Join EqualiSea founder for a free panel on strategically increasing diversity in business

Join EqualiSea founder Martha Burwell at a free panel for Seattle Startup Week with 6 Seattleites who are experts on diversity, and learn how to make your startup or workplace welcoming and inclusive for all types of people.

When: Tuesday, October 27 3-4pm
Where: Seattle Impact Hub 220 2nd Ave South 98104 (main event space)
Cost: Free! But you must register in advance via Seattle Startup Week.

Good for Business and the World: Building Diversity into your startup

Data shows that having a diverse* team is good for both business and social equity.  Yet, it’s something that very rarely just happens.  Our unintentional default, in fact, tends to be to surround ourselves with people just like us—to stick to our social circles. 

Entrepreneurs have the unique opportunity to intentionally design their business foundation and culture to be welcoming and attractive to many types of people. This panel will discuss strategic ways to build inclusion into your new venture, from defining core values to hiring staff.  Join us – and let’s think outside of the circle. 

*our definition of diversity is broad, covering such areas as ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ, age, background, socioeconomic status, and more.

Moderator: Martha Burwell

Martha Burwell is an independent consultant who specializes in sustainable project design and gender-balanced teams. She is based in Seattle and works with nonprofits and small businesses. She also blogs about intersectional gender equity in Seattle at www.EqualiSea.org. An avid traveler, she’s visited over 30 countries and lived and volunteered in 4. See www.marthaburwell.com for more details.

 

Speakers:

Elayne Wylie

Elayne Wylie is an event producer, educator, and filmmaker who trains business professionals in workplace equality. Elayne has also served as the chair of the Seattle Regional Affiliate with Out & Equal, Workplace Equality Associates, and is the current Board Chair of Gender Justice League. She is also a professional filmmaker, trained at the UW in journalism and documentary film. She has a passion for volunteerism and community service, and enjoys roadtripping the Pacific Northwest.

Matthew EchoHawk-Hayashi

Matthew Hayashi is the principal organization development and leadership consultant for Headwater People. They help brilliant people do transformational work and offer a variety of strategic consulting services such as organization learning, strategic planning, change management, process design, and executive coaching. His passion is to help connect groups to the core mission of their work through collaborative and innovation and whole organizational health. Matthew and his wife and children make their home in Seattle, Washington.

Elizabeth Scallon

Elizabeth Scallon is the Associate Director of CoMotion Incubator for the University of Washington’s CoMotion, which focuses on nurturing UW startup companies from innovation to impact. Elizabeth spent part of her early career as a Lab Manager and Research Associate at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and more recently held a position as the Senior Operations Manager for VLST Corporation, a biotech firm in Seattle researching novel approaches to autoimmune diseases.
She holds volunteer position as the Chief Operations Officer for HiveBio Community Lab, Vice President of Pygmy Survival Alliance, and is on the Board of Trustees for the World Affairs Council of Seattle.

Ruchika Tulshyan

Ruchika Tulshyan is the author of The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality In The Workplace (Forbes, 2015). Ruchika co-found a business in Singapore, where she's from and also led content marketing strategy at a Seattle-based startup before deciding to get back to writing full-time. Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time and Bloomberg, among other media. Ruchika has reported from six cities across four countries. She holds degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics.

Eric Osborne

Eric Osborne is Co-Founder of Here Seattle a non-profit networking and professional organization for underrepresented minorities.   He is actively working with minorities and companies within the tech and creative industries to create more opportunities and inclusion for underrepresented minorities in the Greater Seattle area.  He is transplant from Florida by way of Los Angeles and is an avid  reader, reading at least a book a week.

Change the system, not the women, argues Caroline Fredrickson

Caroline Fredrickson’s grandmother came to the USA on a boat from Sweden over 100 years ago.  She came alone, with no money, no friends, and no English language skills.  She worked as a scullery maid, “scrubbing pots and pans until her fingers bled.”  She faced sexual harassment, no overtime pay or sick days, extremely long hours, and wage theft. 

Surely, we’ve come a long way since then.  Surely, our workers are treated better, and have more rights. 

Some do.  But definitely not all. 

Caroline Fredrickson is challenging the “Lean In” model.  Last week in downtown Seattle, I attended an American Constitution Society event where she was speaking, and was seated in a sea of lawyers, most of whom were women.

The event centered around Fredrickson’s book, “Under the Bus: How Working Women Are being Run Over,” in which she argues that though having a ‘self help book” (her words) such as Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, has some great ideas, it’s not nearly enough for most women. 

Lean In states that women should speak up for themselves, and that they can also ‘opt-out’ and stay at home if they desire.  But “most women can’t do either of those things” stated Fredrickson. “We need to have a different conversation,” because there are many people whose jobs fall outside of even the most basic labor laws. 

