites.

The turn to equity

As mentioned above there has been very little debate about the use of the term equity to replace equality. Indeed when searching for material all I could find were articles explaining why equity was a much more appropriate term to use than equality.  Leading diversity consultancy Pearn Kandola published an article last year called Why Leaders Should Lead With Equity (Not Equality)

To explain the difference the author gives us the image of running a race, with equality as the finish line. “But equity recognises that not everyone starts in the same place. Equity is about adjusting the starting line so we can all run a fair race.”

Equal opportunities also recognised that not everyone started in the same place – hence its name – and also that  organisations were biased towards white males.  Companies serious about diversity and equality have been assessing their recruitment and appraisal processes for bias years before the word equity appeared.  The Pearn Kandola article begins with a quote from Kimberle Crenshaw on intersectionality –  a term not widely understood, contested as a theoretical tool and which certainly has limits in any practical application.

McKinsey has also published on the preference for equity over equality:

 “Equity refers to fair treatment for all people, so that the norms, practices, and policies in place ensure identity is not predictive of opportunities or workplace outcomes.” (The Equality Act protects nine characteristics. There is no mention of the word identity)  It continues  “Equity differs from equality in a subtle but important way. While equality assumes that all people should be treated the same, equity takes into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal.”  The whole point of diversity was that it recognised difference. This isn’t new. What is new is that we now refer to identity and privilege and there is a hierarchy. But who makes the judgements of relative advantage between individuals and groups (by virtue of their characteristics)?  The DEI manager?  Which characteristics count? And do some more than others? What treatment should be applied to whom? These decisions are fraught with problems and can lead both to alienation of the dominant employee group and also antagonise those who do not want ‘preferential treatment’ due to a particular characteristic.

There is a limit to how much organisations can do to iron out social disadvantage. Some would argue it is beyond their remit.  Ultimately companies have to obey the law. There are no equity laws, only equality laws. The culture of progressive politics and the power of lobby groups has led many organisations to inadvertently enact policies out of line with the law.

Groupthink and cancellation

Another criticism of DEI is that it has resulted in groupthink, the opposite of what true diversity strives for. Simon Fanshawe OBE, one of the original founders of Stonewall and now very critical of it, discusses the impact of identity politics on the diversity and inclusion industry in his excellent book The Power of Difference and is well aware that there has been a growing tendency in this industry to have ‘right’ answers with which everyone must agree. ‘it is a peculiar feature of modern identity politics that the struggle for diversity is too often matched by a demand for rigid conformity.’ 

And what has happened he suggests is that ‘the nobility of those causes has sometimes given rise to mantras that mask the complexity that needs to be understood to significantly improve those responses’.

 We need to have difficult discussions and we can live with productive disagreement rather than agreement. We aren’t seeing these encouraged. Instead employees are told what are the right views and language to adopt, often by politically motivated lobby groups and activist employee groups in very poor ‘training’ sessions.  And they are punished if they do not agree either by being shamed, cancelled or sacked. There is now a growing number of very public tribunal cases, following the Forstater case which ruled that gender critical beliefs were legal, brought by  employees who have been dismissed due to their views on biological sex.  No wonder DEI is getting a bad name!

It is time for a reckoning. Those in the sector must acknowledge what has gone wrong and fix it or the reputation of DEI, EDI, D&I Diversity and Inclusion or whatever you want to call it will be damaged irrepairably.

In the 1980’s I was working in the City and found myself steeped in a very male work culture. Today people would call it toxic but in those days it was just the norm. Myself and the few other young women who worked there were not the norm and there were plenty of reminders of that! In a trading environment you had to deal with comments on how you dressed and worse on a daily basis.

There was annual investment analyst dinner held at the Grosvenor House and the first year I went my boss took me to one side. “Be careful this evening, he said, and do not get into a lift with a man on your own, even if you know him”. I thought this a bit over the top but by 10.30 pm I understood his warning. There were about 500 men and fewer than 40 women at this dinner and many of the men were very, very drunk. I took myself off to the ladies cloakroom and saw a man I knew and thought to be a rather old-fashioned gentleman in the corridor. I was shocked when he lurched towards me in a very leery fashion and I dodged out of the way, went to the loo and then decided to go home.  I have never forgotten it. If he could behave like that when under the influence of alcohol, I thought, any man could.

When I returned to the City ten years later to do some research into gendered cultures, I needed the help of men. How men behaved and what they did when women were not around was impossible for me as a female researcher to find out. “I don’t think women have any idea of how men talk about them when they are not present”, one man told me. This reminded me of what Germaine Greer said in her seminal book, The Female Eunuch, “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them”.

Perhaps my experience, age and research has given me more of an insight into men’s behaviour than most women, but for those of us who love our fathers, have brothers, sons and male partners some of it is still upsetting and uncomfortable to acknowledge. We collude with the more comfortable narrative that only very few bad men say and do unspeakable things to women and children, until we are confronted with evidence of the opposite. And even then we will try to find a reason why it’s not the norm.

Every so often a case emerges which disrupts this narrative and reveals an ugly truth – that perhaps a very large number of men may indeed think so little of women that they could sexually violate them. Today of course the case is of the Frenchman Dominique Pelicot who over many years drugged his wife, Gisele, unconscious before raping her and then inviting other men via a website to do the same. So far nearly one hundred men are thought to have done so, with fifty of them on trial as well.

If it had just been Monsieur Pelicot, who we hear had been an exemplary father and husband, we could have just explained it as a split personality, that underneath he was a monster akin to the horrendous Josef Fritz. Fritz kept his daughter Elisabeth locked in a cellar from when she was 18 until she reached the age of 42. Trapped underground and enslaved, she was raped thousands of times by her own father and gave birth to seven of his children.

But in the Pelicot case a large number of other men were involved. Only three refused to rape the unconscious Gisele Pelicot but even they didn’t report it. This all happened over several years in a tiny village in Provence. Were all these men also monsters? Did they all have split personalities as some psychologists are suggesting is the case with Dominique Pelicot?  We know that they included  civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers. All ordinary men, most of whom are husbands and fathers. What are we to make of this? There isn’t really an escape route via a comfortable narrative here although I have heard one man blame it on French culture saying that it couldn’t happen here in the UK. But very few men are saying anything about it all and I wish they would.

I suggest the Cleveland child abuse scandal was another such disruptive case. For those who aren’t old enough to remember it, over the course of a few months in 1987, 121 children were removed from their families in Cleveland ,Yorkshire ( then a county)  because of concerns of sexual abuse highlighted through medical examinations and wider assessment.  However the public could not tolerate the truth that so many men, fathers even, really did sexually abuse their children, including babies in the family setting. There was outcry and media hysteria with blame thrown instead at the professionals and in particular the pediatrician, Dr Marietta Higgs, who diagnosed a lot of the abuse. An inquiry was set up by the government and published a report in 1988.

The Inquiry made no assessment of whether or not the children were sexually abused, though clearly this would have been helpful. Writer Beatrix Campbell  subsequently uncovered evidence, through documents now released in the National Archive, that indicate most of the children were sexually abused, and that the diagnosis by medical professionals was correct. Furthermore, her book, Secrets and Silence: Uncovering the legacy of the Cleveland child sexual abuse scandal,  reveals that documents that would have confirmed this reality were amended, diluted and in some cases disappeared and this, at best lack of transparency, or at worst deliberate cover-up, has had lasting impacts.

I relate this as an example of the lengths we will go to as a society to avoid facing the uncomfortable truth about men’s sexual behaviour.

Another case is surely the Rotherham child abuse scandal, where we know that groups of men passed round as many as 1400 troubled girls some as young as thirteen and raped them multiple times over a period of several years. There and in other northern towns professionals knew about the abuse, but chose to sacrifice the girls rather than accuse a Pakistani group of men  which they felt would upset community relations. Indeed the fact that in this case the men were mostly of Pakistani origin enabled the narrative of ‘other men’ to continue.

The reluctance to acknowledge the scale and extent of male violence and sexual abuse is because it is too unsettling. We live and work with men, among men. Many of us love men. As women we just try to avoid being a victim, yet we know that few women will have been lucky enough to come into adulthood without some unpleasant experience of sexual harassment or abuse.

In 2015 a study undertaken at a US university found that out of a small sample (too small to generalise) one third of the young male students would use coercive force to have sex with a woman if they could be sure they wouldn’t be caught.

 A more recent UK study (2021)– and a more statistically robust one –  found that over 10% of male students admitted to rape or sexual assault of a woman in the past two years, which is pretty horrifying.

We have come a long way since I was a young broker in the City. Women in the UK have so more equality in the workplace and there is now plenty of public discourse around women’s rights. Yet we know from history that women’s progress is often followed by backlash. We cannot even pretend that we live in an equal society whilst so many men are still violent and abusive towards us. Men, please get talking about this. We need you to.

The Church of England draft guidance on HBT (homophobic, biphobic and transphobic) bullying in schools has been published and is out for consultation. It is now to be one of a handful of different guidances under the umbrella of Flourishing for All. The other guides will tackle bullying on account of race, disability/SEN, religion and sexist bullying and sexual harassment. Perhaps this is to lessen the spotlight on HBT bullying which has been the Church’s focus for ten years, and which had come under increasing criticism.

Like others I have been very vocal in my criticism of the previous HBT anti -bullying guidance Valuing All God’s Children seeing it as another useful vehicle for  Stonewall and other activist lobby groups to get the concept of gender identity and the accompanying ideology and language embedded into the school system. This method has been very effective and the VAGC itself has been used in Church schools for nearly ten years.

 VAGC was straight out of the Stonewall playbook, with an exact same glossary in the appendix, despite Rev Genders, Chief Education Officer denying this to me and others. The name of a former Stonewall employee was personally thanked in the document and Stonewall credited with providing the finance but this we were told was because Stonewall had merely passed on the money from the Dept of Education.

Anyway, one major difference with the new guidance Flourishing for All is perhaps the total absence of any references to Stonewall at all despite VAGC being peppered with them. I was told that the many references to Stonewall in VAGC was because their LGBT Bullying Schools Report was the only one of its kind and the former guidance needed to refer to it a lot. All reference to this report has now gone as well. Has it therefore been discredited? We are not told.

The erasure of Stonewall is to be welcomed but I would have preferred some clarity about what exactly has changed in this new draft guidance and why? Like why has Stonewall been dropped? We are told that the guidance needed updating following the December 2023 guidelines from the Department of Education on Gender Questioning Children and the publication of the Cass report this year  but we are not told exactly what had to be replaced or why. We have to compare the two documents ourselves.

To begin with the tone is different. I think it is more diffident and arguably less certain of its ideological base, less sure that a trans child must be accommodated regardless. It is cautious, defensive even, often providing an explanation as to why concepts have been used as well as a lot of references to the legal and regulatory framework.

Like other individuals and organisations who wish to place themselves above the fray rather than accepting responsibility for being part of the conflict, the introduction refers to the debate on gender as having frequently been ‘toxic and polarised.’

Bullying by children to children is not a legal issue so it may seem strange to go into so much detail about the Equality Act 2010 and hate crimes. The choice of topics for their anti-bullying guidance umbrella  is to mirror some of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act. I know times have changed but my own experience of bullying at school and those of my children was more often than not directed at kids who were too ‘clever’, ‘swotty’, unpopular, and about appearances – being fat, thin, too tall or too small, too pretty, had funny hair or even red hair, snotty nose etc.  Kids can pick on any perceived difference and will continue to do so. None of these are covered by the Equality Act nor should they be. How relevant then is the Act? Again my contention is that it provides some justification and support for the whole exercise and not much else. A caring culture in a school is beneficial to all children – we don’t all have to go on training courses or learn the Equality Act inside out to know this.

