I hear a lot about the business case for diversity. The fact is, we shouldn’t need one. What kind of person needs a business case to treat fellow human beings fairly?
Diversity is not just about changing the proportions of certain types within a community. It’s also about making everyone in that community – whether or not in a minority – feel welcome, comfortable and valued, allowing all to contribute to their full potential. It’s about recognising differences and then respecting, accommodating and embracing them. And it’s about being considerate.
Through leading the diversity-promoting initiative IP Inclusive, I know the IP professions to be full of decent, well-meaning, morally responsible people. So what goes wrong? Why do we still do things that discourage participants from minority groups, that erode our inclusivity and thus our diversity too? Why do we still accidentally serve a bacon sandwich to a Muslim or a steak to a Hindu; urge an alcoholic celebration on someone for whom it’s forbidden; try to fix up a single colleague with a member of the opposite sex; summon a parent to a late night meeting, a Jew to a Friday evening reception, or a wheelchair user to a last-minute central London conference?
Why do we still not really understand – much less allow for – how it feels to be the only woman in the boardroom, or the only black or Asian person at a seminar? Why do we forget that our well-meaning banter can hurt those who are not part of the “in” crowd? Can’t we foresee that not everyone will feel at ease with a five-course banquet and twenty pieces of cutlery?
It is, of course, thoughtlessness that lets us down. And this is not malicious thoughtlessness; it is the blithe naivety of those who take for granted a world geared almost entirely to the way they are, who have never had to worry about what makes their colleagues uncomfortable, because thus far their colleagues have been the same as them. Even when we try to be sensitive, too often we lack the knowledge and experience to succeed.
We are also susceptible to unconscious biases and assumptions, and to the stereotypes we know and love. We should not judge ourselves too harshly for this – the brain makes sense of the world by recognising familiar patterns – but we must be aware of it and take steps to overcome it. And in this I think the IP professional has particular handicaps.
As lawyers, we are trained to seek out, and follow, precedent. What better way to nurture acquired biases? We tend to be risk-averse, which again makes us less confident with the unfamiliar, less ready to embrace new approaches and perspectives. And we have learned to argue a case, and in so doing to resist conceding alternative views.
Then consider this: in the world of IP, boundaries are sovereign. Our role is to identify and assert them. Our day-to-day raison d’être is thus the antithesis of inclusivity.
Combine this with the fact that most of us in the IP professions enjoy almost embarrassing levels of privilege, and you have a community that often, in a “let them eat cake” kind of way, fails to see the issues facing the less privileged of its members. I suspect that behind our diversity-related faux pas lies a fundamental vanity: the assumption that the ultimate gift we can bestow on anyone is to welcome them as though they were one of us, that is, to slot them into our own frames of reference. Yet a Muslim may not want to be treated exactly the same as a Christian, nor a homosexual as a heterosexual, nor even a woman as an honorary man. Providing equal opportunities is more nuanced than dispensing identical treatment.
I believe inclusivity is key to improving diversity. But behind inclusivity is a recognition of the things, in ourselves, that undermine it, and a commitment to do better. We must think about other people – how we treat them, what we say to them, what we expect of them – and do everything we can to accommodate them. We must ditch our narcissistic assumptions and instead learn from others, with humility and open minds, about how their worlds differ from ours. In so doing, we can create a wider, more vibrant community in which those worlds meet, meld and ultimately, enrich one another.
Andrea Brewster
IP Inclusive task force leader
18th-07-2016
Also an issue! (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/women-shiver-at-work-in-sexist-air-conditioning/) ...although luckily not a problem I have, as I generally like my office cooler than most people do.
Katie Howe
18th-07-2016
And there was me thinking you would be talking about the office temperature!
Dave Combes
17th-07-2016
Inclusivity and diversity are important, but they are by no means the only issues that needs to be addressed to enable people to fulfil their potential. Lawyers can be very critical of one another and unforgiving of technical mistakes or differences of view; it seems to go with the training. Some work environments are highly political. Some are socially conservative or hierarchical. Some people thrive in such an environment; for others it can seem like workplace bullying and stifle their development. Raising awareness of diversity issues is important, but at every stage we should be questioning not only the lack of diversity but whether the steps taken to address it are proportionate and balanced, bearing in mind the other barriers to success and the need to bring people with you. My experience with the Law Society recently has been that sometimes the diversity agenda overtakes other issues in a disproportionate way,
Mark Anderson
15th-07-2016
Inclusivity and combating discrimination are not ends in themselves: they are means of achieving a greater end, which is to establish genuine respect for, and tolerance of, others. This being so, I believe that it is incumbent on members of minority groups to show the same degree of respect and tolerance towards the often thoughtless or indifferent majority as they expect to receive from them. As a member of a minority within a minority (an orthodox Jew, among Jews as a whole) I have sometimes been on the wrong end of the sort of behaviour described in this blogpost. I've always felt, though, that I have a choice as to whether to be affronted and annoyed or whether to respond with warmth, humour and a resolve to educate rather than spite the person(s) in question. It's not always easy, or fun, but I feel that this approach has on the whole worked well. If nothing else, it's worth a try!
Jeremy Phillips
15th-07-2016
There's a fine line between being considerate and being prejudicial. For example, when is not offering an alcoholic drink considerate and when is it discriminatory? I wholly agree that equality doesn't always mean exactly the same. However, the discrepancy is more than just nuanced: there's a general conflict between treating everybody the same and accommodating everybody's differences. The real faux pas are the false assumptions. Making decisions based upon assumptions is a very human trait, so it is unfeasible to strive for avoiding assumptions. Although as IP professionals I would like to think that we generally minimise the likelihood of false assumptions. There are some discriminations that are nigh on inevitable in the IP profession: where language is so critical, then it does make it more difficult to recruit colleagues with inferior levels of English. However, quite why the demographics of IP professionals (and technical students at universities) are so skewed is still a mystery to me. It's also a mystery to me quite why the patent profession in the UK is so London-centric. I can't imagine that firms in the City represent a corresponding proportion of the IP work in the UK. Perhaps that's an aspect of IP inclusion that can also be considered.
Provincial Patent Attorney
15th-07-2016
I recently read an article which nicely highlighted how treating everyone fairly is not always equivalent to treating everyone the same. A local council in a Scandinavian city was reviewing its snow-clearing policy and found that the decision to always clear roads (and main roads first) before pavements disadvantaged women significantly as compared to men, as women are statistically more likely to walk or get public transport to work in that city, and are also more likely to have less direct journeys, e.g. to drop off one or more children to nurseries and/or schools.
Katie Howe
10th-07-2016
I agree. I was reading Travel Which? about a river cruise through Hungary saying that the place names are "unpronounceable". Millions of people CAN pronounce it, although many of the would struggle to pronounce Gloucester correctly. Typical example of arrogance, lack of respect and Anglocentrism. Unconscious myopia? I find it hard to give that writer the benefit of the doubt
Tibor Gold