Diversity, equity, and inclusion

In the United States, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks that seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination based on identity or disability. These three notions (diversity, equity, and inclusion) together represent "three closely linked values" which organizations seek to institutionalize through DEI frameworks. The concepts predate this terminology and other variations sometimes include terms such as belonging, justice, and accessibility. As such, frameworks such as inclusion and diversity (I&D), diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI or EDIJ), or diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (IDEA, DEIA or DEAI) exist. In the United Kingdom, the term equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is used in a similar way.
Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce in characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, veteran status, or religion. Equity refers to concepts of fairness and justice, such as fair compensation and substantive equality. More specifically, equity usually also includes a focus on societal disparities and allocating resources and "decision making authority to groups that have historically been disadvantaged", and taking "into consideration a person's unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal." Finally, inclusion refers to creating an organizational culture that creates an experience where "all employees feel their voices will be heard", and a sense of belonging and integration.
DEI policies are often used by managers to increase the happiness, productivity, and collaborative efforts of their workforce and to reinforce positive communication. While DEI is most associated with non-elected government or corporate environments, it's commonly implemented within many types of organizations, such as within charitable organizations, academia, schools, and hospitals. DEI policies often include certain training efforts, such as diversity training.
DEI efforts and policies have generated criticism and controversy, some directed at the specific effectiveness of its tools, such as diversity training; its effect on free speech and academic freedom, as well as more broadly attracting criticism on political or philosophical grounds. In addition, the term "DEI" has gained traction as an ethnic slur towards minority groups in the United States.
Early DEI efforts included preferential hiring to veterans of the US Civil War and their widows in 1865. In 1876, this was amended to give preference to veterans during a Reduction in Force. In 1921 and 1929, executive orders by Presidents Coolidge and Harding established ten-point preference for veterans towards exams and hiring criteria for federal employment. In 1944, the Veterans' Preference Act codified the previous executive orders, clarified criteria, and included special hiring provisions for disabled veterans. Later amendments added veterans from conflicts after World War II, special provisions for the mothers of disabled or deceased veterans, and job-specific training for veterans entering the federal or private workforce.
In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Randolph-Sheppard Act, which mandated the federal government to give preference to purchase products made by the blind, and established the Committee on Purchases of Blind Made Products. The 1971 Javits–Wagner–O'Day Act expanded the Randolph-Sheppard act and changed the name to The Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled (now AbilityOne). Blind-made products are used throughout the federal government, and include brands such as Skillcraft, ARC Diversified, Austin Lighthouse, and Ability One.
Other DEI policies include Affirmative Action. The legal term "affirmative action" was first used in "Executive Order No. 10925", signed by President John F. Kennedy on 6 March 1961, which included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated [fairly] during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin". It was used to promote actions that achieve non-discrimination. In September 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 which required government employers to "hire without regard to race, religion and national origin" and "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Neither executive order nor The Civil Rights Act authorized group preferences. The Senate floor manager of the bill, Senator Hubert Humphrey, declared that the bill “would prohibit preferential treatment for any particular group” adding “I will eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas.”
More recently, concepts have moved beyond discrimination to include diversity, equity, and inclusion as motives for preferring historically underrepresented groups. In the famous Bakke decision of 1978, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, diversity became a constitutional law factor. The Supreme Court ruled that quotas were illegal, but it was allowable to consider race as a plus factor when trying to foster "diversity" in their classes.
Diversity themes gained momentum in the mid-1980s. At a time when President Ronald Reagan discussed dismantling equality and affirmative action laws in the 1980s, equality and affirmative action professionals employed by American firms along with equality consultants, engaged in establishing the argument that a diverse workforce should be seen as a competitive advantage rather than just as a legal constraint. Their message was not to promote diversity because it is a legal mandate but because it is good for business. From then on, researchers started to test a number of hypotheses on the business benefits of diversity and diversity management, known as the business case of diversity.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations. President Clinton signed the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act in 1998. It helps eligible veterans access federal job opportunities by allowing them to compete for positions typically open only to current federal employees and by reinforcing veterans' preference in hiring. It also protects veterans from discrimination in federal employment and provides a process for addressing violations of their rights.
