As the world marks International Women’s Day, Meagan Barrera sounds the alarm on the systemic harm Big Tech is inflicting on gender equality under the guise of innovation. 

Announcements from US tech companies like Amazon and Google gutting their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, made waves around the world in early January. Meta, which makes billions of dollars in profits from its users, went even further. By weakening content moderation on gender, moving its chief diversity officer out of the role, and efforts to increase racial and gender diversity among suppliers and managers, the company is laying the groundwork for deeper systemic discrimination – with real implications for all users.

These decisions don’t just roll back progress - they actively endanger women, girls, and LGBTQI+ communities, both in the workplace and online.

With the dust now settled around these announcements, the sector’s move away from decades of progress to make the virtual world safer for those marginalised in the physical one, and new technologies more responsive to their billions of diverse users, requires some clear-eyed cost/benefit analysis.

It’s also going to require some leadership by business and investors who recognize the short-sightedness of these moves – both for their own bottom lines and for the world they will contribute to creating. As we reflect on the new approaches of Big Tech to gender equality on International Women’s Day, it is critical that we consider the role the private sector can play in realizing a more just and equitable society – or its opposite.

The flimsy business case for discrimination and anti-DEI initiatives 

Although framed as efforts to promote “fairness” and protect “freedom of expression,” there can be no question that Big Tech’s recent changes will achieve the opposite: further entrenching discriminatory norms and deepening inequalities.

Meta’s abandonment of content moderation immediately sparked concern among human rights groups and digital rights experts alike that these shifts will both facilitate the spread of disinformation and contribute to the proliferation of hate speech and discrimination against women and LGBTQI+ people, who already face disproportionate levels  of online violence, hate speech and harassment. The new policy will now, for example, allow content that argues for “gender-based limitations in military, law enforcement and teaching jobs.” It will also seemingly allow posts alleging that LGBTQI+ people suffer from mental illness or abnormality.

This seems both unethical and potentially disastrous for the business model: women, LGBTQI+ people and other underrepresented communities currently make up more than of half the user bases of companies like Meta, Google and Amazon.

Even if the moral case for stronger content moderation policies can’t be won in tech company boardrooms at the moment, these shifts are objectively at odds with core elements of their consumer base.

A similar argument might be made for those corporations now hell bent on abandoning long-held commitments to DEI. Research has repeatedly demonstrated the business case for diversity in the workforce. Companies with a diverse workforce are 39% more likely to outperform those with the least amount of diversity. DEI programmes are also crucial to attracting and retaining workers, with a majority of US workers indicating that focusing on DEI at work is a good thing.

For tech companies, basic commitment to DEI in the workplace is more than a nice to have – it’s an essential input to ensuring high quality outputs. As Meta said in its 2021 Diversity Report, “[c]onnecting the world takes people with different backgrounds and points of view to build products that work better for everyone. This means building a workforce that reflects the diversity of the people we serve.” Diversity in product design and development teams ensures a variety of perspectives involved from the start of these processes. This limits the risks of bringing products to market that discriminate against certain groups by design or that simply don’t serve their interests, making them much less likely to open their pocketbooks.

Investing in exclusion

For tech investors, too, this should be a wake-up call: the backlash against DEI and gender equality represents a salient material risk for both tech companies and those that provide their capital.

Long-term tech investors are now exposed to potential erosion of profits and social capital of their investee companies over time. This is because of growing negative consumer sentiment from people who will be affected by these measures – including the women and other vulnerable groups making up more than half the user and consumer base of these social media and e-commerce companies. Alienating these audiences will inevitably impact user engagement, advertising revenues and sales. Investors must demand data on how the new policies undermining DEI affect consumer sentiment and loyalty.

Toxic work environments created by the rollback of DEI programs also risk fostering dissatisfaction, reducing productivity, and making companies less competitive. Over the past 10 years we’ve recorded at least 165 news items related to gender and labour rights in the tech sector in our database. What do calls to bring more “masculine energy” and aggression to the workplace mean for women and LGBTQI+ workers who are already facing unsafe environments? Nothing good for the bottom line.  Investors should continue to push companies to adopt policies and practices that will attract and retain top talent that includes diverse perspectives.

In an era of heightened public scrutiny, companies which regress on gender and equity risk becoming targets of boycotts, bad press and public outrage. Investors cannot afford to be complicit in decisions that erode trust and brand value and contribute to technology that fails to respond to the needs of half its user base.

Despite challenges, some investors are making this clear – including Apple shareholders recently voting in favour of keeping the company’s DEI policies in place. Greater numbers are needed to protect liberties and online safety for all: investors interrogating investee companies on due diligence carried out before pulling protections can be a powerful antidote to Big Tech’s new – and dangerous – approaches.