 On the subject of relevance why has the Church introduced a section on intersectionality? This is a contested approach to the equality agenda and arguably should not be introduced unconditionally. The reference given is the Anti-Racism Resource 2023 Intersectionality of Privilege – again a concept that is not agreed on by everyone.  Do we really think it appropriate to put young children into a hierarchy of privilege based on identities? Many of us further down the road on diversity are trying to stem this tide of identity politics that young people are being taught to no one’s benefit. This is projecting a particular ideological view and presenting it as fact.

There is now recognition that social transitioning has been cautioned against by the DofE guidance or Cass Report so instead the new guidance refers to the treatment of those who have already socially transitioned. They apparently must still not be misnamed. We don’t see the word misgendered in here. The Church says it has always agreed with the Cass Report’s negative view on social transitioning but as I say in a post below this is just not the case. In VAGC it states that

“Trans young people may require specific support in order to feel comfortable at school, for example, schools may need to make changes to toilet facilities or a trans young person might require support to change their name or the pronoun by which they are referred to by staff and classmates.”(Valuing All God’s Children 2019).

So there is a very clear change of view and advice but no acknowledgement of it.

So whilst the tone of the guidance is different and some of the more extreme ideological stances on gender identity may have gone, such as the unequivocal support of trans kids in their belief that they are the opposite sex and the guidance to schools on accommodating them, that the Church’s view on this issue has not changed much. For example, a lot of the ideological language has remained in this new draft guidance.

The term LGBT of the VAGC guidance has now given way to LGBT+ which they justify by saying they are following OFSTED and the government, adding that the terminology has evolved. What child is a +…. why introduce the very idea of this as a possibility to children?

The guidance uncritically adopts the use of the expressions ‘trans child’, ‘assigned at birth’, ‘cis’ and  the concept gender identity itself is central to the report. It is only if you read through the glossary and find the footnote to the entry of gender identity, which is defined as “ a sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or another category, such as non-binary” that you will find the quote  “Current government guidance states that this is a ‘contested belief’.

Why then is this not made more of throughout the report? Indeed the glossary whilst being a fraction of the ‘Stonewall’ glossary of VAGC is still problematic. Some examples are:

Sexuality – an emotional, romantic or sexual attraction.

In the glossary the distinction is made between gender and sex.

Sex – This term is typically used to refer to biological status as male/female but may refer to genetics, anatomy, physiology or legal status.

 Gender  – The cultural constructions associated with being male/female or other gender categories, as distinguished from biological sex

Yet the terms are used interchangeably throughout the report. In the glossary even,

Homosexual is defined “ this  might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has an emotional, romantic and/or sexual attraction towards someone of the same gender.” The correct term is sex…as in same sex attracted. This of course doesn’t allow for male lesbians which the activists insist exist.

So whilst the softening of the tone is to be welcomed the uncritical adoption of the concepts and language of gender identity ideology make the guidance unsuitable for schools.

A year or so ago I sat next to a young woman at a seminar and asked her what she did. ‘I’m an actuary’ she said. Impressive.  She told me she was leaving her firm, despite its good reputation because she wanted to find a company where she could actually go to the office. ‘ I am nearly thirty and single and I don’t want to be stuck in my small flat all day’. She had my sympathy.  But for many youngsters who graduated during Covid, they have known no different. And still now for some going into the office is fraught with anxiety. But they also do not know what they are missing.

As a graduate at an investment bank many moons ago, I remember the excitement of starting out with a few others. We were sent on courses together and all worked in the same department. We were mentored, worked in an open plan office and had exposure to fund managers for whom we did research. We had morning meetings at which we may have had to speak and certainly needed to listen to others. And the best bit was going to the wine bar (eighties!) after work and meeting lots of other people too.  I simply cannot imagine doing my job from my shared living space as a whole generation have had to do. But there is no excuse for this to continue.

There was an interesting piece in the Times a few weeks ago about the decline of the graduate scheme. There were a number of reasons but one of them was that working from home had changed much of the point of it.

‘“I was on my own, working from home at the beginning. I didn’t even have a desk, and they’re supposed to pay for desks,” he said. “So working from home  [was] to work from bed. I was just miserable.” Civil Service Fast Track graduate’

Another graduate, at Deloitte, said she often worked from 7.30am until 11.30pm, with little support. She worked from home most days, with no contact with other graduates and no way of knowing if her 16-hour days were normal for those on the scheme.

Diversity consultants have always promoted working from home as “a good thing”.  I have done lots of workshops on flexible working in which a day or two at home featured as one possibility among many. But working from home used to be a hard sell even when the internet made it eminently possible. There was a suspicion that people would take advantage of being at home and not work as hard.  So a large number of working mothers chose instead to do a three or four day week in the office taking the cut in salary.

It’s funny isn’t it how things change. Eighteen months and more of everyone who could working from home doing so has given senior male management a taste of the benefits of it.  Now you can earn a full time salary and do a couple of days or even more at home, which is great but not great if it is the entire workforce.

I suspect if the experience of lockdown during which women/mothers did the lion’s share of the domestic work and home schooling is reflective of the domestic division of labour, that the male experience of working from home may be a bit different from that of a mother with three children.  Most senior or even middle managers are probably in a position where they have a decent place in which to work – a spacious flat or house. And many of them have liked it so much that they haven’t wanted to come back to the workplace full time.

But it is a different kettle of fish for the youngsters who unless they are still at home with mum and dad will not be in a big airy house in the suburbs but in a crowded shared flat perhaps like the young graduate quoted above working from his bedroom.   This is perhaps acceptable in an emergency but it is no way for youngsters to learn the world of work, however fast that may be changing. It can surely not be coincidental that we are seeing soaring rates of loneliness among the 24-35 year age group.

