March 29, 2020
One day, at one of the companies I worked for, I met someone running an outreach programme and offered to help. Susana (not real name) was very pleased and said she'd like help to find more external participants. She told me she valued an inclusive work culture and would very strongly prioritise participants if they were of typically unrepresented groups. Sounds good to me!, I thought. She continued: specifically I'm looking for women and ethnic minorities.
We should stand with Susana's general goal - to make sure we value every contribution and seek out role models of every kind to show that valuable contributions can come from everywhere in society. But something was missing. I care strongly about social mobility, and I'd like to urge you to pay more attention to class / social background as part of inclusive workplaces.
In the UK there are 9 protected characteristics against discrimination. Three of them are about sex, but social background isn't mentioned. At the same time, The Government's Social Mobility Commission reports:
Those of affluent backgrounds "are nearly 80% more likely to end up in professional jobs than those from a working-class background."
People from "working class backgrounds earn 24% less a year than those from professional backgrounds" (this compares to a 17% overall gender pay gap).
And more important to the point about inclusive workplaces: "even when people from disadvantaged backgrounds land a professional job, they earn 17% less than their privileged colleagues."
The largest gap in access to professional and managerial jobs is between those who come from professional families vs working class families. Closely followed by disabilities (a UK protected characteristic) and the sex and race gaps are nowhere near as large.
And finally, the report states that "even when controlling for all measurable characteristics, such as performance, educational background and tenure in a job, the remaining βclass pay gapβ is still prevalent"
Yet, while all of the companies I worked for had policies and training materials about discrimination, I recall none of them covering social background. I'd love to hear from you if your company training and policy covers social background.
So while Susana was on the right track, I think her search was limited. There is a long way to go in dealing with sex, race and other forms discrimination in access to jobs and material well-being. And there is no good reason that social background should be left out of the conversation. In fact that particular dimension is falling behind and needs no less attention.
I want to encourage every person and every company to consider class discrimination as a relevant characteristic. We should want to have inclusive workplaces with people with diverse backgrounds, where their race, sex, as well as social and family origins are all disregarded in favour of meritocratic criteria. I urge you to support this goal.