In much of the world, the march of progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people appears inexorable. From Beijing to Berlin, the rainbow flag flies higher and prouder than ever before. Indeed, seismic generational shifts have changed attitudes toward LGBT faster than seemed possible only a few short decades ago.
Yet while LGBT people enjoy unprecedented freedoms from a social, legal and cultural perspective in most of the world, their status in the workplace remains largely uncharted. Only one Fortune 500 company, Apple, has an openly gay chief executive. There are undoubtedly more. Yet particularly in LGBT-unfriendly nations, coming out in the office is hardly an easy process. In most contexts, heterosexual male or female is still the baseline against which all other sexual orientations and gender identities are defined.
This makes the findings from the recent in-depth EIU study, “Pride and Prejudice: Attitudes and opinions toward LGBT inclusion in the workplace”, all the more relevant. Based on a survey of over 1,000 people across various industries around the globe, the study found that while LGBT discrimination is not endemic to the business world, executives remain sceptical that LGBT inclusion can benefit the corporate bottom line. As a result, respondents crave less investment into initiatives boosting LGBT workplace progress than similar programmes focused on women, disabled people, and racial and ethnic minorities.
As LGBT gain prominence in the workplace, however, opinions change. Respondents who work in companies with high-profile LGBT advocates and those who have LGBT colleagues perceive a higher degree of LGBT progress in their firms than those without. These factors also lead to increased desire for investment into schemes meant to raise LGBT visibility, setting off a virtuous cycle.
While respondents may look dubiously at the need to plough more money into giving LGBT workers a lift, they do believe that business should be working harder to help the lot of LGBT people in society. Indeed, more than one in two claims to want to work for a company that is an advocate of LGBT rights, while two out of three agree that companies need to do more to protect LGBT employees in countries that have anti-LGBT legislation in place. Half of those surveyed say that business has a fundamental imperative to drive change around LGBT diversity and inclusion. Clearly, workers do not want their firms to sit by the sidelines in the ongoing global conversation about LGBT rights.
However one interprets these findings, they are but one tool in the struggle for understanding around this complex issue. With so many LGBT people still hiding the shadows, reliable data can be scant. As Marie Moynihan, head of diversity at Dell Inc, a computer maker, puts it: “This is one of the big issues you’ll find globally around LGBT, the whole issue of identifying—because you have to identify to measure.”
Unfortunately, this problem has no easy solution. The onus cannot solely rest on company bosses and CEOs to drive action, though their presence in the debate matters a great deal. Nor can LGBT workers be expected to simply muster up the courage to come out of the closet in potentially hostile environments. What’s needed is greater discussion at every level, among all walks of corporate life, in this complex and thorny issue.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited (EIU) or any other member of The Economist Group. The Economist Group (including the EIU) cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this article or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the article.
