| Welcome back, Rulers! Happy first December Friday. The letters D, E and I have been getting a lot of attention lately. This week, we dive into what the rollback of DEI initiatives and policies across the country could mean for women, and the arguments behind the shift. America’s biggest private employer retreated on all of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies last week. Walmart said it is ending racial equity training programs for staff, not renewing its Center for Racial Equity, reviewing all funding of Pride and other events and monitoring its online marketplace to remove sexual or transgender products marketed to children. The retail behemoth is the latest in a string of corporations that have reneged on their commitments to DEI, including Ford, Lowe's, John Deere, Boeing, Harley-Davidson, JPMorgan Chase and Toyota. In September, venture capital firm the Fearless Fund, which had invested nearly $27 million in some 40 businesses led by women of color, announced it will permanently close its grant program for Black women business owners after settling a year-long battle over racial discrimination. And, President-elect Donald Trump last month invited Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and prominent critic of DEI, to his Mar-a-Lago estate to deliver a plan to slash federal funding for universities that refuse to scrap diversity and equity programs. “We’re going to go through a little bit of a tumultuous period here in terms of things that are called DEI,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said at a staff meeting in November. The rollback of these policies reflects the increasing pressure facing corporate America in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions. Since then, there’s been a growing list of lawsuits against companies who enforce those policies. And then there’s the incoming president who has long and fervently advocated against DEI. Women, who have largely benefited from affirmative action and DEI policies, will likely have to adapt to a rapidly changing workforce environment that no longer prioritizes quotas or other gender-based hiring practices. (Currently, California, Illinois and Washingtons have gender quotas for corporations in the state, and other companies in the U.S. have explicitly stated gender diversity goals such as dictating that 50 percent of leadership must be women.) Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women, one of the groups who wrote a letter to Fortune 1000 chief executives imploring them to maintain DEI policies, says the Walmart decision “is opening up Pandora’s Box for lots of discrimination and harassment.” “We're gonna see more of a gap, we’re gonna see more people, especially women, struggle more than anything” with the end of DEI, Nunes says. On the other hand, Renu Mukherjee, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, tells Women Rule she welcomed the Walmart decision as a positive step forward. “I, like Christopher Rufo, oppose DEI across the board,” she says. “I'm a woman and I'm Indian, the child of Indian immigrants. … I would be categorized as a woman of color, and I strongly oppose diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in corporate America.” “A lot of the time when these programs are used, the intent is positive, it's to create an inclusive environment for all. But that's not how it is, in fact, always practiced,” Mukherjee continues, citing as evidence that “affirmative action for white women was not the purpose of the policy as it was created in the 1960s.” Nunes emphasizes that although women have benefitted from DEI, and specifically white women from affirmative action, the policies benefit everyone in the workplace by promoting accountability. “If you take the DEI away, you also decrease your ability to provide ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] considerations and adaptability,” things that people of all races and genders benefit from. As Nunes sees it, DEI “helps everybody, it doesn't just help one group.” Natalie Benamou, founder of HerCSuite, an organization that provides leadership programs, speakers and group mentoring services for companies, says the rollback of corporate DEI policies will make women-centered organizations like hers all the more important. She notes that this year, booking for the programs her organization provides has slowed. But she believes that slowdown demonstrates the need for women to come together and support each other more than ever. “I believe every closed door, windows open, it's up to us to fly through,” Benamou says. “We have a door closed on DEI for now … but it doesn't mean that we can't do other things to ensure that there's fairness in the workplace or ensure that people get the opportunity to move forward.” The three letters DEI may be out of the picture, but the need those letters were intended to meet won’t ever disappear, according to Benamou. "What people are saying is it didn't work, so we're not going to do it anymore,” Benamou says. “Well, if you go to a doctor and they don't solve your problems, do you stop going to the doctor? Or do you find the right doctor?"
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment