A concept under the microscope

Equality, parity, equity, "gender diversity", plurality, sharing of responsibilities, gender balance, diversity... The lexicon of the gender issue, which is now on the agenda of all organizations and institutions, has been considerably enriched as the reflection has matured in recent years.

But if the elements of language are more varied today, the choice of words counts... Perhaps more than ever.

Among these words, one has made a special place for itself in the discourse of the business world: it is "diversity".

But what exactly is co-education? How is gender diversity different from equality, parity or diversity? What does the preference of the economic world for this term say about the approach to the subject of women and men in business?

The EVE blog takes a closer look at the concept.

A (relative) neologism

If you had uttered the word "mixity" in 1950, you would probably have incurred the wrath of the tenant.es of a language scrupulously respectful of linguistic correctness, in which any neologism inevitably provokes an attack of hives! Because mixité did not then have its entry into the French dictionary (it was not until 1963 that it was time).

On the other hand, the adjective "mixed" is a much older term, of which we can already find traces in writings of the fourteenth century. Derived from the Latin verb misceo, which means "to mix", "to put together distinct elements" in Horace, but also "to cause confusion" in Cicero's use of it, "mixed" entered everyday language in the middle of the nineteenth century...

A legacy of the debates on girls' education

It was precisely at a time when there was a debate about the education of girls and whether or not they could live in the same class with boys that the idea of co-education spread in French society. This is called "co-education" or "gemination". It is probably not necessary to recall that the majority of public opinion was seriously against it!

But pragmatism is sometimes the law, and when the law forces us to find solutions, what is not yet called co-education is imposed in the schools of the small municipalities of France which simply do not have the means to open and maintain separate establishments.

From co-education to the socio-political project of gender equality

Until the middle of the twentieth century, co-education was a question only for the world of education, which, while admitting the principle in its majority, reserved some courses for girls (including obviously home economics) and others for boys. There was also a bitter debate about whether or not it was necessary to separate the sexes in certain disciplines, such as physical education and sports, sometimes arguing differences in physical power or morality, which was still difficult to adapt to the sight of female bodies in practice.

After the Second World War, and at a time when the question of the place of women in society was becoming a subject throughout the world, the intention of equality that had presided over the reforms of education wanted by Jules Ferry, René Goblet and Paul Bert in the nineteenth century, resurfaced on the political and social scene in the form of a legitimate demand for women to benefit from the same rights and the same opportunities. Since they now have the same level of education as men, why can't they all vote, have their own means of payment, work without having to ask permission from a father or husband, etc.?

The time of activism: when diversity fades behind "women's rights"

Soon the movement for "women's rights" took on an unprecedented scale, at the heart of the cultural, social and political "revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s.

Feminist militant.es make the appalling observation of generalized inequalities of treatment between women and men, in all fields of society, and make it clear loud and clear that it is time for this to stop and that all responsibilities, in the office and at home, in the association as well as in the Assembly, must be shared.

Consciences are shaken by this, which resists in part by raising the spectre of a "war of the sexes" announced. A paradox when the movement wants to deconstruct a system of separation of the sexes that orders society into spaces of the feminine versus the masculine? More likely, it is a marker of fear in the face of the rise of women...

… A fear that the feminist movement of the 1970s did not have the primary objective of appeasement: distrusting diversity even within its ranks, in particular to protect itself from the "division of associative labour" (assuming that men would be tempted to reproduce the classic patterns and take the lead in the movement instead of giving women the full right to speak out and have power over their lives), He stands up above all against patriarchy. And men feel targeted: what is directly called into question are the "privileges" that society grants to their sex!

While "parity" is making its entrance...

So, when the equality movement once again accepted the presence of men in its own ranks, from the 1990s onwards, the question was posed in new terms: diversity, yes, but under what conditions?

Because in fact, women are now where they were not found three or four decades ago: the majority of them work, some are elected in communities or assemblies, they enter the government, give voice – and not just pleasant face – in the media...