Organisations  are also beginning to address whether working from home is good for their profits and efficiency.  “The drive for more staff to return to the office was prompted by concerns about drops in productivity.”

What has also happened is that secure in the knowledge that they may only have to commute once a week at most, some people have moved miles away from their workplaces and are now unable to return full time even when asked.  I spoke to a young woman who used to work for me. She had moved from Surrey to be with her boyfriend in Leeds. I naively assumed she had had to leave her job at the local council. ‘Oh no she said, I work from home and travel down once a month.’  

My research and work has focused on the development and change of workplace cultures. I can categorically say that without in person presence for a majority of the working week, there is no opportunity for cultures to develop let alone change.  Online presence is a very poor cousin to in person interaction.  Basically you cannot form relationships through a computer screen. Humans are ultimately social creatures who require social connection. Any kind of collective work, the sharing of ideas, innovation, team work, mentoring,  sponsorship – all of these require forming relationships.

Currently  most people in hybrid working are choosing to work in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday.  No working parent before Covid would have dared suggest this and we advised against it. Of course everyone would want that! A long weekend!  But no, the protocol went like this – request some flexible working with your manager and between you work out what worked best for the company and for you. It had to work both ways.  Something has gone very wrong when where you work on which day is dictated by employees. 

But there is no point in making the youngsters come back to the office if there are no senior or middle managers there. As one young man said to me “I always go into the office as I prefer working there to being in my flat alone. It is never full but on Mondays and Fridays there are hardly any people there.” Senior management – this is your responsibility.

Now that evidence of the GIDS scandal has been formalised in the Cass Report, there are quite a few  who only a week ago were still accusing women of transphobia for even raising concerns, now hurrying to find agreement with the findings. With no doubt an eye on the general election Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting says he agreed with the report findings, pretending it told him things he didn’t already know.  His own role in making Labour party members lives difficult for their gender critical beliefs has been conveniently forgotten. This is infuriating for those who have been cancelled, abused and marginalised for standing up for women and children’s rights. However in his defence he has acknowledged a change of heart (although no apology as yet).

 Not so the Church of England, itself responsible for promoting the dangerous ideas that have led to children attaching all their problems on to their gender, via its anti -bullying teaching resource Valuing All God’s Children, through its 5000 plus schools.

The role of wider society and the social context in which this ideology has taken hold was discussed by Dr Cass with specific focus on why it was that three quarters of gender questioning children are girls. The role of schools is significant. As the group Safe Schools Alliance notes “We are particularly concerned by the way that schools, aided and abetted by the teaching unions, have promoted an ideology that bypassed all safeguarding practices”

Some of us have been waiting for a public announcement from the Church Education Office. It didn’t come but through much searching I have found a short statement hidden away on the website. Here it is:

“We agree with Dr Cass’s conclusions that, as far as any form of social transitioning is concerned, a very cautious approach is necessary, and should involve full collaboration and consultation with parents and medical professionals. Something we have always maintained.”  (my bold)

My blood pressure took a spike when I read this!  Where, I ask, did the Church maintain this? The section in the guidance which speaks specifically of social transitioning says,

  “Trans young people may require specific support in order to feel comfortable at school, for example, schools may need to make changes to toilet facilities or a trans young person might require support to change their name or the pronoun by which they are referred to by staff and classmates.”(Valuing All God’s Children 2019)

There is nothing in this document that asks that parents and medical professionals should be involved in this process or to say that any approach should be cautious.

Only in January this year there was a news item about a four year old boy who was allowed to join a Church primary school as a girl without any of the other pupils being told.

One of the Church’s let-outs has been to blame local authorities and the schools themselves for their policies but it is high time it took some responsibility and accountability and grappled properly with this important topic.  Brilliant organisations like Transgender Trend and Safe Schools Alliance have had school resources alternative to those of Stonewall and Mermaids readily available but for some reason the Church chose to ignore them. Instead VAGC is straight out of the Stonewall playbook, even having the exact same glossary.

 I and many others have been writing to the Church of England’s Education Board for over four years and our concerns have been dismissed. It seems that the Church has consistently failed to understand the implications of being a mouthpiece for these lobby groups. Sadly for many youngsters, the damage has already been done. It is not enough to rewrite the guidance in the light of the Cass Report. What the Church should do immediately is to acknowledge it was wrong and issue an apology for having left this resource in schools for so long (since 2017), even as alarm bells were ringing. By not doing so it is sending out the signal that it doesn’t take the medical abuse of children seriously.

Living in Love and Faith – Church of England’s confusion over sex, gender and gender identity

The tragic death last September of a female partner of law firm Pinsent Masons  has re-ignited a debate on stress and work/life balance in the professional services sector and beyond.  Vanessa Ford, known professionally as Vanessa Heap, had been working 18-hour days and throughout her holidays to complete the sale of Everton FC to a private equity firm. Her body was found hit by a train and last week the coroner’s verdict was suicide. She was married with two children.

A junior solicitor said a typical work day at Pinsent Masons “is 08:30 to 19:00”, while a senior female solicitor said the work/life balance was “the best thing” about the firm. “I rarely work past 19:30 pm and have never worked a weekend in 5 years there. It’s probably as good as you can get in private practice”, she said.  However, another female senior solicitor said “[I] regularly work until the small hours trying to juggle a family”.

 People who are used to working a normal 9-5 day may be aghast that regularly finishing at 7.30pm is described as positive, but for those working in law firms, particularly in M&A, this long day is standard. And it isn’t just law.

 My PhD research, some of it which found its way into my book Women’s Work Men’s Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), revealed that long hours were a major factor inhibiting women’s progress in organisations. Not much has changed!  Although since Covid there is much more flexibility in where you can work i.e. home working is now common place, this hasn’t been accompanied by a lowering of workloads.  As one female lawyer puts it “we are also all so much more ‘on’ and available than I had seen previously in my career.” Working into the late hours at home is arguably as damaging to one’s health as working late in an office. Whilst this applies to both men and women the impact on mothers is particularly hard.

Twenty four years ago, a senior manager in a bank challenged the long hours by claiming that 14- hour days amount to sex discrimination.  Investment banker Aisling Sykes, 39, was sacked as vice president for spending too much time with her children, and won her claim for unfair dismissal from US bank, JP Morgan, but lost her claim that 14-hour days amounted to sex discrimination. The tribunal ruled that because she was so highly paid her employers were entitled to ‘make certain demands in respect of hours and place of work.’

The case was important because it was an attempt to use the law to construe a requirement to work long hours as a means of indirect discrimination. However it appeared that the high financial gain exempted the bank from any responsibility to ensure a working environment conducive to working mothers. I don’t believe this case has been overruled although refusing a request for flexibility working may be construed as indirect discrimination.

This ruling revealed the gendered subtext to the apparently neutral phenomenon of long hours, which is still prevalent today. The fault was seen as the woman’s – how can she expect to work those hours with four children? The long-hours culture often goes unchallenged, being justified as it was in the above ruling on the grounds of high salaries or client demand.

At first glance, a long-hours culture might seem to be gender-neutral. There are no innate talents and skills in men that cannot be matched by women – stamina and energy are equally shared out. But it has an indirect effect on women in the workplace in as much as women still take primary responsibility for childcare and household management, and so the burden of working long hours adds to the pressure they already have of managing both family and career. It is difficult to contest or challenge gender in this mode because it is tantamount to challenging the structure of the job itself. But this is what is required if we want to see women and men working together at the top of organizations.

This disparity was made especially clear during lockdown when schools were closed and parents had to home school their kids as well as work. It was women who took on most of this home schooling and their careers suffered for it.

At senior levels, the ability to give time is now the primary differentiating feature between men and women employees. That case twenty four years ago showed how the quid pro quo for high salary, high status jobs is working very long hours. Generally men can give more time to paid work than women, both because they are often exempt from domestic responsibilities, and because their time is often made available by women’s unpaid work. Time is a precious resource which is recognized in the recently coined phrase ‘time poor.’

Men can only spend more time at work if they do less domestic work at home, and as their pay increases so does their exemption from the domestic sphere. My research, like others, showed that as job level and income bracket go up, so did the hours, thereby making that step to the top harder for women with families. Indeed in my research senior women were three times more likely to be childless than men (Women’s Work Men’s Cultures Ch 5)

Arlie Hochschild’s classic study of a US company, The Time Bind, shows clearly how time is used in a competitive way among aspiring managers. A senior executive was quoted as saying:

“Time has a way of sorting people out in this company. A lot of people who don’t make it to the top work long hours. But all the people I know who do make it work long hours. By the time people get to within three or four levels of the Management Committee, they’re all very good, or else they wouldn’t be there. So from that point on what counts is work and commitment.^”

Senior managers may put in more hours but they also need help to organize their lives and a partner at home is invaluable. Women and men are renegotiating their roles with regard to work and home. Organizations are a part of that. Their employees’ family situation is no longer something that companies can ignore or pretend does not exist. Working mothers will have a real work–life balance when their husbands/partners do half the total housework and childcare and women are paid on a par with men. The best advice to give ambitious women is to choose their partner carefully.

Young women are entering the world of work and have high expectations for their careers and how they share family responsibilities with their partners. Relations between men and women, spouses and partners may have changed a lot over the past twenty years but while workplaces expect excessively long hours – regardless of where they are worked – and men continue to expect women to take on the majority of the ‘other side of life’ it is mostly women who will continue to burn out or drop out.

The week before Christmas Kemi Badenoch’s team were busy. As well as publishing draft guidance for schools on how to deal with students wanting to socially transition, her department has published updated  guidance on public sector equality duty. Any of the many public sector organisations which are members of the Stonewall champions should take notice. As indeed should any of the corporates and professional service firms who may have inadvertently followed what Kemi Badenoch called “Stonewall’s law” when she faced questions before the Women and Equalities Select Committee earlier in December.  The guidance clarifies what exactly the nine characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010 are (which every diversity professional should know) as well as how the guidance should operate in practice.

“The duty requires decision-makers to understand and take account of the consequences of their choices, having due regard to the aim of eliminating conduct prohibited by the act, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations. At the same time, the duty is not a rubber stamp. It is a legal requirement. Making decisions without having due regard to the duty can be unlawful.”

What is a public sector equality duty? There is both a general duty and a specific duty

The general duty requires public authorities, in the exercise of their functions, to have due regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other unlawful conduct prohibited by the act
• advance equality of opportunity between people who share and people who do not share a relevant protected characteristic
• foster good relations between people who share and people who do not share a relevant protected characteristic.

Private sector companies may not be under any legal obligation to adhere to the duty but they are obliged to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and that means ensuring that the right terminology is used in their policies.The guidance reiterates that the relevant protected characteristics are:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

And to clarify exactly what the characteristic of gender reassignment means it is “Someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process or part of a process to reassign their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. Authorities should take care to undertake their assessment by reference to the protected characteristics set out in the act. They should not use  concepts such as gender or gender identity, which are not encoded in the act and can be understood in different ways.”

This is reiterated at the end of the guidance where certain myths are laid out and dispelled, the last one being

Myth 8: “I must consider other demographics beyond the protected characteristics.”

 Unless there is a clear correlation with a protected characteristic, considering demographics that are not protected characteristics will not help you to comply with the duty. In fact, it could obscure compliance in your supporting records. Examples of demographics that are not protected characteristics include:

• class
• gender
• gender identity
• caring responsibilities
• single parenthood

In a separate letter to public bodies’ heads Kemi Badenoch wrote:

“I would like to be clear that there is no ‘hierarchy of rights’ under the act, therefore we should not hold one protected characteristic in higher regard than another.”

Many public sector organisations, particularly those on the Stonewall Scheme, have replaced sex with gender. Gender is not a protected characteristic. Nor is gender identity. This guidance makes it very clear that neither are not acceptable.

It is useful to request to see an equality impact assessment on any policy either directly if they are published  or through a freedom of information act request if they are not, where you think that there may be a conflict between certain protected characteristics. The guidance gives a couple of good examples – closing a library and closing a care home but here are some others: introducing a policy of mixed sex wards in hospitals, which may have an adverse impact particularly on women; a local authority removing separate ladies and gents toilets and replacing them with one mixed sex toilet, which may have an adverse impact on women; the introduction of Clean Air Neighbourhood scheme which may may have an impact on the elderly and disabled. Very often these assessments have become mere tick box exercises but this guidance emphasises that there is not only a duty on a public body to apply the aims of the duty but a legal requirement.

Last week I heard what is becoming a fairly familiar story to many parents.  A fifteen year old boy announced to his whole family, including his grandparents, on the last evening of a half term holiday that he was changing his name (to an unusual female one) and from now on his pronouns were to be they/she.  Everyone was stunned. There had been no warning whatsoever. However it transpired that he wasn’t the only one… another five youngsters in his year had done the same thing.  His parents managed to have a look at his internet history and found reams of websites and social media sites on transitioning. Eliza Mondegreen, an academic who researches the online trans and detrans communities tells Stella O’Malley  in a Gender: a Wider Lens podcast  that we cannot understand young people’s desire to be non -binary or trans without studying what goes on online. I think she is right. In the podcast series The Witch Trials of JK Rowling (episode 3) in which  the impact of social media on language and culture of the youth trans community is analysed one youngster says “ I hadn’t heard of non-binary until I came across it on social media”. 

This may be described as youthful rebellion but this isn’t one that the young have dreamed up themselves and can have more far reaching consequences than being a punk or a goth ever had.  Kids have been carefully served on a plate an ideology that insists that their bodies do not necessarily determine whether they are male or female,  and that they have an inner gender identity which according to the teachings takes priority over biological sex. Those of us who still believe in material reality know this to be nonsense.

Non-binary is very much a young person’s choice of identity. Thanks to the 2021 Census we know that 85% of all those choosing to identify as non-binary are between the ages of 16 and 24. And there were only 30,000 of them in England and Wales (although as we now know even this number may have been exaggerated because the concepts of gender identity and non-binary were poorly understood by segments of the population)

Of all the identities on offer non-binary at first glance appears to be the most appealing and the most non-committal.  (However there are those who start off as non-binary, use it a stepping stone and go on to want to fully transition to the opposite sex and there are an increasing number of girls who demand mastectomies).  And now like the boy above, announcing mixed pronouns adds a bit more nuance  – non-binary with a hint of female hence the double pronoun they/she. But even just being non-binary gives you the golden ticket of being trans.

No one was describing themselves as non-binary until about five years ago. Even in academia which heralded in most of the gender identity ideology that is now flowing through our institutions, using they/them is fairly recent.  “The practice of using pronouns in a non-binary way has not featured much in academic writing – the first paper on it was published in 2017, but has become more accepted online and on social media, with people now listing them in their Twitter bios.”

Apart from a confused number of rebellious probably gay youth another group ‘coming out’ as non-binary are celebrities.

“I’m not male or female, I think I flow somewhere in between. It’s all on the spectrum,” said Sam Smith, speaking in a March 2019 I Weigh episode with Jameela Jamil.

Emma Corrin, The Crown star ‘came out’ as non-binary in 2021 by updating their pronouns on Instagram. “because my journey has been a long one and has still got a long way to go” she said.
Later in an interview she said, “I think that we are so used to defining ourselves, and that’s the way, sadly, society works, within these binaries. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I exist somewhere in between and I’m still not sure where that is yet.”  Join the club Emma.  We are all on a spectrum of femininity and masculinity but we don’t have to essentialise it.

Stonewall tries to define non-binary but succeeds in only telling us what it isn’t, followed by a tautology .

“Non-binary is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely. Non-binary people can feel that their gender identity and gender experience involves being both a man and a woman, or that it is fluid , or completely outside of that binary”

For this definition to even begin to make a modicum of sense we must believe in the subjective notion of gender identity, another concept that defies rational definition, but which is the crux of all current transgender theory.

Feminism has said for decades that gender is a social and cultural construct and changes in time and place. It has never been fixed. Sex is fixed.  Being gender non-conforming means not conforming to expectations of what the current dominant modes of masculinity or femininity are, the stereotypes, that may be via physical expression or conveying atypical characteristics of behaviour and character. Prince was gender non-conforming, David Bowie was gender non-conforming, the New Romantics were gender non-conforming and thousands of feminists are gender non-conforming. This really is nothing new.

What is new is the terminology, and the insistence that this signifies you are somehow outside the categories of male and female (sex) and  that this subjective feeling must be recognised and acknowledged publicly by others. Despite the very small numbers and the young age of those who call themselves non-binary,  there are calls from lobby groups to legislate specifically for this group and organisations are accommodating new language and providing training on non-binary discrimination.  In Scotland the government feel so strongly that the lives of non-binary people need to be improved that last year it published an action plan.  As Debbie Hayton said in the Spectator in response to this announcement “Why? Who told these children they were non-binary – in a separate category to other children – and why is the Scottish government playing along with it? Children need to be told the truth: that there are two sexes, and while they may be able to shun the social conventions associated with their sex, they cannot opt out of their sex altogether.”

