MY TAKE

DEI IS DEAD. LONG LIVE DEI.

‘Belonging’ is finding favour with those who deride DEI. But does ‘belonging, risk  moving from a new trend that everyone is embracing to dated jargon before long? Image credit: FAUXELS on Pexels.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Ten years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously said, “Because it’s 2015!” when asked about the number of women in his cabinet.

I recall cringing. And then being astonished that not too many others saw it the way I did. In fact, a friend was breathless in excitement over our “dishy PM” who is now on his way out.

Not many appeared to take issue with what was implied, or what could be read into that statement – that the women were there because it was the right thing to do, not because they were the best person for the job.

Not that there’s anything wrong with doing anything because it’s the right thing to do. But when that is reduced to ticking all the boxes, I cry halt.

Remember how parents used to extol the virtues of keeping good company? “You are the company you keep” and so on. How the good habits of friends– studying hard and earning good marks, generally! – would rub off on you.

With news of major corporations such as Walmart – the largest private employer in the US and a significant employer in Canada – ditching DEI, and the “pressure” on other organizations to follow suit, it would appear parental words of caution about the reverse also being true have come to pass. Not everything our friends do is worthy of emulating.

Experts on both side of the divide have weighed in on the demise of DEI – the reasons and the road, if any, ahead.

In an article posted on CBC News James Dunne wrote that the changes announced at Walmart are “sweeping and include not renewing a five-year commitment for a racial equity centre set up in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd – nor will the company continue to use race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts.”

In the wake of such rollbacks, everyone looked at Donald Trump who has openly derided inclusion initiatives.

But, as Dunne wrote, some of the policy changes at Walmart have been in the works for a while.

“For example, it has been moving away from using the term DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – in job titles and communications and started to use the word belonging.”

Emboldened by the US Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 ending affirmative action in college admissions, conservative groups have filed lawsuits making similar arguments about corporations, targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs, writes Dunn. Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley-Davidson and Lowe’s.

Dan J. Berger, founder of the community-building platform Social Tables, offers a framework for understanding what belonging is along with strategies to enhance it while avoiding false paths in his  book The Quest: The Definitive Guide to Finding Belonging (ForbesBooks)

He says Walmart’s pivot represents a well-needed move past surface-level inclusivity metrics toward fostering true connectedness.

In this post-COVID world, employees aren’t content with performative inclusivity anymore, he notes. They want workplaces where they feel genuinely connected and valued. Workplaces where they belong, not told that they belong.

He has seen first-hand that the impact of a focus on belonging is far more positive than the impact of DEI’s frameworks and metrics for organizations. And that, he says, is why belonging is the future of diversity in the US, Canada and beyond.

He outlines the key differences between DEI and belonging, and why fostering belonging is so much more powerful and effective, while being harder to achieve.

But does “belonging” risk  moving from a new trend that everyone is embracing to dated jargon before long?

I am reminded of a conversation with a friend in which she bemoaned feeling constantly behind the curve. “I just about got the hang of this whole ‘woke’ thing but now they are getting ready to ditch it!”

Need to Know, which shares research from think tanks, academics, and leading policy thinkers in Canada and around the world, curated by The Hub, recently posed this question: Is the “Great Awokening” over?

Excerpts, below:

“In 2022, economist Tyler Cowen predicted that wokeism – a loose reference to progressive attitudes on social injustices, particularly around race, gender, and systemic inequalities – was peaking.

“He may have been right. Corporations are beginning to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. In the wake of the US presidential election results, there have been discussions among Democrats of the need for them to ditch its turn towards wokeism. Meanwhile, here in Canada, voters appear to be much more concerned about affordability rather than manning the barricades for progressive social causes. With all this in mind, we take a look at some recent research that assesses the social costs of the turn to woke.

“In a recent episode of the podcast ‘Conversations with Tyler,’ sociologist Musa al-Gharbi discusses the dynamics of the ‘Great Awokening,’ a term describing the surge in social justice activism among elites today. Al-Gharbi identifies this as the fourth such movement in US history, with previous waves in the 1930s, 1960s, and late 1980s to early 1990s. He says these periods are the consequence of ‘elite overproduction,’ where society generates more educated individuals than there are elite positions available, leading to status anxiety among these groups.

“This anxiety prompts elites to adopt social justice causes, not solely out of genuine concern but also as a strategy to secure their status.”

And often, as Al-Gharbi notes, such movements typically wane without achieving substantial real change for marginalized communities. Instead, they often result in cultural conflicts that can inadvertently empower right-wing factions.

DEI, of course, is about far more than gender. It includes gender and ethnicity, age, ability... But with women making up 50 per cent across all categories, the focus tends to be on gender equality.

Some misogyny hides behind patriarchy – “women have always been subjugated and will continue to be so, deal with it”. For some it’s just sheer pig-headedness, not seeing how keeping a full half of the population hobbled impacts us all.

And so we count how many women make it to the top echelons of an organization.

We mandate representation. Which, again, I have to admit, I had an issue with. Because there are enough highly accomplished women who balk at being seen as representing a mandatory number.

 But then there are also an equal number of highly accomplished women who say we’ve had decades of asking nicely, only mandates will get us there.

 In an eerie echo, Samhita Mukhopadhyay (The Myth of Making It) and Priyanka Mattoo (Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones) both concluded that they were in dream jobs – but someone else’s dream, not theirs.

Not because they were flaky or flitted from job to job without settling on one but because they were driven to the decision to quit by the misogyny they faced.

So it’s not enough to mandate representation – if that’s the route we want to take.

It’s incumbent upon us to ensure the women are respected and valued for who they are, not what they represent.

And so the debate rages. But I think we can all agree that hope lies not so much in new policies but in new thinking.

Raising a generation to believe that we all deserve equal access to opportunities will take time, but quick-fix policies can be rolled back just as quickly.

A shift in thinking is the need of the hour.

Because it’s 2025? No, because it might last longer and withstand attacks better