No, I’m not going to give up on ‘diversity and inclusion’
I’ve spent years with anger myself, but…..
[PS If you’re short on time, skip to the last section!]
By now, most of you have seen Jon Evan’s (great) commentary on giving up on “diversity & inclusion” , sparked by Arlan Hamilton (Backstage Ventures) declaring she would no longer speak at D&I events starting in 2019.
Jon’s analysis highlights a completely valid sentiment about the industry — exhaustion — and I respect it and feel it myself. And Arlan is spot on in wanting to focus on things that create action.
For anyone reading the piece, though, “giving up” shouldn’t be the takeaway.
I’ve spent over 10 years working on gender equality in the tech space, and have gotten so pissed at all the dollars companies poured into events and external stuff, because it was all crap. CRAP!
I called bluff on a lot of the companies out there who think they’ve “spent years” on D&I, who failed to realize that putting marketing dollars to external events doesn’t actually *do anything*.
We call this “diversity theater” (you’re welcome to start a #diversitytheater hashtag!), and I could go on… and on… and on…
Arlan, and Erica Joy, and Cindy Gallop and everyone else are rightly pissed, and so am I. Seriously, if I get another VC firm requesting access to our database so they can get women founders in their application rounds, I’m going to scream. This. Doesn’t. Solve. Your problem.
Lip service and exhaustion
When I took over Women 2.0 two years ago, I was able to look at a lot of my own past work from a fresh perspective, and combine it with Women 2.0’s established philosophies to create our mission and goals. The original team had worked for a decade to create change in the space and figure out how to move the needle.
Women 2.0 used to be largely focused on events around the world. This was very similar to the work I’d been doing at Girls in Tech, where we had 60 chapters around the world, running local events as our primary course of action. And this was like any number of similarly focused organizations out there.
But it reached a point where these events (aside from being an exhausting core business model!) were also not doing anything for the companies anymore. Excellent for community, little for companies.
They served a very important purpose for a number of years — community mobilization and issues awareness and education. These are crucial components for any societal movement, and societal movements take a long time.
But they started to show their ineffectiveness, and the “crutch” they were creating for companies.
As soon as brands started asking about ROI of their dollars (somewhere around 2014 or 2015) it became clearer what the goals were — marketing and PR. So, in the eyes of sponsoring brands, not only were D&I events no longer tagged as CSR efforts, but they also weren’t producing “internal benefits.”
Stop and think about that for one second. The ROI was marketing ROI. Those dollars were marketing dollars.
These companies’ didn’t consider their work on women in the tech space an internal benefit because their brand images were not seeing an impact.
Furthermore, there was literally no connection to internal culture whatsoever — no impact made on internal culture and also no value placed on internal culture.
They stopped caring about community impact, and they had a completely warped view of what internal impact was supposed to be. Huh?
Queue complete exhaustion of lip service. No one even cared. Everyone’s been talking the talk.
But that anger and knowledge is a powerful weapon, and one that can speed progress. Use it.
Our North Star became creating mechanisms for action (see #4 here, about how this just can’t be so hard!). We live and die by this.
We talk about it as we build out our woman-focused offerings and getting female founders access to money. We’re talking about it as we build out the D&I arm of our business (stay tuned). We nix or change things that don’t create action.
All this is just to say: People doing this work could take their anger and exhaustion and use it to flip models on their heads.
We can filter who we’re talking to or working with (e.g. We and several other companies and organizations very directly said no to Uber when they were trying to hastily clean up their image last summer… keep saying no and keep calling those companies out).
We can get angry on stage at conferences (This is fun!).
We can demand more of our clients or investors.
We can push people “What’s your goal here? What’s your expected impact?”
We can reimagine what events could look like that were either filtered or action/impact-oriented.
And Etc.
No, it’s not necessarily your/our job to do all this disruption. Companies have to change themselves. But if you wake up every day and work to make this industry a better place, dig your heels in.
There’s a place in this discussion for anger. There’s a place for teaching. There’s a place for solution-building. There’s a place for a whole lot of good stuff here.
We need to find better ways to tackle the problems, and create better solution sets.
We can’t give up, because there are people who actually need us.
Pay attention, because this is important.
One of the biggest reasons why we can’t give up is that there are huge swaths of people and companies in this country and around the world who do care about this, and do want to find solutions. They do want be progressive. They do want better workplace cultures. They do care about their employees and how they feel. They don’t fit the profile of what was depicted in Evan’s article.
They also don’t always have the right direction, but that’s where they need us (not Women 2.0 per se, I mean all of us working for this goal). If we can continue to use our expertise and provide people access to that, we will speed progress up.
Focus on the new waves of companies who have the ability and desire to set their cultures right now. There is serious long-term opportunity in this. Industry-changing and culture-changing opportunity. And there’s not a chance I’m giving up on that.
If you’re sick of the Ubers and Facebooks and VC firm X, drop ’em. Let the companies who don’t really care about this continue to disintegrate inside. Burn the fig leaves.
But don’t let the firms and people who do care go. No one’s lost yet, there’s still a lot winning to do. Arlan and others are going to find their ways to do more impactful work on this D&I stuff, and that’s exciting.
Don’t give up on the future.
