Workplace quotas: why "employment equity" is less than equitable

Bryn Evans • September 9, 2019

Chapter Tags: Economics, Politics

This article builds on a 2019 piece written by the author for the Palatinate newspaper.

It often feels like the progress being made to rectify the lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the workplace is painstakingly slow. Too frequently placed on the back-burner by policymakers and businesspeople overwhelmed by more topical issues, representation of women and Black, Asian, and ethnic minority (BAME) individuals in business has risen only incrementally since the turn of the century. Today, women occupy just 35% of senior management positions in the UK, well above the global average of 29%. Meanwhile BAME individuals, who account for roughly 15% of the UK population, hold just 6% of senior management posts in the country.

Despite the relative lack of urgency in advancing workplace diversity, it remains a significant problem. Studies show that a healthier balance of men and women as well as a wide ethnic representation contributes to both increased company earnings and higher worker satisfaction. Nor are these studies being ignored; according to PwC’s global survey, nearly 9 of 10 CEOs agree that having a diverse and inclusive workplace population improves their company’s bottom line.

How then can the issue be remedied? Businesses and activists alike have long pointed to positive discrimination quotas, a form of employment equity, as the best solution. This piece will take a different stance, arguing quotas are far from effective in improving corporate diversity and inclusion. Not only are they ineffectual and likely unachievable without additional large-scale social restructuring, but they threaten the very equality which they seek to promote.

The unfeasibility of percentage-based quotas

On the surface, positive discrimination quotas are relatively simple: by way of governmental or corporate policy, companies are compelled to reserve a certain percentage of positions for an underrepresented demographic. In 2008, Norway implemented workplace quotas on a national scale, obliging listed companies to fill at least 40% of their director seats with women. Although Norwegian companies complied, prominent UK businessman Sir John Parker believes the law was not as effective as it appeared. Speaking with The Telegraph, he outlined his observations.

“[Norwegian] companies have a number of female candidates who circulate boards, with some women holding eight or nine board positions at any one time. I’ve heard of some Norwegian companies having to recruit outside the country, such as in the UK, in order to get more women on their company boards.”

Simply put, there are not enough qualified women for every Norwegian company to fulfil their quota by hiring domestically. This is largely due to the fact that such quotas are a bandaid fix, addressing a consequence—underrepresentation of women and BAME individuals in senior positions. Rather, it is the root structural inequalities in society which prevent such workers from rising to senior positions that are in need of reconstuction. Dr Roaa Ali, a research associate at the University of Manchester, explains that positive discrimination quotas are urgent, surface-level forms of intervention which must be employed in tandem with more longterm solutions. She believes quotas can only achieve maximum effectiveness if they “coincide with a drastic structural change of the culture and discourse on diversity, and perception around the contribution of ethnic minorities.”

Other forms of positive discrimination: the issues with affirmative action

There is a second type of commonly used positive discrimination in the hiring process, though it may be more appropriately labelled ‘affirmative action’ or ‘employment equity’ rather than ‘quota’. Netherland’s Eindhoven University of Technology recently publicized that in light of its goal of achieving better gender balance, the institution would “be opening up all vacancies for permanent academic staff exclusively to women in the first six months of recruitment.” Because the policy does not demand a certain percentage of women, the university is unlikely to run into similar issues as Norwegian companies regarding being forced to outsource candidates. Yet, for the same reason, the policy equally does not guarantee better representation for women in the university’s faculty. Although it will likely encourage a more thorough examination of female applicants—an effect which is undoubtedly positive for diversity and inclusion—the measure fails to serve its main purpose as quick, surefire intervention. 

By introducing hiring criteria contingent on gender, TU Eindhoven additionally runs the risk of ostracizing those who are supposed to benefit. Professor Binna Kandola, author of Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference, describes how if an individual knows they have received a job or promotion because of a quota rather than pure merit, they are more likely to experience embarrassment and feelings of inadequacy. Those who were passed over for the new position are also liable to feel resentment toward the individual, potentially believing themselves to be more meritorious than the benefactor of the quota.

In fact, the idea of resentment has a much more problematic effect on positive discrimination than merely a divisive feeling. Affirmative action has been the subject of a plethora of laws and court cases because of its implications for basic equality rights. In the landmark case of Grutter v Bollinger, the US Supreme Court ruled that in order for student admissions processes that favour "underrepresented minority groups" to not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, selection panels must also consider similar individual factors to every other applicant. It is not a stretch to apply similar logic to professional hiring. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 prohibits all favouritism on the basis of gender or ethnicity. In the absence of a national law similar to that in Norway, any UK company which operates its own form of affirmative action or positive discrimination quotas may be exposed to lawsuits from disgruntled applicants.

A better way forward

Quotas have all the right intentions. They are simply too unsophisticated, superficial, and borderline discriminatory to advance workplace diversity in any meaningful way. Returning to Dr Roaa Ali’s comments, deep structural changes are imperative. This starts with outreach. The more advocacy is done and the more hiring managers, executives, and general public—not just CEOs—are made aware of the need to increase professional diversity, the more widespread the eventual changes. However, the solution goes deeper than mere outreach; after all, a hiring manager can understand all he pleases about the importance of diversity yet still be pushed to hire a white male due to a lack of other qualified candidates.

Reworking education and the perceptions surrounding women and BAME individuals in academia is therefore equally, if not more, important than outreach. Already, we are seeing record numbers of underrepresented demographics attending post-secondary institutions. In 2017, UK higher education firm HESA reported that women represented 57% of all students currently enrolled in post-secondary degrees, while BAME students stood at 18% of the total. Dig deeper into the statistics, however, and the numbers are less promising: of postgraduate students, only 48% were women and 10% were BAME. In the same year, the Financial Times reported that just 34% of British MBA students were female—a number interestingly similar to the percentage of senior manager posts (35%) occupied by women referenced in the introduction. 

Improved education on the benefits of workplace diversity, a decreased pay-gap to facilitate the pursuit of higher education for women and BAME individuals, and initiatives to recruit more of these individuals to leadership degrees are all structural changes which can be made to promote workplace diversity. The issue is rooted in systemic social inequality, a complex trend quotas are ill-equipped to change. You wouldn’t choose a bandaid to repair a broken bone; why choose a quota to mend a centuries-old societal fracture?