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by Tzunamitom
4576 days ago
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> Why try to force equality? Am I missing something? OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action. Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things: 1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ.
Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea... 2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity. Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR. |
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