This article is written by Ally Goldberg, a freelance writer specialising on topics within Inclusivity amongst other ESG subjects, for Beacon Gainer, private wealth advisory services group. Ally is also the Ethical and Social Impact Business Manager for BGG & Miolo.
As a diversity and inclusivity professional, I know that terms such as affirmative action and positive discrimination can rile people up. I have had many a conversation about the pros and cons of these practices and their effects on both employees and employers.
In one camp, there are those who believe that positive discrimination is still discrimination, and that a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, should never enter decisions about whether they get hired. In the other camp, there are those who believe that considering these factors is one of the only ways to successfully diversify the workplace.
In the UK, affirmative action in the purest sense is illegal e.g. hiring someone on the basis that they are part of a protected group. However, the exception to this rule is that when multiple candidates are equally qualified for a role, employers are permitted to treat underrepresented candidates more favourably that their counterparts.
In this way, UK law attempts to balance the very real need for more diversity in the workplace with the concern that prospective employees can be turned down purely on the basis that they ‘aren’t diverse enough’, despite perhaps being more qualified than other candidates. This balancing act isn’t perfect, but it is currently all we have.
Things are quite different over in the US. Affirmative action efforts are very loudly and explicitly put in place to increase the numbers of protected groups in various workplaces.
In the 1980s, the Supreme Court ruled that it could actually impose racial quotas in the workplace in order to ease the way toward the end of hiring discrimination. Affirmative action has continued to be a hot topic within the US system, particularly around college admissions. In 2003, the Supreme Court effectively endorsed admission systems that favoured underrepresented minorities.
While quotas are no longer so common and the legality of affirmative action varies state-by-state, overall the US is still much more active around affirmative action than we are in the UK.
Due to the US’s more gung-ho approach to affirmative action, most of our research and knowledge around it’s effectiveness comes from there. On the ‘cons’ side, we can see from the extensive history of court cases surrounding this issue that it is easy to get it wrong and to end up in a lawsuit. But, assuming that you stay out of court, what other issues might you run into?
Well, Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, alleges that there is such a thing as a ‘mismatch effect’. He claims that by lowering entry requirements in order to allow more marginalised people in, you end up with people who are underqualified and – he argues – actually does the minorities more harm than good. This is supposedly evidenced by findings that black law school graduates are four times more likely to fail bar exams than white graduates.
However, this theory has been widely criticised due the number of factors that aren’t taken into account – e.g. the networking, tutoring and special skills opportunities offered to white students that are harder for black students to access while at law school.
I very regularly hear people making the assertion that you should never introduce any kind of racial discrimination into the workplace, even in good spirit. That once you start factoring the colour of a person’s skin into your hiring, in any way, it’s a slippery slope. In an ideal world this would be true, but in the world we actually live in, it’s naïve.
Whether we realise it or not, race is already a massive factor in hiring. A 2003 study from the University of Chicago showed that just having a ‘black-sounding’ name made you 50% less likely to even get an interview than ‘white-sounding’ counterparts with identical CVs. Everyone has biases, no matter how subconscious they are, and there is plenty of evidence that these biases slip through into hiring practices.
We cannot live in a meritocracy when not everyone is afforded the same opportunities to achieve merit. We must acknowledge that 2 identical CVs are not identical when you add context. A degree from a top university is more impressive when it belongs to a black person than a white person – one has overcome an inherently racist system to get there, the other hasn’t. A successful track record in a financial career is more impressive coming from a woman than from a man, because she has fought through a systemic, industry wide bias to achieve it.
Affirmative action, while we all wish it wasn’t needed, is an important step on the road to diverse and inclusive workplaces. It forces us to confront our own internalised biases, makes us stop and think about the deeply rooted discrimination that marginalised people have to face at every stage of their career.
Whatever reservations we may have about positive discrimination, the fact is that it works. The National Women’s Studies Association Journal cited a study showing that there were over 6 million women in employment in the US who would not be if it weren’t for affirmative action. That was a citation a few years ago which means there would be many more million today who have benefited.
As I’ve said, in this country we don’t have the ability to hire people based purely on a protected characteristic. But next time you have a CV on your desk from a candidate who is underrepresented in your field, I ask you to consider the challenges they have faced to get that piece of paper in front of you.
To discuss more about affirmative action, diversity and inclusion or ESG plan for your company, please email welcome@beacongainer.com and ask to be put in contact with our Ethics and Social Impct Business Manager
