Diversity and Inclusion has increasingly become an important part of any forward-looking organization’s corporate strategy. However, appearances can be deceptive. A bit of ‘check box’ action here. A dollop of corporate spin there. Insert a few colourful pie charts into the mix. Nice job. Despite the slick marketing and fancy graphs that typify inclusion narratives, a closer look is revealing. For instance, where are all the childless employees?Although a significant part of the workforce, they rarely feature in policy. Why not? Clearly, there is room for improvement here.
Childless employees represent a significant and growing minority –at least one in five adults, (the data on women is somewhat less murky than for men), in many industrialized countries today. However, meaningful statistics are a struggle to come by for this grossly under-if-at-all-researched segment of the population, largely because policy-makers appear oblivious to this gap. However, times are changing. The current pandemic has brought with it a renewed awareness of the more marginalized individuals in the global workforce. And that includes employees who are not parents for a multitude of reasons. Today’s workforce is diverse and multi-faceted. Inclusion efforts are supposedly designed to incorporate what is seen just as much as what is unseen. But despite that universal promise,childless workers face a wall of silence in the workplace and beyond.
Childlessness does not mean ‘less than’ and may impact anyone at any point in the career lifecycle. It’s not just something linked to age, and even then, this deeply sensitive issue warrants careful attention, not ignorance. Childless employees are just as deserving of fair and equal treatment in the workplace as anyone else. However, even nowadays, workers remain conditioned to expect priority treatment over others because of their parental status, and that leads to certain inequities among the workforce. In a sustained response to the pronatalist world in which we live, employers continue to compensate workers around their reproductive choices and capacity to care for children, rather than the work that is done.
Although challenges faced by parents in the workplace are well-known, this is not true for non-parents. Most people know someone who is childless, but that familiarity is lost onemployers. Many seem simply unaware that this segment exists at all in their workforces. This is also convenient, because otherwise, incorporating the needs of childless workers would have to be worked into budgets. Compensation would need to be shared around more evenly. And so, it’s easy to see how this hidden issue remains that way.
However,policy-makers should rightly be concerned with treating all workers fairly and equally, regardless of age, dis/ability, gender, ethnicity, parental status, sexual orientation, race, religion or any other dimension. Despite that, equity in the workplace continues to elude childless employees for the most part. Systemic discrimination is insidious and can be deeply entrenched in the workplace. Even a bulldozer with a tank full of rocket-fuel would strain to shatter the inertia that this corporate blind-spot perpetuates. As long as policy-makers prioritize the needs of dominant groups, and stretched budgets both underpin and drive that imbalance, then exclusion will triumph over inclusion. A fair and equitable workplace is little more than fantasy if hidden segments of the workforce are either inadvertently or strategically overlooked. The effect is the same.
The equal treatment of women in the workplace remains under the microscopeto this day. But ironically, this crusade does not include all working women. On one hand, when it comes to policies, parental status and all the stages around it, are reasonably well-catered for. On the other, non-parent employees are just othered. And so, this remains an unspoken issue that’s best swept under the corporate rug. Nothing to be seen here. No fairness, no equality, and no inclusion either.
Those who become parents need support to remain effective in the workforce. But the same is also true for childless and childfree workers with their own unique needs. There is a significant policy gap around these hidden issues and it’s one that deserves attention. As long as all women are not treated fairly and equally at all stages in their career lifecycle, employers will increasingly have a case to answer on such issues. Inclusion should mean that all segments of the workforce are actually included in corporate Diversity and Inclusion strategies. It’s not just a marketing tool designed for brand enhancement.
Inclusion is only truly meaningful if everyone is included.
While a pronatalist society enables employers to remain ignorant of the childless and childfree employees in their workforces, little will change. And so these employees will continue to be exposed to bias, prejudice and negative stereotypes. A common assumption around non-parent employees is that they have no family or care needs, which somehow ‘justifies’ relying on these workers as a limitless resource. Such unfair treatment not only shames and silences but also reinforces their invisibility.
Employers would be misguided in continuing to overlook the needs of the childless segment in their workforces. These employees have unique needs that are no more or less important than anyone else’s. All sectors have a responsibility to ensure that their policies are revised to be inclusive of any factors that may affect childless employees. Inclusion means that employers need to play their part in treating every employee fairly by creating new norms that do just that. Anything less is really just inclusion-washing.
Anon.