100% male spaces are becoming scarcer (without completely disappearing and without at the same time, traditionally female spaces being as much invested by men); And from the strict point of view of diversity seen as a principle of mixing, 1 woman among x men, we can already consider that it is mixed. Even if the cocktail is sometimes a little-a lot diluted. So you will have to rebalance the proportions of the recipe!

And parity was created, which is nothing more than a quota: the French law of June 2000 imposes, for all list elections, a proportion of 50% women and a "chabadada" distribution in the order of the list. This is an obligation of means, leaving the political parties the choice of entrusting the more or less "winnable" constituencies to un.es and others.

Other options are possible: the Copé-Zimmermann scheme on the share of women on the boards of directors of large companies aims lower in the figures (40%) but imposes an obligation to achieve results: it will have to be achieved, one way or another, by 2017!

Quota systems are disturbing (the EVE blog will come back to this shortly), but they are proving to be a major contribution to the discourse on equality: they set in stone the idea that it is towards "effective equality" that we must strive.

… Diversity returns in the guise of "diversity"

In the meantime, the notion of diversity has left the sole field of gender equality to address the issue of all forms of discrimination and, above all, segregation.

We speak of "social mix", "cultural mix", "religious mix", etc., most often to denounce its absence and the gaps in access to opportunities that it implies.

The lack of diversity in certain territorial spaces (for example, the neighborhoods of a city) or symbolic spaces (for example, spaces of power) challenge privileged "self-contained" spaces to open up.

In the world of work as well as in the political field, the tendency to "clone profiles", the result of both an unconscious preference for the "same" and more or less assumed practices of co-optation, is designated as a factor in the loss of opportunity for the "different".

The "gender diversity" approach and its expected benefits

This loss of opportunity for individuals defined as "different" (in terms of the "norm" observed, if not the right rule) is soon perceived as a loss of opportunity for society as a whole... Who deprives himself of talent (what Condorcet, Stuart Mill or Stendhal already said a century or two ago about women), in this case talents who have very particular qualities: those of the "outsiders".

Like Tom Thumb, the outsider is reputed to be agile and ingénieux.se, clever and resourceful, inventif.ve and sagacious when he or she masters the art of taking side roads to get around obstacles.

A new approach to gender diversity stems from this, closer to the notion of "gender diversity" in the Anglo-Saxon fashion than to the spirit of the French Republicans of the nineteenth century. Inherited from the fight for civil rights and its extensions in the struggle for the representation of ethno-racial minorities in the United States, this conception synthesizes the demand for justice and the very pragmatic interest in making room for the "different".

First, to appease the social climate, when the demands of minorities (or women, who are not numerically in the minority, are treated as such) growl. Then to benefit from all that the "other" can bring because of his difference: difference of profile, difference of background, difference of point of view, difference of culture, difference of experience, difference of sensitivity...

A mix detached from the ideal of equality?

A whole rhetoric of diversity as a factor of innovation, of increasing the quality of decision-making processes and ultimately of performance has been put in place since the early 2000s... And it has been a great success, especially in the business world, which finds it easier to find its elements of language than in more ideological speeches.

But the argument, although enthusiastic if only because it convinced many decision-makers to take real measures in favor of diversity, was soon confronted with a fundamental criticism: while waiting for the "different" to bring about change, were we not forcing it to constantly demonstrate its usefulness? Are we not condemning him to remain in his position of "different" without shaking up the idea of the "same"?

Are we not contributing to essentializing one's qualities, at the risk of sacrificing the ideal of universality on the altar of a complementarity that would assign roles to un.es and to others, without allowing each to express all his or her singularity?

In the end, is there not a risk of achieving diversity without equality, when we could go so far as to find it advantageous to perpetuate certain differences in treatment in the name of a kind of "necessary discomfort" conducive to the dynamics of mobilization and change? The question is deliberately provocative, but so posed so that we remember that the opposite of equality is not difference, but inequalities. In other words, that it is possible to simultaneously value the specificities of each person and to guarantee everyone the same opportunities to fulfill a chosen destiny.