By 2003, corporations spent $8 billion annually on diversity. In 2009, in response to calls for the US government to do more for disabled veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan President Barack Obama signed executive order 13518, which established the Veterans Employment Initiative to enhance recruitment and retention of veterans in the federal workforce by creating a comprehensive framework to support their transition into civilian employment. It directed federal agencies to increase veteran hiring (especially disabled veterans), set goals for improvement, and establish the Veterans Employment Program Office to provide assistance and resources for veterans in civilian employment. In 2011, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13583 concerning diversity and inclusion. After the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the ascent of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, Time magazine stated in 2019 that the DEI industry had "exploded" in size. Within academia, a 2019 survey found that spending on DEI efforts had increased 27 percent over the five preceding academic years.
In support of DEI hiring during the first term of Donald Trump, the Office of Civil Rights of the Federal Aviation Authority FAA on Thursday, April 11, 2019, announced a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations, which identifies specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, to facilitate their entry into a more "diverse and inclusive" workforce in a standard public opening for air traffic controller jobs at the Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) with the potential to be appointed to a temporary ATCS position at the FAA Academy.
One 2020 estimate placed the size of the global diversity and inclusion market at $7.5 billion, of which $3.4 billion was in the United States, projecting it to reach $17.2 billion by 2027.
In 2021, Joe Biden signed several executive orders concerning DEI, including Executive Order 13985 and Executive Order 14035. In 2021, New York magazine stated that "the business became astronomically larger than ever" after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The Economist has also stated that surveys of international companies indicate that the number of people hired for jobs with "diversity" or "inclusion" in the title more than quadrupled since 2010.
In 2023, The Supreme Court explicitly rejected affirmative action regarding race in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The Court held that affirmative action programs "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful endpoints. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today".
As of 2024, affirmative action in the United States had been increasingly replaced by emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, while nine states explicitly banned affirmative action use in the employment process.
In 2024 and 2025, several large American companies scaled back or ended their DEI programs, owing to pressure from President Trump and his administration and, in some cases, related policies, such as participation in the Corporate Equality Index. These included Walmart, Meta, Amazon, McDonald's, Ford, Lowe's, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Tractor Supply and PBS. Generally, these companies said they will continue to foster a safe and inclusive workplace, while ending or reducing policies, initiatives, or programs that specifically take note of protected status. In this period, other companies reaffirmed their commitment to DEI, including Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Costco and the National Football League.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump called DEI efforts "illegal and immoral discrimination programs" and "public waste" in his January 20 executive order, rescinded Executive Order 11246 on January 21, demanding that all governmental DEI programs be shut down by January 23, and placed employees on administrative leave and eventual layoff.
Early February 2025, a lawsuit was filed against Trump's executive orders, arguing that they were unconstitutional. In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit paused the lower court's nationwide preliminary injunction and permitted the enforcement of the executive orders pending the outcome of the appeal.
References to women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals have been scrubbed from federal websites, image archives, and physical installations. As described by Brenda Sue Fulton, "[this] administration has hung a sign outside the armed forces saying if you're not a white male, you are no longer welcome."
U.S. government departments have ordered probes of organizations that practice DEI, including hospitals, universities, federal contractors, and media companies. They have also pressured foreign companies with U.S. government contracts to comply with the order, drawing ire from foreign officials.
Affirmative action is intended to promote the opportunities of defined minority groups within a society to give them equal access to that of the majority population. The philosophical basis of the policy has various rationales, including but not limited to compensation for past discrimination, correction of current discrimination, and the diversification of society. It is often implemented in governmental and educational settings to ensure that designated groups within a society can participate in all promotional, educational, and training opportunities.
The stated justification for affirmative action by its proponents is to help compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, and to address existing discrimination. In a business environment, increased workforce diversity has been found to be associated with increased performance.
In a 2018 article, proponents of DEI argued that because businesses and corporations exist within a larger world, they cannot be completely separated from the issues that exist in society. Therefore, the authors argue the need for DEI to improve coworker relations and teamwork.
