Stop Punching Down
A protest placard that says "Equal rights does not mean less rights for you. It's not a pie."
Like many people, my response to the recent political attacks on so-called “diversity equity and inclusion programs” has been visceral. It’s pretty hard not to take these attacks personally if you are in any of the groups being targeted by them – basically, anyone who is not a white man as far as I can make out.
Why do they resonate with our community? An absence of facts is the starting point.
A large body of research shows that inequality is bad for a huge number of societal outcomes – including overall economic growth outcomes for you neoliberalists out there.
And a quick scan of readily available statistics tells us that inequality is alive and well. The question is, do we want to maintain that situation, or do we want to try and improve societal outcomes – see above. Here come the numbers:
Women make up just 22 per cent of CEOs, 37 per cent of key management personnel and 42 per cent of managers in Australia.
While 14.5 per cent of the Australian population has an Asian heritage, only 1.6 per cent hold a chief executive, C suite or senior leadership role.
About a quarter of the Australian population is estimated to have a non-European or Indigenous background. Yet, according to the Human Rights Commission, such backgrounds only account for 5 per cent of senior leadership positions.
The labour force participation rate for people with a disability rose by about seven per cent to 60.5 per cent in 2022 – a major jump after decades of no change. But only 56.1 per cent were employed. The labour force participation rate for people without disability is 84.9 per cent and the employment rate for working-age people without disability is 82 – so the gaps are still pretty big.
A 2023 Ipsos report surveyed 30 countries. It found that the LGBTQ+ population was 9 per cent. But only 25 out of 5,670 board seats at Fortune 500 companies (0.4 per cent) were occupied by openly LGBTQ+ people.
Statistics like these simply show how unfair our society is in disproportionately concentrating power and economic advantage with some types of people at the expense of others.
This structural inequity is the result of years of discrimination. So we’ve come up with some actions and programs to try and address it – which are now being attacked. And based on the numbers, we really need to do more and better. Because reducing inequity actually benefits everybody and our community at large.
Cover photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash