Dr. Sigrid Luhr publishes Guest Blog for Contexts Magazine!
Dr. Luhr has written a blog post for Contexts Magazine titled, "Tech Talk: Diversity Discourse in Silicon Valley"
Do companies benefit from this diversity discourse? Only if their true goal is to maintain the status quo. By making relative comparisons, tech workers point to other tech companies that they see as worse when it comes to diversity. By citing evidence of effort, respondents see any diversity efforts as progress, even if the efforts themselves are ineffective. Finally, by using expansive definitions, tech workers reimagine diversity in ways that extend well beyond the axes of exclusion their company’s diversity initiatives were designed to address. These strategies ultimately allow employees to perceive of their companies as “better than most.” But they may also produce a form of complacency that leaves companies with little incentive to enact more lasting and effective diversity initiatives.