When Numbers Fall Short: The Challenge of Measuring Diversity in a Global Context
January 31, 2020
At the C&A Foundation we believe many of the challenges we seek to tackle are rooted in social exclusion. We are on a journey to deepen our approach to gender justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. As part of our own effort to learn, we recently undertook a demographic survey of our sixty-plus employees worldwide to find out how "diverse" we are as an organization and what it might imply for our efforts to create an equitable organization. It was a first for us and we learned far more than the numbers alone reveal.
The process itself was both eye-opening and humbling. It forced us to reflect on what really matters for our global organization when it comes to diversity and it underscored some of our own implicit biases.
We worked with U.S.-based consultants to prepare the survey — which covered age, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, disability, race, religion, and educational status. Unknowingly, the very act of selecting these categories imposed a U.S.-centric world view, particularly with respect to our understanding of race and ethnicity.
For example, the category "Latinx" was used in the initial survey; this category is very relevant in the U.S., but reductive in Latin America, confusing in Europe, and irrelevant in South Asia. An important category for Europe — Roma — was not available for selection.
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