What’s on the Agenda: Diversity as Non-performative in the Treatment of Identity Categories in Workplace Diversity in the Netherlands

Abstract

Influenced by economic, societal and demographic developments in the Netherlands, there has been an increase in interest to treat diversity as a matter to be managed in the workplace. More and more large corporations announce their diversity strategies due to financial incentives, government regulations that are particularly aimed at women in leadership positions and the wish to show that they are in support of employees’ talents. Due to the latter, corporate diversity strategies claim to be inclusive and welcoming for everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, age and religion. By means of an intersectional analysis of interviews with diversity managers and the diversity texts of various corporations, this thesis analyses how large corporations operating in the Dutch context understand and implement their diversity policies. Also, it considers what intersections and categories of identity are perceived as important by them and why. Additionally, this thesis examines how neoliberal ideals have an impact on this. For this research, Sara Ahmed’s and Eike Marten’s discussions of diversity as ‘nonperformative’ are significant as they demonstrate that saying diversity is not similar to doing diversity. Due to the gap between a corporate sense of ´intersectionality´ and the understanding of this as conceptualized by black feminists, the strategies are still weak in terms of recognizing how the varying axes of identity are interconnected as well as how to avoid tokenism. Although diversity managers claim that there is a strong intrinsic motivation, corporations place a high value on diversity linked to Western, neoliberal terms of profitability, productivity and effectiveness which contributes to the non-performativity of diversity. In this way, toxic ideas of ‘unvalued’ differences are reinforced and different experiences and needs of people are neglected. The racialized system of whiteness and the idea that Dutch society is highly progressive is hindering corporations and their diversity managers to deal with dominant, binary and essentialist representations of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity in a more active and critical manner. As the corporations’ statements ‘do not as they say’, the corporate language on diversity is shaped in such a way that it fails to pay attention to the crucial, underlaying matters related to social inequality and oppression linked to racism and sexism.