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Feminism: chat

Understanding Majority culture or pandering to it?

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Notcreativeatall · 04/05/2022 09:10

I've worked throughout my career in a very male dominated industry/environment- generally American firms but also Japanese firm/Swiss/English.
The whole diversity/inclusion agenda at work seems based on understanding the minorities- eg courses on being inclusive to women, LGBT+, Autistic etc, minority ethnic groups etc - i do generally appreciate these and think they are coming from the right place etc. However (with one exception) we don't see any explanation of the majority culture- eg what does it take to succeed..how are you being judged /rewarded etc
I can't work out whether teaching people about the culture they are working in is pandering to that culture or just giving people tool to get by- i think the latter.

So for example most of the places I work have a certain degree of self assessment in performance review and expecting people to demonstrate ambition etc for promotion- i mentor people who do not naturally do this- they think good work should shine through - in some cases that it is pushy to put yourself forward- that ambition is crass etc so they don't do it- i do believe this but i also know this isn't how the firms i work with act- management will try and look through/take culture into background etc (i used to work somewhere that automatically uplifted the performance grades in one office as they were known to be on average lower than other countries) - but I also think you need to understand the culture in which you are working and the "rules" - i mentor people and I try and help them see how they can use the rules but not compromise their inherent beliefs but I do worry that I am just helping to maintain the majority culture and re-enforcing that it is right

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