Diversity

Increased Diversity can enhance Equity and Inclusion. At the same time, deepening Equity (recognizing and addressing barriers) and Inclusion (ensuring all feel respected and have the conditions to succeed) must occur alongside increasing Diversity.

The benefits of Diversity have been widely documented. Here is a selection of commentaries and studies:

  • Diversity is indispensable to excellence: The Canada Research Chairs program, by Malinda S. Smith (The Conversation Canada, August 27, 2019)

    “The diversity of a team can help drive and shape research questions, methods and perspectives. Diverse teams tend to be smarter, demonstrate fewer biases and errors, make better decisions and generate research with greater impact…. But unequal opportunity structures in Canada’s research ecosystem, and academia more broadly, can limit the diversity of talent cultivation, identification, nomination, selection and appointment to coveted positions.”

  • Diversifying collaboration networks to increase equity in psychology, by Erica Hsiung Wojcik (Nature Reviews Psychology, January 12, 2022)

    “Researcher assumptions and perspectives shape research questions, experimental design, study populations, and data analysis and interpretation. By working with collaborators with different lived experiences, researchers can do better science.”

  • These labs are remarkably diverse — here’s why they’re winning at science, by Kendall Powell (Nature, June 6, 2018)

    “It’s science’s job to provide solutions for diverse communities…, so science must ‘reflect a diversity that comes from outside the ivory tower’.”

  • Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable — and That’s Why They Perform Better, by David Rock, Heidi Grant, and Jacqui Grey (Harvard Business Review, September 22, 2016)

    “A 2009 analysis of 506 companies found that firms with more racial or gender diversity had more sales revenue, more customers, and greater profits. A 2016 analysis of more than 20,000 firms in 91 countries found that companies with more female executives were more profitable. In a 2011 study management teams exhibiting a wider range of educational and work backgrounds produced more-innovative products…. In a 2006 study of mock juries… when Black people were added to the jury, white jurors processed the case facts more carefully and deliberated more effectively.”

Ready to think more deeply about institutionalized Diversity and Inclusion policies? On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, by Sara Ahmed

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