Apr 7, 22 | 6 min read
linkedin polemic inclusive work
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It is hard to believe that year after year we have to return to the debate on the validity of affirmative action or positive discrimination that aims at the inclusion of socially underrepresented groups in the workplace.
The hot topic right now involves the professional social network LinkedIn. The company, which has more than 740 million users and is present in virtually every country, has once again excluded jobs exclusively for Afro-descendants and indigenous people in Brazil .
LinkedIn is a global social platform that positions itself as an ally of diversity. So why did it take this stance on job openings that are in favor of what it stands for?
We invite you to reflect on inclusion in selection processes, not only in Brazil, but throughout the world.
Keep reading because this topic is very important!
Case Summary
It all began when Brazilian research institution Laut advertised a job on LinkedIn that preferred candidates of African descent and indigenous people.
For Brazil, the announcement was harmless (in fact, it was even welcomed by many as a step towards reversing inequality, especially at the top).
LinkedIn then removed these job postings, explaining the decision based on the company's current global policy, which understands that: " people with the same talents should have access to the same opportunities ." This indicates that affirmative actions are understood as discriminatory actions and create a situation of inequality between talents.
It is obvious that this decision had major (and bad) repercussions in the country. Dozens of large companies protested, federal prosecutors opened investigations and they were sued by various activists.
The global company Natura&Co (which also owns Avon and The Body Shop) signed a manifesto condemning LinkedIn's decision. Other giants such solomon islands email address as Oracle, Unilever, Bayer, Ambev and Santander also expressed their support for the rejection initiatives.
And that was not all: the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office of Brazil notified Linkedin to provide explanations on the case. After all this pressure, LinkedIn changed its approach and announced that it would change its policy for Latin America .
But, despite this, this episode alerts us to the need to reaffirm our position regarding inclusion policies .
Difference and inequality
The word "difference" has the power to provoke various feelings in people, but never indifference. In the dictionary this word is defined as:
1. f. Quality by which something is distinguished from something else.
2. f. Variety among beings and things of the same species.
I would like to highlight here the passage that says “variety among beings of the same species.” I couldn’t agree more, because all people are different. Human diversity allows us to see the world with a wealth of divergent thoughts and plural ways of being.
However, due to our differences or characteristics that make us up (race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, origin or generation), we are placed in a position of greater or lesser access to resources and opportunities. In that case we would no longer be talking about difference, but about inequality.
As taught by Djamila Ribeiro — Brazilian feminist thinker and writer —, the Social Locus , a common place that runs through our experiences, allows us to see how social dynamics reproduce and feed inequalities.
However, this is not the case with inclusive actions, as they do not produce inequalities as the employment platform tried to point out, but rather, on the contrary, they seek to combat the myth of meritocracy and reduce the disparities already experienced in the labour market.
Beyond Brazil
Brazil is a South American country with a mixed history due to its indigenous population, European colonization and the slavery of peoples from Africa until less than two centuries ago. Although the country was the last on the continent to end slavery, the formation of its society is similar to that of most American countries.
Affirmative action is not new in Brazil. While Racial/Social Quotas were only approved in 2012 , since the 2000s there have been efforts to reserve places in universities for low-income, Afro-descendant and indigenous students.
It is also important to remember that, since 1991, Brazil has had a law that provides for a series of job vacancies reserved in companies for people with disabilities, in order to guarantee the inclusion of this population in the labour market.
Along the same lines, a gender quota is already planned for political parties and even the reservation of seats for women in the Legislative Chambers at all federal levels. In both cases, 30%.
In the global context, it is possible to find policies very similar to these. In India , for example, racial quotas have existed in all public services since the 1930s. In Malaysia , Australia and New Zealand, there are also policies that seek to reduce inequality between social groups.
In the US, although there is no law requiring universities to set aside racial quotas, there have been movements within these spaces since the 1960s in search of diversity of candidates for vacancies. The US Supreme Court allows universities to use social aspects such as race and gender, for example, as one of the factors for accepting students.
In this way, we verify that inclusive actions are used by different countries and in different contexts as a powerful tool in reducing social inequalities.
We've come a long way, but it's still not enough
Returning to Brazil, we can see some results of inclusive actions. Between 2010-2019 we noticed a 400% increase in the number of Afro-descendant students in Brazilian universities .
For the first time, the population that declares itself as black or mixed race now represents more than half of higher education students in public universities, reaching a presence of 50.3%. However, this does not translate into the workforce of companies.
According to the IDados Institute, based on data from the National Household Sample Survey of IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), in the first quarter of 2020, 35% of Afro-descendants with higher education worked in positions that do not require a degree.
When we look at management positions, only 4.9% occupy positions on the Boards of Directors of the 500 companies with the highest turnover in Brazil.
In the US, African American, American Indian and Alaska Native workers were twice as likely to be unemployed.
And what does this tell us?
Currently, there is an institutional structure that privileges some people, mostly white, cisgender, and heterosexual.
Although there are affirmative actions in different spheres of power (public or private), we still realize that there are still barriers that prevent Afro-descendants, for the most part, from accessing the labor market or growing in their careers.
We need much more intentionality, and above all coordinated actions between governments, companies and society.
