A disturbing shift away from diversity, equity and inclusion is spreading through the corporate world. Following US President Donald Trump's lead, some of the world's most powerful companies have rushed to dismantle years of positive work that's been done in this area.

Race and gender are central to this discussion, but diversity and inclusion programs concern the whole gamut of non-majority groups in any given setting, including sexual orientation, disability and class. So what does mean to be abandoning policies and initiatives designed to make our societies, organisations and businesses fairer and more equitable for everyone? To remove unjust barriers to entry that have, for too long, locked less-privileged groups out? It’s not like, our work is done here.

Take, for example, the continued lack of representation of women in the C-suite. The numbers simply don’t represent broader society - or brands’ stakeholders and customer-bases. Or educational establishments that blatantly favour upper class students from rich families. That’s where affirmative action comes in. Talking about merit-based hires and some lofty ideal of a colour/class/gender/disability-blind world is pure nonsense when some of us clearly get a head start over others.

Big questions: what's driving brands to drop DEI programs? Did they ever really care in the first place? How do the culture wars play into all of this? Will what's happening in America spread to other countries? And will more big brands follow suit? Is diversity and inclusion officially dead - or just on life support?

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In this episode, Clare gives you a masterclass on the history, context and current state of play, then revisits key messages from previous episodes on this topic, including insights from Aja Barber, Lou Croff Blake, Rahemur Rahman and Junior Bishop.

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