As of 2022, many academic institutions in the US have also started making commitments to DEI in different ways, including creating documents, programs and appointing dedicated staff members especially in the US. Many accreditation agencies now require supporting DEI. As of 2014, information on DEI for both students and professors was widespread in colleges and universities, with many schools requiring training and meetings on the topic. Many scholarships and opportunities at universities even have a secondary purpose of encouraging diversity. Diversity in higher education can be difficult, with diverse students often feeling reduced to fulfilling a "diversity quota", which can carry a high emotional tax.
Within healthcare, DEI reflective groups have been used to enhance the cultural sensitivity within mental health professionals. Such reflective spaces help improve mental health professionals' reflexivity and awareness of DEI-related issues both within direct clinical work with clients, their families, and wider systems, as well as within professional supervision and teams.
Diversity management as a concept appeared and gained momentum in the US in the mid-1980s. Equality and affirmative action professionals employed by US firms along with equality consultants, engaged in establishing the argument that a diverse workforce should be seen as a competitive advantage rather than just as a legal constraint. Their message was: do not promote diversity because it is a legal mandate, but because it is good for business.
Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, some companies made substantial commitments to racial equity by establishing dedicated diversity, equity, and inclusion teams. In early 2024, the Washington Post reported that there is a trend in corporate America to reduce DEI positions and delegate the work to external consultants. The number of DEI jobs reached its highest point in early 2023, but subsequently decreased by 5 percent that year and has further shrunk by 8 percent in 2024. The attrition rate for DEI roles has been approximately twice as high as that of non-DEI positions. Companies that rolled back their DEI initiatives cited the 2023 Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and similar actions of other companies. The scaling back of DEI initiatives has aligned with a rise in legal challenges and political opposition to systematic endeavors aimed at enhancing racial equity. Diversity management can be seen to "leverage organisational diversity to enhance organisational justice and achieve better business outcomes".
Several reports and academic studies have found a correlation between financial benefits and DEI. At an aggregate level, a 2013 study found that birth country diversity of the labor force positively impacts a nation's long term productivity and income. Firm-level research has provided conditional support to the proposal that workforce diversity per se brings business benefits with it. In short, whether diversity pays off or not depends on environmental factors, internal or external to the firm. Recent work published in 2024 showed that there is a plausibly causal link (not only a correlation) between workforce gender diversity and financial performance in major firms.
Research suggests that attempts to promote diversity can provoke defensive responses: One study suggested that even incidental allusions to diversity during interviews promoted defensive reactions in White male applicants. Indeed, after diversity was mentioned, their performance during the interview deteriorated and their physiological arousal increased.
In August 2021, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Nasdaq's proposed rules requiring listed companies to ensure women and minority directors were on their boards or provide an explanation of why they were not. In December 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held in Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment v. SEC that the SEC lacked the authority to approve these rules. A California judge held in 2022 that a similar board diversity law violated the California Constitution.
Since 2023, Republican-dominated US state legislatures have considered bills against DEI efforts, primarily at state colleges and universities. That change has been taking place amid heavy legal pressures. The Supreme Court in June 2023 upended equal protection law with its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, eliminating the use of affirmative action in college admissions but did not directly affect employers. Since then conservative activists organized in the states to dismantle race-conscious policies in various aspects of the economy.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has tracked over 80 bills introduced in state legislatures since 2023. Of these eight have become law, 25 failed to pass, and the rest are pending. Two bills became law in Florida and Texas; and one each in North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah. Florida now prohibits public colleges from requiring “political loyalty tests” as a condition of employment, admission, or promotion. The other Florida law prohibits public colleges from spending state or federal funds on DEI unless required by federal law. One Texas law prohibits DEI practices or programs, including training, that are not in compliance with the state Constitution regarding equality. The other law bans DEI offices and staff, as well as mandatory diversity training. It also bans identity-based diversity statements that give preference regarding race or sex.
In 2020, several prominent actors and directors criticized diversity standards, such as at the Academy Awards. Beginning in 2024, to be eligible for a best-picture nomination at the Academy Awards, a film must meet two of four diversity standards in order to qualify.
In 2023, Actor Richard Dreyfuss stated the Academy Award's diversity and inclusion standards "make me vomit", arguing that art should not be morally legislated. Several major film directors, who are voting members of the Academy Awards, anonymously expressed their opposition to the new diversity standards to The New York Post, with one describing them as "contrived". Film critic Armond White attacked the new standards as "progressive fascism", comparing them to the Hays Code.
