Diversity and Inclusion, a fashion or a necessity?

All the large organizations in Peru are promoting their strategy of Diversity and Inclusion. Not only because it is the right thing to do, but because the benefits of its implementation impact various areas of the company: from the work environment to the sense of belonging to the organization.

What are we talking about when we refer to Diversity and Inclusion?

Each person is made up of their identities (I’m: a father or a mother, also a partner, collaborator, etc.). They are all part of our individuality and what makes us different from other people. Diversity recognizes the sum of these identities, seeing the person as the intersection that merges them all.

So what is Inclusion?

Inclusion is listening and taking into account opinions and ways of being and thinking within the organization’s processes. This means that we can be part of a diverse organization, but not necessarily an inclusive one.

Proper management of Diversity and Inclusion has an impact that reshapes the organization’s culture. Increases the retention of diverse talent by 63%, 59% shows better results than other organizations in the industry, whose focus was not attracting diverse talent.

There is a 154% increase in innovation and performance increases by 8 times for creative tasks.

More and more organizations understand the importance of having diverse and inclusive teams and are committed to generating them. But, unfortunately, the slowness of the government action leaves much of the weight to private companies; even so, the gaps are enormous:

In gender equity:

• In Peru, for every S / 1 sol that a man earns, women who fulfill the same role earn S / 0.70. 30% less on average.
• It would take Latin America 86 years to level the current wage gap.
• The number of women who finish high school is much lower than that of men. This behavior is associated with the vision of women only as a housewife, exposing them to their partners exercising some type of control, abuse, or violence through access to family money. Likewise, these women seek operational work, so their income is far from that of their partners.

Source: Adecco Group 2019, World Economic Forum – Global Gender Report 2021.

Sexual Diversity

• 8% of people identify as non-heterosexual.
• 71% of people indicate that the LGTBIQ+ population is discriminated against. However, when asked if they had a company they would hire a gay person, only 40% would. This figure is reduced to 31% in the case of trans people.
• 41% of the LGTBIQ+ population don’t come out of the closet in their organizations out of fear of losing their job.
• Almost 35% of the people surveyed responded that it is dangerous to leave children in the care of people from the LGTBIQ+ community.
• 45% believe that trans people live confused, and around 43% that LGTBIQ + people are the product of some childhood trauma or experience.

Source: Ipsos Apoyo for MINJUSDH 2019, Ipsos/MINJUSDH 2020

People with disabilities

• Did you know that 8 out of 10 people with disabilities are unemployed? This number is 3 times higher than the country average.

Source: OIT 2018

We need to repair the system. Make people happy with who they are, without fear of retaliation, teasing, bullying, and deconstructing barriers defined by other people’s biases. For example, we need to base our hiring criteria on people’s talents and contributions to the organization. This generates access to job opportunities and growth for the real talent we need to invest in.

Continuing to work for human rights is an individual responsibility of all people, not just companies. However, it is currently in the hands of private companies to continue pushing initiatives concerning the rights of each person born here. The Peruvian State cannot acceptably serve this population. The absence of the issue on the country’s political agenda is also concerning.