How is this possible?

1.  Labor laws hold a legacy of slavery

Many of our U.S. labor laws were created in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries.   Think of what congress looked like at that time.  Roosevelt was president during the passage of several significant labor bills, and had to negotiate with congress members who adamantly refused to give certain people (read: people of color) equal rights.  Congressional records show US representatives in the 1930s and 40s referring to African-American servants as “God’s gift to the South” that should not be taken away.  A clear legacy of slavery and white entitlement. So Roosevelt negotiated.  And a lot of people got left out of those laws, in particular service industry and farm workers.

2.  Women’s work was not considered “real work” when labor laws were created

Common sentiment in political leadership at the time (which still lingers today) did not consider jobs like housekeeping and childcare "real" work, mainly because white men did not typically have to do that work.  So again, that work was not regulated.  And we see that reflected today in the lack of humane working conditions for jobs such as childcare, housekeeping, and home care workers, in which the majority of workers are women, particularly women of color.

3.  There are significant loopholes for businesses to deny worker rights, such as exemptions for small businesses, part time workers, and contractors.

2013.21.09_17.52_2858.jpg by Raido is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

“In reality,” Fredrickson explained, “the basic safety nets that we think all people have access to are often denied, particularly to people of color and women, because they fall outside the legal definition of employee.” Overtime, protection from harassment, paid sick time, paid leave—in the U.S., these can be denied from a very large percentage of the workforce.  The kicker: they are denied legally, because the Fair Labor Standards Act has significant exemptions. For example, benefits can be denied if an employee works less than 30 hours per week, so a common technique is to have many employees at 29 hours per week. Contractors are also exempt, and the definition is hazy. For example, you may be familiar with the lawsuit earlier this year that Uber and Lyft drivers brought against their employers. And again, people of color and women are impacted the most, because they hold the majority of low-pay, low-status jobs.

4.  The American workplace has not caught up with the rest of the world in treating workers like humans

“The (American) workplace is structured for some kind of robot man…we never really grappled with the idea that people have outside responsibilities.”  In other words, we haven’t built the legal or business infrastructure to support real people.  The USA and Papua New Guinea are the only countries in the world without some kind of paid parental leave.  Our strongest law is the feeble Family and Medical Leave Act, with 12 weeks of unpaid leave for businesses larger than 50 employees.  In reality, 40% of workers in our country don’t even qualify.  Being unpaid, even if you do qualify, many people can’t afford to take it.  We’re still “treating workers like widgets,” as Fredrickson put it.  And, unsurprisingly, women are the ones who are impacted the most by this, as they still hold a majority of family responsibilities that require time off.

5. Lately, the most progress has been seen at the local level. 

The past several years, it’s been tough to get bills passed in congress.  “We used to dream big,” lamented Fredrickson.  In the mid-20th century, we *almost* passed laws that would provide free childcare to all (!), and better working conditions nation-wide, she explained. But now, action is happening at the local level.  Seattle is pretty awesome in having passed the $15 minimum wage.  Other cities and localities are taking note.  But conservative groups are also paying attention, and responding.

6.  The linchpin: Conservative groups are attempting to block progressive laws by
deciding on state judges.

This was the cumulative moment in Fredrickson’s speech.  This is where it all comes together. 

The Temple of Justice, Home to Washington's State Supreme Court by Harvey Barrison
 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Imagine it’s time for your state to elect their judges.  Enter wealthy, conservative groups such as ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), who want to make sure a judge that will rule more in their favor will be elected.  They throw huge amounts of money into the campaigns they support.  They run smear ads on judges they don’t support.  More progressive judges begin to rule more conservatively, so that they won’t be the target of those ads, and so that they can be elected again.  The elections are held, and it’s clear that money does influence the outcome. 

Those judges then help determine laws that decide the fate of the entire state.  And the most dangerous thing of all—they may pass “preemptive laws” which essentially mandate that local city governments can’t make more progressive laws than the state law.  If Washington State had had a preemptive law on minimum wage, Seattle would never have been able to pass the historical $15 bill, that is now affecting cities worldwide. That’s not to say that progressive interest groups don’t also put money into elections, but recent events have shown that conservative groups are willing to spend huge amounts, and it’s working. 

7. The solution is hazy

I thoroughly enjoyed Fredrickson’s analysis of the legal state of laws that impact workers.  However, I was left unclear of what a solution would be.  Does it mean changing how we elect state judges?  Or refocusing on national laws?  Or something else altogether? I’m not sure.  I look forward to reading the book and I hope that there are also solution ideas for this urgent problem.