Diversity

The key to inclusion is understanding who your employees really are, particularly those in underrepresented groups. One of the best practices for this is to segment employee engagement survey results by minority groups.

Many organizations conduct employee engagement surveys, but most neglect to segment the data they collect by criteria such as gender, ethnicity, generation, geography, and role in the organization. By only looking at the total numbers, employers miss out on opportunities to identify issues among smaller groups that could be leading to employee turnover, as the views of the majority overpower those of minorities.

Harajuku has become a catwalk for jendaresu-kei (or "genderless style"). Although women who dress in a more stereotypically masculine way may also identify as "genderless," in Japan, the term jendaresu-kei refers to males who are not interested in the typical male dress code of dark suits and dress shoes.

Matching colorfully patterned fabrics and fingernails with "kawaii" (cute) hats and purses, they signal a vibrant new masculine style. But they may also represent wider changes in the way male roles are perceived in Japanese society. 

The trend of young men eschewing Japan's navy blue suits is outlasting the fast cycles of the fashion industry. As a lifestyle, signs of genderlessness are also evident among men far removed from the Harajuku scene.

A Japanese medical school has been accused of manipulating the test scores of female applicants for years to artificially depress the number of women in the student body, a scandal that has triggered sharp criticism.

The revelations have highlighted institutional barriers that women in Japan still face as they pursue work in fields that have long been dominated by men.

Tokyo Medical University reduced the test scores of women to keep their numbers at about 30 percent of entering classes. For the 2018 school year, 8.8 percent of men and 2.9 percent of women were accepted, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying that school administrators justified the practice out of the belief that women were more likely to drop out of the profession after marriage or childbirth.

In most American families led by couples, both parents are in the workforce. At the same time, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. children are being raised by single moms. Yet child care is generally unaffordable and paid leave is not available to most U.S. parents.

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act in the U.S. did mandate 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave for some American workers. Yet most families can’t forgo the income that moms bring home.

In Denmark, moms get almost 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and dads get two weeks of paid paternity leave. On top of that, couples get up to a total 32 weeks of parental leave, which parents can split.

Once upon a time, the American dream was built on the ideal that hard work leads to success. But today, with the rise of technology, the message has become: work all the time or you will fail, Melinda Gates argued in her first column on LinkedIn. 

This workaholic culture is particularly harmful to women, Gates writes, because women are still being told by society that home care and child care is up to them as well. She explained:

"We’re sending our daughters into a workplace designed for our dads... The American workplace was set up based on the assumption that employees had partners who would stay home to do the unpaid work of caring for family and tending to the house. Of course, that wasn’t always true back then, and it definitely isn’t today."