Blog

Two essential ways to approach gender data that can accelerate inclusion in any workplace.

Hard-won advances for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, questioning, Intersex, Asexual and other communities are increasingly under threat. Discriminatory laws, norms and practices are denying LGBTQIA+ people their autonomy, their access to health care, their reproductive rights and choices.

When you think of your company’s workplace structure and policies, how much do you know about who they were designed for? Does your company consider the impact of its work culture on Neurodivergent people, people who are sick/have chronic fatigue, and Disabled people?

A guide for addressing cissexist statements, to aid you in sometimes tricky conversations.

It can often feel tricky or intimidating to respond to someone who says “All Lives Matter”, but the consequences of remaining silent are serious– they maintain the status quo that affords White people safety and legitimacy at the expense of Black people.

In part 2 we continue learning about inclusive language by diving into some commonly misused terms.

When we have precise, shared language, we give agency, respect, and dignity to marginalised communities and can come to solutions for disrupting oppression more quickly.

As much as LGBTQ+ people and allies alike have tried to professionalize the concept of pronouns, the reality for many non-cisgender people is that they are messy!

Once we understand why fatphobia was created, and the White patriarchal order it benefits, we can directly disrupt harmful outcomes that fat people experience.

By gaining an understanding of the roots and connections behind antisemitism, you will be better able to show up for Jewish colleagues and actively disrupt efforts to marginalise them.

We need to restructure our workplace policies to reject the idea that certain behaviours and thinking are or are nor 'normal'.

We need to restructure our workplace policies to reject the idea that certain behaviours and thinking are or are not 'normal'.

Please be mindful in reading the following news, as it may be particularly upsetting in regards to racism, child abuse, and sexual assault.

The Global North has a responsibility towards asylum seekers from the Global South as a form of reparations for the costs of colonialism.

Inclusion beyond recruitment — a guide for Human Resources.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia last week, 8 years after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, is horrendous. No people should ever have to endure this. My heart hurts for the Ukrainians and those in Ukraine whose lives will never be the same again.

In order to unpack the day-to-day realities of oppression South Asian people face, we must understand how the overlap of racism, colonialism, and Islamophobia creates particular negative outcomes for this community.

Orienting to equity means we shift from the paradox of trying to include people into workplaces designed to keep them out. 

The idea that violence and abuse by the police is exceptional, is false. It is the norm, and it is in fact the purpose of the police in the wider ordering of our social relations. The idea that the police are at the vanguard of an anti-sexual violence revolution is plainly ridiculous. An institution built on violence cannot and will not end violence.

The age old “bad apple theory” we keep defaulting to fails us both in its explanatory power and its capacity to create meaningful solutions — to create a society in which patriarchal violence is not the norm we need to understand how and why it is the norm.

While it may be easier to label people as a whole as “bad” or “malicious”, this dismisses the ways that we all engage in harm and need resources, rather than isolated punishment, to learn and grow.

People need to know why inclusion matters now, what the impact of inclusion is (when they are not directly impacted) and the role of structures in systemic oppression for nudges to be truly effective.

When Asian communities are dehumanised, seen almost exclusively through the lens of suspicious, dirty, dangerous, diseased, then violence at the state, institutional or interpersonal level is permissible and possible.

Taking a stand publicly to afford Begum her childhood and victimhood, and giving her access to the possibility of existing beyond her decisions as a 15 year old — as is the norm for those who do not live within sites of oppression — is an important position to hold resolutely in order to disrupt, interrupt and challenge Islamophobia.

Situating the concept of privilege in the wider context it is borne from and in turn, further reinforces, allows us to avoid superficial, ineffective and disconnected analyses of oppression that lead to superficial, ineffective and disconnected disruptions of oppression.

We propose a series of questions that we recommend you ask in the interview alongside your wider competency and values/behaviour questions to unearth the schema your potential future D&I Lead uses in thinking and doing when it comes to inclusion work.

The spread of the corona virus, people’s responses in the face of information about new ways to behave, alongside government action, offer up illuminating insights for how we can re-think how we bring about change in service of inclusion in our organisations.

Covid-19 has exposed the longstanding daily trials and tribulations of America’s poor and shrinking middle class

We do not need to endorse biologically essentialist narratives of gender to grant women access to decision-making power — no matter how positive the attributes.

Words have meanings. And as a general rule, it’s extremely useful to ensure definitionally we are all on the same page — otherwise we can end up in chaos. As such, we wanted to share that we often get asked, “why — given that ageism is an ism — do Fearless Futures not conceive of it as an oppression, when most of the oppressions you explore also have ‘isms’ at the end?”. We answer this pertinent question below using a handy conceptual framework to assist us with this analysis.

Racism is routinely justified by the ‘fears’ of the group engaging in the racism, no matter how illusory the explanation. And it’s always prioritised over the real fears that many people of Chinese heritage may be feeling right now, as their humanity is stripped from them by onlookers.

If you’ve not been confronted with this potent phrase, one among many toxic phrases that dominates ‘diversity’ conversations, then you’re lucky. Challenging the ideas bound up in the ‘lowering the bar’ accusation is central in the battle over who belongs.

Hanna speaks with Victoria Fox, ex-CEO of LIDA and current CEO of AAR, who participated in Fearless Futures’ Design for Inclusion programme (DFI) in February 2018 to hear her reflections on her experience. 

Not only doesn’t the business case work in driving change, but it is a narrative that is bankrupt if we want to design an inclusive future with any integrity at all. Here is why.

Much time and energy is spent on how to tackle the question of ‘bias’ in recruitment. Anonymisation (‘blind recruitment’) is often positioned as the silver bullet to creating a more ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’ workforce. But is it?

People cannot get enough of talking about unconscious bias. Many who speak of their commitment to true and deep diversity and inclusion are utterly enamoured with unconscious bias training. It’s nonsense. Here’s why.

When you are designing the future, can you do everything to disrupt oppressive histories and presents from repeating themselves and instead imagine a just and humane world — and then design your team cultures and products for that instead?

Often when we talk about ethics, we forget to talk about power. People will often have the best of intentions. But we’re seeing a lack of thinking about how real power asymmetries are affecting different communities.

As technology’s capabilities have advanced, including the deployment of artificial intelligence, the concerning impact — from criminal justice to recruitment to consumer finance — on inequalities and exclusion has become increasingly evident.