Dusseldorf Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet: this color palette shines anew from advertising pillars every June. The rainbow is an identifying mark of the LGBTQ community, a collective term for sexual and gender minorities adopted from English. June as “Pride Month” as a month of pride for this community has its origins in 1970 in New York City.
So much for PR symbolism in the German economy. Now to the lived reality: In only 26 percent of the companies in Germany, diversity is a top priority, according to the German Diversity Monitor 2021. According to this, 70 percent of the companies do not provide a budget for diversity.
Real support for minorities involves far more than just a symbolic rainbow: If you really want to contribute to the abolition of discrimination, you have to consciously include and make visible people who differ in age, gender, ethnic origin, religion and sexual orientation – as well as the handicapped and the socio-economically weak.
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And that’s not just good for the image – studies show that too: According to a survey by the management consultant McKinsey, companies with a high level of gender diversity have a 25 percent higher probability of being above-average profitable. If the board is international, i.e. ethnically diverse, the probability even increases to 36 percent.
The positive in differences
Wolf Lotter, journalist and co-founder of the business magazine “brand eins”, explores why this is the case and why real diversity could become even more important for the success of companies in the future in his new book “Differentiations”. The central thesis of the author: Diversity in the workforce promotes creativity and the ability to innovate in companies. Two skills that will be absolutely necessary to transform the old industrial society into a modern knowledge society.
Wolf Lotter: differences. How diversity becomes justice.
Edition Körber Foundation
Hamburg 2022
320 pages
20 Euros
Every person, Lotter argues, must therefore be treated as an individual and according to their individual achievements. A mandatory prerequisite for this is the recognition of differences – more precisely: the recognition of the positive in the differences. Only in this way can justice prevail for every individual in a society. I’m different, everyone else too and that’s a good thing – that’s how Lotter’s core message can be summed up.
Before reaching this conclusion, Lotter’s book teaches the reader a great deal about the history of inequality – from Bible times to contemporary capitalism. Lotter notes that inequality has always been the result of standardization. By requiring the people who populated it to conform, each system deprived them of the freedom to flourish.
To this day: The current economy rewards adapted behavior more than creative individuality. Those who follow instructions often rise faster than someone who looks for their own solutions. Lotter’s plea: companies should make diversity rather than standardization their guiding principle.
In all of this, however, he never turns against capitalism or democracy per se. He even advocates competition and the market economy – they also promote creativity. A democratic order and legal rules are also necessary, they just have to be questioned again and again. However, what exactly such rules should look like so that everyone can realize their potential and creative processes can be initiated remains unclear. Lotter’s book does not go beyond a mere criticism of the current situation.
criticism of criticism
A clear idea of what doesn’t really make the world a better place is also provided in the book “Cynic Theories” by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. The thrust of the work, which was published in English in 2020, is already made clear by its subtitle: “How activist science places race, gender and identity above everything else and why that is of no use to anyone,” reads the.
Racist or homophobic statements as well as sexual harassment lead to an outcry earlier and more strongly today because people are sensitized to these issues. That’s a good thing, one would like to think that exclusion and discrimination should always lead to an outcry – after all, as Wolf Lotter put it, it is important to see the positive in the unequal in order to produce something creative.
But Pluckrose and Lindsay also see a danger in this. Namely, when the corrections are based on questionable justifications and people censor themselves for fear of saying something supposedly “wrong”.
To justify their critique of contemporary identity politics, the two authors delve deeply into academic debates – going back to the beginnings of postmodernism in the 1960s. His assumptions led to language being viewed as a “dangerous instrument” and groups instead of autonomous individuals becoming the focus of debates.
Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay: Cynical Theories. How activist science puts race, gender, and identity above everything—and why that doesn’t benefit anyone.
CH Beck
Munich 2022
380 pages
22 euros
Translation: Sabine Reinhardus, Helmut Dierlamm
Based on this, an applied postmodernism emerged in the 1980s. The result: new scientific disciplines such as queer studies, critical race theory, intersectional feminism or disability and fat studies.
The authors argue that what all these have in common is that they value personal experience more than objective research. According to Lindsay and Pluckrose, in the meanwhile occurring third phase of postmodernism, the so-called “social justice theory forms a new religion (…) that is extremely hostile to reason (…) and contradiction”.
Pluckrose and Lindsay do not deny that discrimination exists. They also believe that marginalized groups need to be listened to. But they are clearly opposed to a “language and thought police” that they believe they have identified in many current debates – and also have a more productive alternative ready: liberalism. Liberal systems such as capitalism or democracy have changed the world for the better over the past 500 years – only, Pluckrose and Lindsay also concede, not always quickly enough.
Helping people help themselves
Matthias Herzberg’s book “Andersherum in die Chefetage” shows how sluggish some positive changes are. On around 300 pages, the executive coach, who is himself married to a man, reports on more than just first- and second-hand experiences that seem outdated. The author attests that homophobia is still part of everyday life in many German companies, executives all too often turn a blind eye to cases of discrimination, and many gays feel forced to lead a double life for fear of a career break.
Matthias Herzberg: The other way around, on the executive floor. Making a queer career in the male economy.
Bastei Lubbe
Cologne 2022
304 pages
16.99 euros
Is it any wonder that there are no homosexual role models in the management ranks of German business? And that top managers like the former Telekom board member Thomas Sattelberger only come out after their career? In the still male-dominated German economy, homosexuality still often does not fit into the picture, Herzberg concludes soberly: “In Germany, openly gay men can now become federal ministers or vice chancellors, as long as they don’t talk about it too often or too loudly. But managers, let alone top managers?”
But his book is less analysis than instructions for self-help: If you are gay, you have to be courageous and stand up for yourself, is his central message. Gay men should consistently address discriminatory behavior – towards colleagues, towards superiors and, if necessary, towards their lawyer.
Herzberg adds that change in the economy can only succeed if board members and supervisors are committed to it. But the employee affected by discrimination also remains challenged. The author’s plea for more role models who encourage others and pave the way is only logical.
The only problem is that these recommendations for action have clear limits. Men who are still struggling with their homosexuality are also affected by discriminatory behavior – but they hardly have the self-confidence to take legal action to defend themselves. Another shortcoming of the book: Herzberger’s explanations focus heavily on homosexual men and leave out other people in the LGBTQ community. It would be interesting to know what experiences homosexual women have, for example, who have a hard time in the German “male economy” because of their gender.
As different as the approaches of the three individual books are, they ultimately have one thing in common: they show that we have to stand up for one another and for more acceptance. Not just politicians, not just business executives, but every individual. In the words of Wolf Lotter: “We don’t just see the difference. We do it too. We are the difference.” In the words of Matthias Herzberg: “Minority to majority: We need you.”
More: “Woke-mob” or new enlightenment? How political correctness became a US election campaign issue.