Let’s Discuss: DEI in 2026

This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

There’s an interesting op-ed in the NYT (gift link) from Joanne Lipman, author of That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together. She collects the various ways companies are backing away from DEI initiatives in order to please the current administration. She also notes that “reversing progress on gender equality and women’s rights” is part of the autocrat’s playbook. There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s discuss…

• how have DEI initiatives changed at your company in the past few years, if at all?
• in what small (or big) ways do you feel affected, personally?
• (I wonder if different generations of women have different opinions here — do you feel more affected if you’re, say, under 35, and less affected if you’re over a certain age?)
• do you agree with a recent report that women in the workplace have “less career support and fewer opportuities to advance”? have you seen more “masculine energy” at your place of work?
• what are your thoughts on the way forward?

In a few different alumni groups that I’m involved with, the trend (both within the group as well as reports from inside the university) has been more along the lines of “we’re removing the letters DEI to placate the administration, but nothing else is actually changing.” But, for example, the administration recently sued Coca Cola for hosting a women’s retreat (gift link to WaPo), alleging it discrminiated against men… so maybe just changing names won’t be enough.

Some choice quotes from the article (again, here’s a gift link to read the whole thing…)

The Trump administration has defined “illegal D.E.I.” as “programs, initiatives or policies that discriminate, exclude or divide individuals based on race or sex.” But in practice, President Trump’s allies have questioned whether women deserve a place in the work force at all. They have blamed women for last year’s California wildfires and slammed the conservative Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a “D.E.I. hire” for a ruling they didn’t like. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is purging the military of senior female officers after complaining that the armed forces had become “effeminate.” Women’s names have disappeared from museums, parks, monuments and even the Arlington National Cemetery.

She notes that a number of companies say they’re still advancing diversity, but that no one will talk about it.

It may seem perfectly reasonable, even admirable, for companies to keep their mouths shut as they continue to advance diversity goals. After all, nobody wants to be a target. In previous years, too many companies went overboard, with lots of cheap talk about diversity and not enough action. The problem is that silencing the conversation risks undoing years of progress at a time when women are still underrepresented in business and public life. As women are erased from the narrative, injustices against them go unnoticed.

How has this been affecting women in the workplace? Last year, she reports, an annual report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org “found that women have ‘less career support and fewer opportunities to advance.’” She also notes that Mark Zuckerberg, at least, now says companies need more “masculine energy.”

(As the mom to a teen boy I like to think of this as having Axe body spray pumped into the bathrooms, but… that’s probably not what they mean.)

In the op-ed she also talks about how other marginalized groups have been affected, and how this reversal of progress has played out in other countries through the ages when under authoritarian rule. I recommend you read all of the relatively short op-ed; lots of food for thought.