It is hard to determine in what ways those young people describing themselves as non-binary are really any different from anyone else. Maybe because there are few outward signs, many who describe themselves as non-binary die their hair – pink or blue usually and may wear non stereotypical clothes for their sex.  Lest we should make the mistake of confusing gender expression with gender identity Stonewall is on hand to tell us what the difference is…

“In order to understand non-binary gender identities better, it’s vital to understand the difference between gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity refers to a person’s clear sense of their own gender. This is not something which is governed by a person’s physical attributes. Gender expression is how you express yourself and just like everyone else, non-binary people have all sorts of ways to express themselves and their identity. They can present as masculine, feminine or in another way and this can change over time, but none of these expressions make their identity any less valid or worthy of respect.” 

So, if I understand correctly, there are no external signals to tell you that this person in front of you is anything other than a man or a woman, they will have to tell you. And you must refer to them in the way they ask you to. At what point was this particularly concept debated? Recognizing the opposite sex is how our species has survived. No wonder pronouns are compulsory – it’s all they’ve got.

When I read in 2018/9 that the ONS was going to change the 2021 Census question on sex to mean gender identity, a highly contested concept not widely understood by the population, I was alarmed. As a social scientist and the designer of many surveys I knew that was a massive mistake and I started to investigate how on earth two key tenets of good longitudinal data collection, clarity and consistency of question could so easily be ignored for the Census, the gold standard of surveys. Political lobbying was the answer I found, but luckily for public records, historians, medical and social researchers and policy makers an intervention by a small unfunded organisation FairPlay For Women resulted in a judicial review. The ONS backtracked and retained the original question on sex whilst adding a further question on gender identity -although the wording of this question is now being reconsidered after the census results showed that it may have been poorly understood.

A few weeks ago it was announced that Professor Alice Sullivan (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society) is heading up a six-month review analysing the collection of research and statistics by all public bodies on sex and gender, with specific recommendations to be made at the end. This will make a fascinating read. And last week the organisation Sex Matters got the show on the road with its own guidance on data collection of sex and transgender identity. You can download it here.

Over the past five years or so many organisations have already decided to replace the question of sex with other wordings and continue to do so, often in the name of inclusivity, diminishing the reliability of their data.The Sex Matters team found that many organisations, instead ask for “gender” (or gender identity) and some offer a bewildering array of options, including non-binary (which is not a sex or recognised legal term) agender, man-identified, gender queer and others.

Instead, says Sex Matters, when asking about sex keep it simple! Simply use Male or Female (plus optional prefer not to say). When designing a question, the place to start is to ask what the information is for. Organisations may need to record information about people’s sex for many reasons, including:.

• because it is required by law – for example, schools must record pupils’ sex 
• for healthcare and medical records –for correct diagnosis, screening, analysis of test results, treatments, dosages and so on 
• for operational reasons – for example, where a person’s sex is relevant to their job (such as a bra fitter or women’s refuge worker) or where there are sex-based rules about who can access a particular service 
• for processing salaries, tax and pensions
• for sports – to decide on eligibility for competitions and to assess and record athletic performance 
• for safeguarding – where an organisation places staff in positions of care towards children and vulnerable people 
• for social statistics – for example, recording and analysing economic data by sex 
• for equality monitoring – for example, to avoid sex discrimination in recruitment processes or to monitor workforces in order to spot patterns of discrimination (and pay inequality)
• in order to prevent, investigate or prosecute crime. 

In almost every situation, if you want to know a person’s sex, what you want to know about is their actual sex (apart from for tax and pension records, which are linked to sex as modified by a gender-recognition certificate).   Collection of data on sex has never been considered to be sensitive information but organisations can always include a ‘prefer not say’ as well as male or female.

If you want to know whether people have a transgender identity, you should ask this separately from the sex question. This should be asked with caution and responding should be voluntary as this is sensitive information. The guidance makes it clear that:

 “you should ask about this only if you have a good reason and have considered the privacy implications of collecting the data. It should not be collected routinely. Some potential reasons for asking people about transgender identity are: 

• operational – to identify transgender people as a population with specific needs 
• for social statistics – because you want to know how many people identify as trans in a particular population 
• for equality monitoring – “gender reassignment” is a protected characteristic and you may choose to monitor it (although you should consider whether this is possible in practice. The numbers being very small and the inability to publish the biological sex of those who have a GRC makes this a difficult process). 

“Appearing inclusive” or “Wanting respondents to feel seen” are not good enough reasons to collect this data. Data-protection principles require that there is a lawful basis for collection, and that the information is used only for purposes that have been identified in advance. 

The recent turmoil at the top of two organisations, NatWest and Stonewall  has focused attention onto the Diversity and Inclusion sector (D&I), and revealed tensions which have been brewing for some time. At first glance the retail bank and the LGBT Charity may not seem to have much in common but both have lost their leadership because their organisations may have promoted ‘inclusion’ to such an extent that they exceeded their business mandate and lost the confidence of their customer base.

Alison Rose, CEO of NatWest, owner of Coutts private bank was forced to resign after news broke that Coutts had closed the bank account of politician Nigel Farage because, it was revealed by a Freedom of Information request, his values or political views didn’t fit in with the bank’s ‘inclusive values’. This was followed a day or two later by the resignation of Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts. Shares in Nat West fell by more than 8% last week in an ironic twist given that Mr Farage’s custom was considered by those who closed the account to be a reputational risk.

Separately, Nancy Kelley, the Chief Executive of Stonewall has made a premature and hasty departure without explanation. Then on July 30^th Chair of Trustees Iain Anderson made some remarks in a Sky interview which were followed hours later by a public retraction from Stonewall and an apology from him, leaving questions about the charity’s leadership.

The Nigel Farage/Coutts public debacle has revealed that the public do not approve of a bank straying into political and moral waters. As Warren Buffett said in a FT article a couple of years ago, “it is not the job of a business to make moral judgements”

But increasingly businesses of all kinds have been doing just that.

Organisations – moral agents of social change?

Over the past few years many corporates and public sector organisations have embraced elements of the diversity and ESG (Environmental,Social and Governance) agenda. However on occasion they have done so without reference to equality law and introduced policies not always supported by the wider population or even their own employees.

