Social Movements Like #MeToo Have Changed The Workplace

The missing piece in diversity and inclusion efforts

Diversity and Inclusion have become a major focus for organizations and human resource professionals over the last decade. This emerging focus has been driven by the dual forces of increased awareness about gender and racial inequity as well as research showing that more diverse teams outperform. At the same time, social movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have heightened societal awareness about the need for greater social justice.

It was with this context in mind that Blueprint at the University of British Columbia, an NGO dedicated to thought leadership on masculinity and its impact on society, conducted a major study in the United States and Canada to explore how movements like #MeToo and Time’sUp (and the discussions they helped foster) have changed the workplace.

The study involved focus groups with seventy-one men and women in senior leadership positions within mid-large-sized companies plus a representative quantitative survey of 1,402 Americans and 1,007 Canadians working in companies of fifty or more. We explored a range of topics related to gender equity, relationships between genders, perceptions of equity/inclusion behaviors before and after these movements as well as attitudes towards being allies for many historically disadvantaged groups. We also examined the perceived effectiveness of different intervention strategies to accelerate inclusion. While we attempted to explore the experience of non-binary persons in the workplace, our respondent numbers were inadequate to generalize our findings so we will focus here on the binary of men and women at work. You can find the full report for the U.S. and Canadian reports here, but in this article, we want to focus on what we learned about men and male leaders since much of the focus on inclusion aims to create change in this cohort.

What we discovered was heartening and offered insight into how organizations can make even more progress. The headline of our findings might read: Men have changed, women have changed even more and if we want men to be even more supportive of gender equity/inclusion, we need them to both listen more and have the chance to speak more.

First, the good news is that men have in fact changed and not just by their own self-report, but as perceived by their female colleagues. While it is clear we have more progress to make, men report being more likely to speak out for gender equity, challenge inappropriate behavior at work, and express a strong commitment to pay equity while reporting a growing personal commitment to becoming allies for women, people of all races and ethnicities, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Men in leadership roles are more likely to sponsor or advocate for women at work than before these movements. Even more encouraging is that while all generations agree that younger workers are more engaged on inclusion issues than older workers, it turns out that their attitudes and perceived behaviors aren’t significantly different. The progress men are making crosses generations.

While it is clear men have changed (or, have at least started to), our study also found them less confident, more cautious, and feeling that their voice is not as welcomed in the equity conversation. Frankly, some cautiousness among men is a good thing as men need to be a lot more aware of the ways we may be contributing to less inclusive workplaces. Still, there was a strong undertone in our research that men want to be part of the equity conversation in a more fulsome way.

One of the most interesting findings is that men generally perceive other men as more misogynistic and less likely to advocate for equity and inclusion than they themselves. This matters because if men believe that other men are less committed to an inclusive workplace, they will be less likely to speak up and challenge others. In our focus groups, we explored whether inappropriate sexual comments/jokes had decreased meaningfully or simply gone underground. Sadly, the general feeling was more towards the latter. When asked about speaking up to challenge such behaviors, one young male leader said “sometimes, but you don’t want to be THAT guy.” We think one of the most powerful uses of our study is to help men see that most of their male colleagues want change. Maybe it is time we step up to be “that guy”.

Based on the findings of our study and work over many years with teams in business, athletics, and the protective services (military, fire, and police), we believe the missing piece in diversity and inclusion work, and the key to accelerating progress, is to create safe spaces for men to both to hear about the experiences of other genders, races, and sexual preferences while also giving them the opportunity to dialogue with each other about the challenges of leading in a more diverse workplace.

One of the questions we asked in our study was whether there was a need for specific programs to help male leaders become more inclusive. Over seven in ten women and over six in ten men agreed this was an important step. Our work with companies like Heineken in Mexico revealed that developing programs for male leaders to openly discuss their own experiences can be an important accelerator of progress, and our work with leaders generally, has shown time and again that when people who have privilege connect to their own experiences of exclusion, they are more likely to have empathy for the exclusionary experiences of others.

Our study showed that almost eight in ten workplaces in the United States and Canada are conducting formal initiatives aimed at greater inclusion. When we asked participants to assess their effectiveness, we found that both male and female respondents believe these efforts to have been effective. Men rated Employee Resource Groups and Team Building Efforts at the top of the list. Initiatives like Unconscious Bias Training and Diversity Training had the highest ineffectiveness numbers among men. We think framing initiatives as “opportunities” to hear the experiences of other groups and to listen to the experiences of others will be most effective with men. Of particular interest to HR professionals is that support for Equity Quotas was weak among almost all groups and had the weakest support with 47% of respondents saying this was an ineffective way to address equity and only 42% seeing them as effective.

Although there has been progress, about 10-13% of men in the United States and 4-6% in Canada expressed a backlash to these social movements. They feel that movements like #MeToo have made workplaces more toxic, creating difficulties for genders to work together. These men say they are even less committed to equity and inclusion than before.

One of the most powerful moments in one of the focus groups occurred when two distinct camps were formed. One group of men and women felt that social movements had catalyzed positive change and the other, also comprising both genders, felt they had exaggerated the exclusionary experiences of women. When a man from this latter group noted, “These things happen in Hollywood, not where I work,” a woman that had agreed with him earlier that the movements had a toxic effect, suddenly revealed a litany of all the negative behaviors and attitudes she had experienced over the years as a woman. The virtual room fell silent. Opportunities for men to hear about the experiences of other genders are critical if we want to progress further. We think that organizations need to help foster this kind of dialogue both between genders as well as within gender groups.

In conclusion, our study shows that social movements, and the conversations they’ve generated, have helped shift men at work towards support for gender equity and inclusion. If we are going to make greater progress and want to see lasting change, we will need for men to keep listening whilst creating opportunities for them to talk about their own struggles within the male culture.