Racial discrimination has increased 77% in the EU, top biz schools reach gender parity, and return-to-office disability disputes

The Latest DEI News 👇🏾

Politics & Law

• Churches step in after Florida restricts how Black history can be taught [NPR]: “With Florida restricting how Black history can be taught in public schools, some churches are stepping in with their own lessons.

• ‘We all should be worried’: Black entrepreneurs, business leaders say conservative legal challenges could hinder progress [CNN]: “Black business leaders told CNN the lawsuits, if successful, could stand to undo decades of progress toward leveling the playing field for Black and brown people in the workplace and small business sector.”

Inclusive Leadership

• 4 Things DEI Leaders Should Know About Businesses In 2023 And Beyond [Forbes]: “In fact, surveys reveal that 62% of workers feel that DEI programs are ineffective, and 46% say the programs have failed them personally. DEI leaders must understand and implement key actions to ensure their company's initiatives succeed in 2023 and beyond.”

• Changing Faces In The House: The Need For Inclusive Leadership [Forbes]: “According to Census information, by 2030, the United States will experience significant shifts in its demographic makeup. Those changes are due to generation, race, and ethnicity shifts. Given that information, plus the history of those occupying the Speaker Role and the increased diverse representation in the House noted in Pew Research, there is a strong likelihood that even more shifts are on the horizon to change House Leadership.”

Art, Music, & Entertainment

• This Black-owned ballet school empowers young dancers [CNN]: “She hadn’t thought about it before — how when you imagine a ballet dancer, you usually think of a White woman — but she couldn’t stop thinking about it after. That thought led her to Ruth Essel, the founder of the Pointe Black ballet school in London who’s creating a space for young Black ballet dancers to be their most authentic selves.”

Research

• 'Grave Consequences': Scientists Warn of Extreme Bias in Brain Aging Research [Science Direct]: “The risk of Alzheimer's disease and depression differs significantly between male and female bodies, and yet the vast majority of research on the human brain does not reflect that. Instead, male anatomy is too often considered 'the norm' against which all other human brains are measured.”

• Being Black in the EU – Experiences of people of African descent: “Overall, experiences of racial discrimination increased in the EU countries since 2016, reaching as high as 77%. The lack of progress is alarming despite binding anti-discrimination law in the EU since 2000 and significant EU policy developments since then.”

• Research: Flexible Work Is Having a Mixed Impact on Employee Well-Being and Productivity [SHRM] “Flexible work is having an impact on employee well-being, according to recent Gallup data. In our 2023 Global State of the Workplace Report, which represents more than 140 countries, employed individuals who were working remotely either full time or part time (hybrid) said they were experiencing more stress and more anger than employees who were working onsite full time.”

Workplace, Professional Development, & Employee Wellbeing

• The Fight Over Return-to-Office Is Turning Into a Disability Dispute: “Charges of disability discrimination are on the rise as more companies deny workers’ requests to stay home for mental-health reasons”

• Aligning Workplace Culture with Employee Mental Health: 6 Steps to Success [SHRM]: “The just-released 2023 Mental Health at Work Report from Mind Share Partners, a nonprofit focusing on workplace mental health, reveals that workers want changes that go beyond traditional health benefits and self-care apps. In fact, 58 percent of surveyed workers rated a healthy, sustainable work culture as ‘very or extremely helpful’ for their mental health, while only 35 percent of them rated self-care resources as ‘very or extremely helpful.’“

• The conundrum of productivity vs employee wellbeing [The Citizen]": “Leaders in the workplace find it hard to solve the conundrum of productivity vs employee wellbeing after so much changed in the corporate world and business sector over the past three years due to the changes brought on by the pandemic and lockdowns.”

Education

• Women Catch Up With Men at More Top Business Schools: “Women now make up at least half of full-time M.B.A. students at five top business schools, the most to reach that milestone in a given year, new data show. The rising share of female M.B.A. candidates reflects business schools’ concerted efforts to recruit more women in recent years. Full-time M.B.A. programs at Penn State University and the University of Oxford hit parity for the first time this academic year.”

Life, Society, & Environmental

• Looming Education Funding Crisis Will Impact U.S. Students, Economy [Forbes]: “A report released last year from the Southern Education Foundation, Economic Vitality and Education in the South,(EVES) showed that students from Black, Brown and low-income families are much more likely than their peers to struggle academically due to underfunded and under-resourced schools.”

• Despite high Black maternal death rate, California hospitals ignored training about bias in care [KRON4]: “More than two and a half years after a law took effect requiring maternity care staff to complete racism in medicine training, only 17 percent of hospitals were in compliance, according to an investigation published by the state Department of Justice Friday.”

• She led the Black Panthers. Now she’s a property developer – for Oakland’s poorest [The Guardian] : ”Its creator is Elaine Brown, an activist, writer and singer who in 1974, when Newton went into exile in Cuba, became the only woman ever to lead the Black Panther party. Now 80, she proves to have as much fire in her belly as she did back in the heady days of the Black liberation struggle, though this time her immediate focus is not revolution but providing jobs and low-cost homes to those who need them.

Until later,

Adriele

This newsletter is co-curated by Nico Escobar. Need virtual coordination? Social media management? Content creation? Reach out to her!

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