Following Trump’s edicts in the United States—the land of the First Amendment that protects freedom of speech—people are now afraid to talk about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Yet, our societies are still permeated with discrimination against women and minorities. We cannot go back light-years in how we treat those who differ from the dominant group. What can be done to monitor and counter this phenomenon?
“The supremacy of the white man is the political system (never called by that name) that has made the world what it is today.” The opening line of The Racial Contract by Charles Mills—a thirty-year-old book that made history—should be proposed as a writing prompt for high school final exams. It provokes reflection on what we are witnessing far beyond the racial dimension. Discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, physical appearance, obesity, and disability still pervades our societies. We encounter it daily. It affects those outside the dominant group, those in the minority. Those who perpetrate it are not always aware. For those affected, beyond the frustration of suffering an injustice, there is a loss of motivation and often of self-esteem, with lasting damage to their professional and personal lives. Discrimination influences school choices, entry into the job market, career progression, and many aspects of daily life. It should be at the forefront of our concerns. We must find ways to monitor the phenomenon and remedy it, because beyond being profoundly unjust, discrimination ultimately deprives our communities of valuable human resources and undermines social cohesion, worsening well-being for everyone.
The Restoration
A campaign is underway today to drag us light-years backward in how we treat people who are different. It originates in the United States, the country that perhaps more than any other has implemented policies to provide greater representation for minorities in leadership roles, university admissions, and other restricted-access positions. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it began there, driven by Donald Trump’s edicts. The backlash from majorities is brutal. In the public sector, individuals responsible for monitoring discrimination and promoting minority inclusion are being dismissed. Corporations are racing to dismantle their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments. Universities—despite being in the land of “free speech” and the First Amendment—are banning the term DEI from all communication for fear of losing federal funding, and require their faculty to do the same. Citizenship is denied to those who have transitioned or do not identify as male or female. Public health agencies are removing from their websites guidance on addressing sexually transmitted diseases and health conditions specific to LGBTQ+ individuals. DEI has become the scapegoat upon which the anger of those suffering from rising prices, job loss, or unaffordable housing is unleashed. The silence of those who once championed diversity and inclusion is deafening. True, it’s a thorny issue. But remaining silent means paving the way for restoration. That’s why we’ve decided to cover it in this issue of eco.
What Are We Talking About
It’s not always clear what we mean by discrimination, and as a result, what can be done to protect diversity. In the following pages, we consider discriminatory behavior to include daily decisions about hiring or firing, or how much to pay someone, when personal characteristics unrelated to productivity or work quality influence the outcome. For example, it is discriminatory for a teacher to suggest vocational school instead of high school to a student solely because they are the child of an immigrant or have dark skin. It is discriminatory to pay women less than men even when their work contributes equally to the value of a company. That two people are paid differently doesn’t in itself prove discrimination—it only occurs when two individuals, contributing equally, are paid differently. Employers, and especially human resource directors in large companies, are best positioned to evaluate whether discrimination exists. That’s why it is vital to raise their awareness of the issue. This was, at least in principle, the goal of the DEI programs implemented in many large U.S. firms—programs now hastily dismantled to avoid Trump’s mandates. The aim was prevention, not reactive and costly legal action that often disadvantages the victim burdened with the burden of proof.
Gender Discrimination
In this issue of eco, we focus particularly on gender discrimination. We document how the wage gaps between men and women entering the job market, which had narrowed until the early 2000s, have remained stable over the past two decades. Contractual terms offered to young men and women still differ. Women are more often offered temporary contracts, especially by employers with higher rates of voluntary resignations due to maternity. Despite often being more educated than men, women in Italy enter the workforce already facing a 7–9% wage gap—a disparity that tends to grow throughout their careers. About one-third of gender pay gaps are due to different pay within the same company. Women subjected to violence by a male colleague are more likely to lose their jobs than the men who assaulted them. Male-on-male violence is punished more severely than violence against female colleagues.
These are all signs of discrimination both inside and outside the workplace. Proving its existence requires more. In the absence of data on individual productivity, a widely used method to monitor discrimination involves testing employer responses to fictitious job applicants with identical resumes, differing only in gender. These studies show that women are called for interviews far less often than men—and even less than male Albanian immigrants—with identical credentials. Physical appearance (revealed by attached photos) affects women’s chances of being called for interviews, but not men’s. These conditions can be simulated not just for gender, but also for sexual orientation, nationality, body mass, and more. And not only for hiring decisions, but also for rental applications, daycare admissions, and other scenarios. Discriminatory attitudes have been observed across these dimensions. It would be advisable for such simulations to be systematically conducted and centralized by Istat as part of a national discrimination monitoring system.
What Can Be Done to Counter It?
Discrimination is not always born of prejudice. Often, it arises from having to make decisions with limited information, leading to generalizations and stereotypes. In other cases, it stems from objective conditions that allow employers to pay some workers less than their productivity would warrant.
For the first type—prejudice and cultural bias—affirmative action can help. For example, reserving leadership roles for women (such as board seats in publicly listed companies, as in Italy) or for other underrepresented categories. The goal of quotas is to demonstrate that historically excluded groups can provide significant value. Once this awareness is established, the need for quotas fades. In other words, affirmative action is meant to make itself obsolete. Its downside is that it is explicit and, understandably, unwelcome to those negatively affected. Perhaps the U.S. went too far, explaining today’s virulent backlash. It’s the pendulum effect.
The second type—based on limited information—is more subtle and harder to fight. When deciding whether to hire someone to care for our loved ones, we may rely on stereotypes like “Peruvian caregivers are more affectionate than Eastern European ones, who are more reliable,” distrusting initial impressions or letters of recommendation. Here, the problem isn’t bias but the challenge of acquiring more information. We fall back on whatever we know about people from the same background. Hiring decisions then become based more on nationality than individual merit. This type of discrimination is very hard to combat. Experience shows more information is better than less. Yet, experiments like anonymizing resumes to hide applicants’ origins have proven counterproductive—ethnic minority candidates were less likely to be called for interviews when names were concealed.
The third type—perhaps the most common—is market power discrimination. Employers who know that women face greater obstacles changing jobs (e.g., due to family responsibilities keeping them near home) can afford to pay them less than equally or more productive men, who would switch employers if underpaid. To fight this form of discrimination, we must strengthen women’s mobility and bargaining power, starting with their household dynamics, relieving them of career-limiting responsibilities and placing those burdens on society or their partners. This includes mandatory paternity leave policies, childcare services, nursery availability, and family support policies, all of which we cover extensively in the pages that follow. These are crucial in countries like Italy, where—according to our “Chart of the Month”—women work far more than men when unpaid domestic labor is added to their paid work.
P.S. In the next issue (coming out on Thursday, April 17), we will focus on pensions.
