How I Learned That Fairness, Not Identity, Drives Our Response to EDI.

How I Learned That Fairness, Not Identity, Drives Our Response to EDI.

Exploring the paper ‘Understanding Gender Equality Policy and Practice Gaps Through the Lens of Organisational Justice: Development of an Employee Alignment Model‘ – McCarthy, C., Barnard, S., Thomson, D. and Dainty, A., 2021

Blog three of five, in a series by Chrissi McCarthy.

We often assume that gender, race, or personal commitment to equality determines how we respond to EDI work. But our research shows something different: perceptions of fairness matter more than who we are or what we believe.

When Alignment Trumps Identity

In the last blog, we discussed how perceptions of fairness impact employee attitudes toward equality approaches. In the paper, we framed this as alignment, that is, employees were either in-group or organisationally aligned.

In-group aligned: Backing powerful individuals or cliques when you think the system is rigged.

Organisationally aligned: Rallying behind your company’s goals when you believe it plays fair.

We found that employees either supported those with power or their organisational goals and ambitions.

This could look like a disabled woman of colour who believes in equality aligning with an in-group that does not support her needs if she perceives her organisation to be unfair. Similarly, a straight white middle-class man could align with his organisation and support internal EDI work if he believed his organisation to be fair.

“When perception of fairness is low, even those committed to equality can start acting against ED work.”

When it comes to attitudes towards EDI work in organisations, who we are and what we believe matters less than how fair we perceive our workplace to be.

My Own Wake-Up Call.

I’ve always been strongly aligned with equality and justice. That’s not to say I haven’t made mistakes; I have, but my personal views have always been supportive of equality.

However, when working in an unfair environment in order to survive, I had to put those beliefs aside. I didn’t always recognise that I was doing this, you don’t always in the moment when you are carried away by the conversation around you and how it normalises the absurd, but on reflection, that is exactly what I did.

I can clearly remember joining my colleagues in questioning the appointment of a female engineer and stating how important it was that she was able to do her job.

I told myself that as a woman engineer, you are often seen as a reflection of all women; if one woman fails, we are all seen as a risk, and we have to work harder to undo that perception. I justified my behaviour to myself, so I could believe I was still “good”. Ensuring that I felt okay about the added scrutiny I applied to someone I had never met.

It should be noted that none of us raised any concerns about male hires.

Interestingly, I never raised concerns about women engineers on the sites I worked on, which felt fair. In those environments, I trusted that I didn’t need to, and challenged others when they did.

“My personal values around equality were overridden by my perception of unfairness and my need to survive my career.”

I’m not saying that to justify my behaviour; I’m saying that because if we ever want to achieve equal environments, we need to start understanding how we react. Not how we want to react, but how we actually do in the contexts we are placed in.

We respond to our environment.

When it comes to EDI, it can be really easy to play good cop, bad cop, frame people as heroes and villains, or determine identity as a safe house from acting unequally to others. I think this is far too simplistic.

What if we are not good or bad when it comes to equality, but rather a response to our environment?

Understanding the drivers for our behaviour opens the door to understanding why great equality approaches can fail in some environments and flourish in others.

Of course, there are some bad, irredeemable people out there, but most of us are just muddling through, and if we design our equality work for only the best and the worst of us, we miss out on the most of us.

And when we do that, we all fail. 

Quick takeaways

🏢 Organisational action: Focus on the fairness perceptions of leaders and mid-management first. It can help you understand the message your employees are being told outside the company line.

🎓Research: How does EDI and fairness climate impact the outcomes of EDI work? An approach might have great outcomes in one environment and unintended consequences in another.

📚Peer learning: Reflect upon your behaviour, have you ever found yourself acting against your beliefs, even subtly? What environments were you in when this happened? Let us know in the comments below.