Mix, equal opportunities, parity, equality and/or diversity ?

Via a survey on LinkedIn, we asked you the question " what does gender diversity mean to you first? ". And you were all right ! Because if today, when we talk about diversity, we immediately understand that we are talking about gender balance, it is important to know that the connotations of the term have varied over the course of recent history, particularly according to socio-political contexts and collective issues. Here's an overview.

The time of mixed people with " ethnic diversity" connotations

In the 1950s and 1960s, co-education was more reminiscent of miscegenation. It should be remembered that at that time, we were faced with the crucial issue of decolonization on the one hand and the economic challenges of the Glorious Thirty on the other.

Decolonization leads to the conception of a different relationship with the populations of the former Empire. The time of domination must be followed by that of otherness, as the political powers seem to mean. All the post-colonial literature reveals, however, that this problem cannot be solved in elements of language.

At the same time, there is the challenge of strong economic growth that requires more and more labour. Immigration is being appealed to. But while employers need immigrants to keep the factories running, society, whose minds are not completely decolonized, is permeated by reflexes of identity withdrawal. Diversity was then promoted as a form of living together, tolerant, anti-racist, open to the fertile mixing of cultures. This voluntarist discourse on a diversity that creates enrichment is correlated with a discourse on the integration, or even assimilation, of immigrant populations. It is a kind of paradox since by claiming to erase the cultural markers of people from immigrant backgrounds in order to dissolve them into the norm of the host country, integration aims rather to avoid mixing !

The time of " social mixing"

After the first oil crisis in the 1970s and the succession of economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s, the question of social inequalities is being raised with new acuity. The socio-geographical segregation that can be seen in urban planning and housing as well as in the conditions of education, the gaps in access to employment, the breakdown of the " social ladder" and the impoverishment of the middle classes, the increase in wealth inequalities, the socio-cultural fractures within society are putting the issue of equal opportunities back on the agenda.

So, the word " mixity " becomes synonymous with social mixing. The school is particularly expected to achieve the objective of bringing the same age group up to speed, regardless of the social origins and family conditions of the pupils. The school map is being questioned and schools that mainly welcome children from wealthy families are called upon to work towards social diversity by opening their classes to students from diverse backgrounds.

Housing is a nodal point, while the most affluent neighbourhoods remain inaccessible to the least privileged populations and gentrification phenomena are also observed that drive working-class families out of city centres. Public policies promise to curb these phenomena of splitting and segregation by promoting social diversity. Companies also take up this reason, especially when they encounter recruitment difficulties.

The time of " mixity-parity"

It was at the end of the 1990s and the turn of the 2000s that the word " mixity " took on the primary meaning of gender mix. The feminist movement has so far used it, preferring to it that of equality. It must be said that gender diversity does not promise from the outset that women and men will have access to the same jobs and functions, to the same salaries.

This is what parity promises, driven by quotas first in politics and then in the economic world. Gender diversity only commits to the representation of genders in spaces and functions that are considered universal: work, leadership, domestic tasks, " care ", etc. Since they have no gender, there is no reason why some should be " reserved " for men and others for women.

Although a priori relatively unengaging, gender diversity becomes a consensual gateway to equality issues. We understand, for example, that if we want to increase the share of women in masculinized professions, we must question the codes of these professions, attack stereotypes and reveal the relations of domination that they carry. In mirror, we realize that in order to attract men to feminized professions, it is necessary to look at the issue of the deterioration of social recognition and the decline in the remuneration of these professions as they have become more feminized (the cases of judges, doctors or teachers being symptomatic).

Towards the time of a diversity of diversity ?

The 2010s saw the triumph of the objectification of the link between diversity and performance. But why does mixing genres promote economic health? This question is answered by summoning the power of collective intelligence: the variety of points of view, experiences, perceptions and cultures. This does not only apply to " gender diversity" but also embraces intergenerational, intercultural, social origins, psychocognitive differences, etc.

The idea of diversity would therefore return to its etymology mixtus , which means to mix. In this sense, diversity is not a coexistence in spaces and functions but rather a dynamic... That of inclusion !