How did we get here? In 2002 Schneider Ross colleague Sue Ollerearnshaw and myself wrote a report called the Business of Diversity. In it we outlined the key business drivers for diversity like recruitment and retention, and found that there was also a place for social justice. Was it always necessary to show that adopting a policy would improve the bottom line? Sometimes implementing diversity policies also seemed to be the right thing to do, as many leaders told us.  Corporate social responsibility (before it became ESG) was taken seriously by large global companies and and at times included the diversity team. CSR translated into organisations being active and responsible in the communities in which they operated like having volunteer schemes, supporting local schools as well as undertaking environmental projects. These projects tended to be localised and particular to each organisation. Diversity was approached in the same way. Different organisations had different needs depending on the business, culture and location. Social justice, rarely articulated, then meant broadly that organisations had a part to play in the wider society around them. What organisations didn’t feel was they were themselves agents of social change and that that was part of their mission. It wasn’t. They just wanted to reflect good practice. This is where the emphasis and indeed the types of activities and policies have changed over the past twenty years.

The concept of social justice today has some very specific meanings, most of which are derived from left wing academia, not historically a friend of capitalist enterprise. It is heavily influenced by critical race theory (born in the US) and identity politics and has entered the diversity discourse via the concept of equity which has replaced equality. Equity refers to the fair division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. Criticism of this approach is that it creates a hierarchy of privilege creating division rather than emphasising commonalities. And others argue that it is not in organisations’ power or interest to guarantee outcomes rather than provide opportunities.

One strand of diversity has been particularly visible and dominant in recent years and that is LGBT or rather the T. This may seem strange given that the number of trans employees in any organisation is likely to be very, very small, in itself raising questions as to the rationale for its prominence. Special celebratory days, weeks and even months have given corporates an opportunity to advertise their ‘progressive’ credentials with reference to one group/identity or another. Enter Stonewall which since 2015, has advised thousands of organisations on how to be trans inclusive.

Time’s up for Stonewall?

But the LGBT charity and lobby group has also had a turbulent time in recent weeks. In early July Chief Executive Nancy Kelley unexpectedly announced that she was leaving after being at the helm three years. On July 2Oth Chairman of Trustees, Iain Anderson gave an interview to Sky presenter Beth Rigby which was painful to watch. Mr Anderson struggled to answer questions Beth Rigby posed about the conflict between some of the policies and demands Stonewall promote for trans people and women’s rights, particularly in sport. However, Anderson did give a small hint of a suggestion that Stonewall would be prepared to meet with groups challenging its approach (like the LGB Alliance with which it has refused a meeting on two occasions). You can watch the whole interview here

The following day a statement was issued by Stonewall correcting  Mr Anderson and in that statement Mr Anderson also issued an apology for upsetting the LGBT community. The statement is here

 This was descending into farce. That very afternoon Chief Executive, Nancy Kelley also left the organisation for good before her period of notice was up. In another blow to Stonewall the Labour Party has now done a major U turn on Trans Self Identification, one of Stonewall’s key goals. Who knows where that leaves Stonewall now? The LGBT charity has found itself being increasingly challenged on the policies it promotes to those who sign up to its Diversity Champions programme and rewards in its Workplace Equality Index. These includes the declaration of pronouns in emails and even at meetings, mixed sex toilets and the removal of gender based language like mothers and fathers. This has been rolled out in countless organisations via diversity and inclusion departments in the name of inclusion, regardless of the number of trans employees they have and without any consultation to other employees.  However recent years have seen some high profile companies leaving the schemes.

Organisations overstepping the mark

Coutts, via Nat West in its quest for inclusion has been a long term participant of Stonewall’s schemes until this year when it dropped out. It isn’t just NatWest that may be overstepping the mark in certain areas of diversity and ESG. Many FTSE 100 companies as well as professional services and public sector organisations have taken on the mantle of social change advocates.  One problem, as I argued two years ago here, is that although we in Diversity and Inclusion have often pushed organisations to go a bit further than the law in order to be a leader e.g. better maternity pay than statutory pay, many have now veered into territory that has political and even legal repercussions. And in doing so they have often failed to tie in policies with their own specific business needs and have not ensured that their workforce is invested in the values espoused. Many people have told me that they are too nervous to raise any concerns about certain policies for fear of being labelled right wing or a dinosaur or worse. This is not good diversity practice.

 Have we reached a place where Diversity and Inclusion has fallen into groupthink? Simon Fanshawe, author of The Power of Difference, says in a piece in the Times today that,

“Where to be ‘inclusive’ now apparently is defined as ‘you have to speak like this, think like this and behave like this. Or we’ll exclude you’.”

Where we might wonder is diversity of thought?

ESG including diversity was initially lauded as responsible capitalism by many people, including investors, who are now wondering if it has all gone too far, to the detriment of business profitability, and giving it the less kind title of ‘woke capitalism’. 

And now the government may be stepping in. Today (July30th) Kemi Badenoch wrote in the Times that

“It is not government’s job to write companies’ HR policies. However, it is our job to stop them doing harmful things based on a misunderstanding of the law. Our Inclusion at Work panel of experts from academia and business will develop resources based on evidence not ideology”.

 Let’s see what this brings. If recent days tell us anything it is that when people see the tide turning they usually turn round and swim with it.

Unfortunately growing criticism of the social justice agenda in organisations is in danger of damaging years if not decades of hard work during which diversity and inclusion had come in from the margins and gained a rightful seat at the business table. However the public doesn’t distinguish between this and the more extreme ‘politically correct’ or ‘woke’ agenda which is now being so publicly challenged.What a shame if the brilliant parts of D&I are caught in this wider backlash. Those who work in D&I need to take up the reins and be much clearer about which parts belong inside the business and which are better campaigned for outside.