Let’s Discuss: D.E.I. in 2026
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There's an interesting op-ed in the NYT (gift link) from Joanne Lipman, author of That's What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together. She collects the various ways companies are backing away from DEI initiatives in order to please the current administration. She also notes that “reversing progress on gender equality and women’s rights” is part of the autocrat's playbook. There's a lot to unpack here, but let's discuss…
- how have DEI initiatives changed at your company in the past few years, if at all?
- in what small (or big) ways do you feel affected, personally?
- (I wonder if different generations of women have different opinions here — do you feel more affected if you're, say, under 35, and less affected if you're over a certain age?)
- do you agree with a recent report that women in the workplace have “less career support and fewer opportuities to advance”? have you seen more “masculine energy” at your place of work?
- what are your thoughts on the way forward?
In a few different alumni groups that I'm involved with, the trend (both within the group as well as reports from inside the university) has been more along the lines of “we're removing the letters DEI to placate the administration, but nothing else is actually changing.” But, for example, the administration recently sued Coca Cola for hosting a women's retreat (gift link to WaPo), alleging it discriminated against men… so maybe just changing names won't be enough.
Some choice quotes from the article (again, here's a gift link to read the whole thing…)
The Trump administration has defined “illegal D.E.I.” as “programs, initiatives or policies that discriminate, exclude or divide individuals based on race or sex.” But in practice, President Trump’s allies have questioned whether women deserve a place in the work force at all. They have blamed women for last year’s California wildfires and slammed the conservative Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a “D.E.I. hire” for a ruling they didn’t like. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is purging the military of senior female officers after complaining that the armed forces had become “effeminate.” Women’s names have disappeared from museums, parks, monuments and even the Arlington National Cemetery.
She notes that a number of companies say they're still advancing diversity, but that no one will talk about it.
It may seem perfectly reasonable, even admirable, for companies to keep their mouths shut as they continue to advance diversity goals. After all, nobody wants to be a target. In previous years, too many companies went overboard, with lots of cheap talk about diversity and not enough action. The problem is that silencing the conversation risks undoing years of progress at a time when women are still underrepresented in business and public life. As women are erased from the narrative, injustices against them go unnoticed.
How has this been affecting women in the workplace? Last year, she reports, an annual report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org “found that women have ‘less career support and fewer opportunities to advance.'” She also notes that Mark Zuckerberg, at least, now says companies need more “masculine energy.”
(As the mom to a teen boy I like to think of this as having Axe body spray pumped into the bathrooms, but… that's probably not what they mean.)
In the op-ed she also talks about how other marginalized groups have been affected, and how this reversal of progress has played out in other countries through the ages when under authoritarian rule. I recommend you read all of the relatively short op-ed; lots of food for thought.
It’s truly unfortunate that this administration has done everything they can to lead us to believe that DEI is something bad. We have a president and secretary of defense who are two insecure little boys who need to demean and belittle everyone to make themselves feel powerful. It is shameful how many lives they have ruined.
It seems like a heavy topic to put in a fashion chat subject line.
It is very possible to believe that both the DEI of 2020 and the current administration are bad.
The irony of what’s happening is infuriating. Responsible adults are desperately needed.
I completely agree.
Mark Z is pandering to DJT.
DEI, done well, is about recruiting well, having wide relationships with local communities and professional communities, both internally and externally. It does not have anything to do with hiring unqualified people, it’s more about finding them across many demographic identities.
I work in Fair Practice/EEO – and our org’s president doubled down with support of our programs because the wording is about “illegal discrimination” – discrimination has always been wrong and should be investigated. We have never believed the lie. We know this is fear-mongering. What we do have is more nuisance suits. As in, if you look up the hire on Linked In, they have more experience and time-in-our-industry.
I do believe toxic masculinity is out there and that all of our children, teens, and young adults are better served with healthier relationships. Ted Lasso is one show that turned it on its head. Adolescence was heartbreaking.
I worked at a small company when DEI became a thing, and my company did not participate at all. When I switched to a large firm, I was given “inclusion” training, and I can see why some people object to it. I watched onboarding videos with clips encouraging LGBTQ people to come out of the closet. I want LGBTQ people to feel welcomed (some of my dearest relatives are LGBTQ), but isn’t it patronizing for a company to tell employees how to live their lives and make such personal decisions? And what about people who follow conservative religious traditions? How do they feel watching an onboarding video telling them this? There was also a 10-hour course about microaggressions and things like that. It honestly feels like propaganda, and I’m a lifelong democrat. I can see why there’s been a backlash.
I work at an engineering firm, in a construction-related field in a West coast city. Our company has made huge strides in the almost 20 years I have been there, we are now at around 40% women in technical roles, which is HUGE. And, we have a reasonably strong number of women in leadership, which is also very different than when I started in the industry. Young women in the firm today actually have a range of female role models to look to. I see the change across the industry as well. I went to a construction related training course this week and close to half the attendees were women, from engineering, architecture and construction companies, at varying levels of experience. It’s my own experience that 1. having women in leadership does change the culture in ways that make it better for other younger women and 2. it’s becoming way more common for project teams to be more gender balanced. At the same time, I do see that some companies are still more male-dominated, and women in those firms can still struggle and feel isolated. It just depends on the firm and its culture, I think.
Setting aside the question of gender, I consider myself a proponent of DEI. I do have team members who aren’t really on board with the DEI movement or some aspects of it, although they individually are happy to work with colleagues of all backgrounds, and personally my goal is to seek to find common ground rather than forcing someone to get on board with a particular set of ideas. I think when a company can move from the earlier, more knee-jerk or pandering versions of DEI to a more mature version, it can be powerful. As others have said here – better and wider recruiting and as close as we can get to bias-free hiring, and a culture that embraces the different backgrounds and qualities that different people bring to the workplace, are the best versions of what DEI as an idea or movement can help enable.