In 2021, Conservative media sources, such as National Review, have been frequent critics of DEI, with contributor George Leff arguing it is authoritarian and anti-meritocratic.
In the 2020s, DEI came into the spotlight in American politics, especially in state legislatures in Texas and other Republican-controlled states. Several states are considering or have passed legislation targeting DEI in public institutions. In March 2023, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill with a rider banning the use of state funds for DEI programs in universities and colleges. In May 2023, Texas passed legislation banning offices and programs promoting DEI at publicly funded colleges and universities. In Iowa, a bill to ban spending on DEI in public universities was also advanced in March 2023.
Several prominent Republicans positioned themselves as critics, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. In January 2024, the Florida Board of Education banned federal or state money being used toward DEI programs in universities.
Another significant point of political controversy has been the implementation of DEI frameworks in the military, with Republican politicians frequently criticizing the efforts as "divisive" and as harming military efficiency and recruiting, while Democrats have defended it as beneficial and strengthening. In July 2023, the House of Representatives voted to ban all DEI offices and initiatives within the Pentagon and military along partisan lines, with all Democrats and four Republican members also opposing. The Senate, under Democratic control, has not acted.
Political opposition to corporate DEI efforts in the United States, particularly marketing criticized as "woke", have led to calls for boycotts of certain companies by activists and politicians; with notable examples being Disney, Target, Anheuser-Busch, and Chick-fil-A. Commentator Jonathan Turley of The Hill described such boycotts as resulting "some success".
Some of these companies' responses to the controversies have, in turn, sparked criticism from progressives of walking back or failing DEI commitments.
A June 2024 poll by The Washington Post and Ipsos found that 6 in 10 Americans believed that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are "a good thing". A September 2024 poll by the Human Rights Campaign found that 80% of LGBT Americans would boycott a company that repealed its DEI programs and 19% would quit their job if their place of employment did.
A 2025 poll by Axios found that more than 50% of Americans across all demographics surveyed said that DEI initiatives had made "no impact" on their jobs. Of those who said it did have an impact, a majority in almost all demographics said DEI had "benefited" their job rather than "hindered" it.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, institutions are making defensive adjustments to the criticism. Some schools are removing the word "diversity" from titles of offices and jobs; some are closing campus spaces set up for students according to identity; some are ending diversity training; and some have stopped asking all faculty and staff members for written affirmations of their commitment to diversity.
Diversity training, a common tool used in DEI efforts, has repeatedly come under criticism as being ineffective or even counterproductive. The Economist has stated that "the consensus now emerging among academics is that many anti-discrimination policies have no effect. What is worse, they often backfire." A regular claim is that these efforts mainly work to protect against litigation. A 2007 study of 829 companies over 31 years showed "no positive effects in the average workplace" from diversity training, while the effect was negative where it was mandatory. According to Harvard University professor in sociology and diversity researcher Frank Dobbin, "[O]n average, the typical all-hands-on-deck, 'everybody has to have diversity training' – that typical format in big companies doesn't have any positive effects on any historically underrepresented groups like black men or women, Hispanic men or women, Asian-American men or women or white women."
Contrary arguments for training are that, "implicit bias training is crucial for addressing racism, and bypassing it cannot be justified under the First Amendment. While free speech is a fundamental right, it is not absolute and must be balanced against public health needs, including combating systemic racism."
The use of mandatory "diversity statements" within academia, wherein an applicant or faculty member outlines their "past contributions" and plans "for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion" if hired, has become controversial and sparked criticism. Diversity statements have been a part of some academic hiring processes since at least 2001.
According to a 2022 survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors, one in five American colleges and universities include DEI criteria in tenure standards, including 45.6% of institutions with more than 5000 students. Some universities have begun to weigh diversity statements heavily in hiring processes. For example, University of California, Berkeley eliminated three-quarters of applicants for five faculty positions in the life sciences on the basis of their diversity statements in the hiring cycle of 2018–2019.
A 1,500-person survey conducted by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported that the issue is highly polarizing for faculty members, with half saying their view more closely aligns with the description of diversity statements as "a justifiable requirement for a job at a university", while the other half saw it as "an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom". According to Professor Randall L. Kennedy at Harvard University, "It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements", adding "I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince".
Several U.S. states have implemented legislation to ban mandatory diversity statements. In 2024, MIT announced that diversity statements "will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions" at the university, becoming the first major university to abandon the practice.
According to the University of Iowa DEI framework, "equity is different than equality in that equality implies treating everyone as if their experiences are exactly the same." A common identification, especially among critics, is of equality as meaning "equality of opportunities" and equity as "equality of outcome". This difference between equity and equality is also called Dilemma of Difference.
In the 2020s, high-profile incidents of campus conflict have sparked debate about the effect of DEI on the campus environment, academic freedom, and free speech. The 2021 cancelling of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) guest lecture by University of Chicago astrophysicist Dorian Abbot after he criticized DEI programs led to media attention and controversy. As a result, MIT empaneled a committee to investigate the state of academic freedom at the university.
The 2023 suicide of former Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto led to a new wave of controversy surrounding DEI in the workplace and its impact on freedom of expression. Bilkszto had earlier filed a lawsuit against the Toronto District School Board in the wake of a 2021 incident at a DEI training seminar; Bilkszto was later diagnosed with "anxiety secondary to a workplace event", and claimed the session and its aftermath had destroyed his reputation. Bilkszto's lawyer has publicly linked this incident and its aftermath with his death. In the wake of Bilkszto's death, Ontario Minister of Education Stephen Lecce stated he had asked for a review and "options to reform professional training and strengthen accountability on school boards so this never happens again", calling Bilkszto's allegations before his death "serious and disturbing". Bilkszto's death generated international attention and renewed debate on DEI and freedom of speech. According to The Globe and Mail, the incident has also been "seized on by a number of prominent right-wing commentators looking to roll-back [DEI] initiatives." The anti-racism trainer involved in the incident has stated they welcome the review by Lecce, and stated that the incident has been "weaponized to discredit and suppress the work of people committed [to DEI]".
DEI has been criticized for not focusing on antisemitism. According to Andria Spindel of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, antisemitism has been largely ignored in the DEI curriculum.
Tabia Lee, a former DEI director at De Anza College in California and DEI critic, has criticized DEI for what she says is fostering antisemitism. According to the Brandeis Center, the DEI committee at Stanford University said that "Jews, unlike other minority group[s], possess privilege and power, Jews and victims of Jew-hatred do not merit or necessitate the attention of the DEI committee" after two students complained about antisemitic incidents on campus.
According to some critics, DEI initiatives inadvertently sideline disabled people. Writing for The Conversation in 2017, college professor Stephen Friedman said that, "Organizations who are serious about DEI must adopt the frame of producing shared value where business and social goods exist side-by-side". According to a Time article in 2023, "People with disabilities are being neglected".
This view has been echoed by a number of DEI leaders and activists. Sara Hart Weir, the former president and CEO of the National Down Syndrome Society and co-founder of the Commission for Disability Employment, argues that when deliberating on the vision of DEI success in the United States, policymakers, and employers need to take proactive measures to engaging with people with disabilities who they historically ignored. Corinne Gray has argued that, "If you embrace diversity, but ignore disability, you're doing it wrong."
"Diversity hire", "equity hire", or "DEI hire", are disparaging and controversial labels for persons from underrepresented groups, which are, according to this label, assumed to be less qualified and have supposedly received preferential treatment due to DEI policies. Wording of some DEI initiatives can backfire and contribute to the self-perception of the hired person that they would not have been hired solely based on formal merit and have only been hired due to a combination of their underrepresented identity and formal merit. The term "diversity hire" can refer to problematic hiring strategies such as tokenism. The term "DEI", when used as a term to disparage people (particularly Black Americans), has been described as an ethnic slur.
DEI issues, sometimes with different terminology, are of concern in numerous countries around the world in the 21st century.
In Japan and Iceland, DEI efforts often concentrate on gender and age equality.
India prioritizes addressing workplace biases stemming from the patriarchal system, caste system, and religion.
Many African countries focus on workplace inequality arising from the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic backgrounds.
Nordic countries face challenges due to cultural norms like the Law of Jante, which can create a positivity bias and hinder acknowledgment of inequality.
EDGE had examined following 19 key DE&I criteria across 20 major countries:
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