Impactful Inclusion Toolkit

ACTIVITY 16Build Equality into the Day-to-Day

“Inequality, in all its forms—gender, LGBTQ, racial, or otherwise—is an issue that every company must address for its own benefit and to create a better world. We believe businesses need to focus on closing the equality gap with the same energy put into creating new products and markets.”

—Tony Prophet

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Many of us begin our careers with sheer optimism and drive. We were hired because of our knowledge, skills, and expertise and the expectation that those abilities will contribute to organizational goals. There's no reason to believe anything to the contrary (just yet). We enter the workplace believing that we have equal access to opportunity and that working to the best of our ability leads to success. When it comes to women, however, gender inequality can quickly derail career aspirations when equality and equity are not prioritized. When we layer ethnicity into the equation, institutional systems favor their White counterparts in support of career advancement and place historically marginalized groups at a disadvantage.

Many believe that equity and equality are interchangeable when talking about diversity. Consider equity the building block of equality. When we think of equality, we think fairness. What we do for one person or group is exactly what we do for another. In the workplace, you may have experienced a new mother having six weeks of maternity leave, while new fathers don't get any. As company policies adjust to include ...