There was once a running joke at the Paris offices of beauty giant L’Oréal: that the company’s world-renowned products for women were, in fact, successful thanks to a handful of men.
In the 1980s, women were barely visible – representing only 27% of executive-level positions – at a company that famously told them, “You’re worth it.”
Today, the French beauty empire has bridged the gender gap. In 2023, it was recognized for the sixth straight year by the Bloomberg gender equality index. It has also come to terms with the fact that diversity is no laughing matter.
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President Donald Trump’s assault on programs to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion in federal agencies has found no echo in Europe. But the continent has a long way to go in this field.
“Diversity is still not an easy subject to bring up in business,” said Jean-Claude Le Grand, chief human resources officer at L’Oréal, during a diversity conference at its Paris headquarters last month. “It took us a long time to get here, but we’ve come a long way.”
Now, all that hard work in Europe to improve workplace diversity is being challenged. U.S. President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders to dismantle diversity programming across U.S. federal agencies, and suggested that private companies would be wise to follow suit.
Mr. Trump’s scrapping of DEI policies has opened the door for a rollback of such efforts in Europe. Are European businesses inclined to step through it?
No backtracking on DEI
Though there is no legal mandate to reduce private funding or programming allocated to diversity, European companies awarded U.S. government contracts will be under pressure to follow Mr. Trump’s directives.
Other European businesses, without U.S. links, are obliged to follow European DEI regulations, and appear to be doing so.
Germany’s national railway Deutsche Bahn, for example, said in an email that, as a state-owned company, its policy was to remain politically neutral. One human resources director at a global medical manufacturing company said the firm had not yet taken a public stance regarding Mr. Trump.
“We’re a publicly traded company, and we shouldn’t” weigh in, says the employee, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It’s bad business, when all you want to do is make sure everyone can use your products.”
Some European business leaders sense that the rug may be pulled out from under them just when they are getting comfortable with diversity programming. DEI consultants say the pressure to tackle inclusion issues really took off in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
That doesn’t mean businesses are backtracking, though. In Germany, corporate leaders have been concerned by both Mr. Trump and the influence of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which came second in recent parliamentary elections, but Siemens, Deutsche Bank, and Mercedes-Benz have all said that they do not plan to roll back any diversity initiatives.
“There’s a strong conviction from companies that diversity makes firm economic sense,” says Reinhard Hönighaus, a partner at FGS Global, a communications and public affairs consultancy firm with branches in Germany and the United States. “It’s not just a question of investors, stock price, or even reputation. It’s about upholding the basic values of the company, and that means being inclusive.”
“European businesses are already living with diversity. It’s a reality,” says Yazid Sabeg, a French businessman and the commissioner for diversity and equal opportunities under the Sarkozy administration in 2008. “We’ve come too far to go backwards.”
Still a long way to go
But diversity and inclusion efforts in Europe still lag behind their U.S. counterparts. Only 7% of European companies have a DEI strategy in place, according to a study last year by EY, a consultancy, compared with 60% of U.S. companies.
That is partly to do with the discomfort that people still feel about the topic of diversity in Europe’s workplaces. The continent continues to grapple with how to integrate its rising, ethnically diverse immigrant populations. Many see the diversity discussion as an unwelcome “woke” American import.
“In Europe, people are so sick of hearing the word ‘diversity,’ that the moment I use it [in my trainings] I immediately see people’s discomfort,” says Olla Jongerius, the founder of BeamReach Inclusion, a DEI consultancy firm with clients such as Amazon and LinkedIn. “People who see DEI negatively say it is part of the cancel culture. If you use the wrong word, especially if you’re a white male, you’re canceled.”
The issue is particularly complex for businesses because in Europe, talking about diversity at work is not only fraught; it can be illegal. Under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which protects citizens’ privacy, an individual’s explicit consent is required to collect personal information such as ethnic origin or sexual orientation. In France, collecting data about ethnicity has been banned since 1978.
Legislation on diversity does exist, but little is streamlined across the bloc. In 2004, France introduced Europe’s first diversity charter, and since then, employers representing over 17 million workers across Europe have committed to incorporating diversity into their businesses or organizations.
The EU has also passed 16 pieces of legislation on gender equity since 1970. Spain, Italy, Germany, and France have set hiring quotas for people with disabilities.
It’s the bottom line that counts
But race and ethnicity remain touchy subjects. Currently, there is no Europe-wide data showing how those factors affect the way people are treated at work.
“In public conversation in companies in Europe, we would not use the word ‘white’ or ‘Black’ to describe someone,” says Michael Privot, a private DEI consultant based in Belgium and the former director of the nonprofit European Network Against Racism. “We signed the charter for diversity 20 years ago, and we still don’t know how to talk about race.”
European business leaders are navigating their own paths to discussing diversity. The European Network Against Racism encourages companies to create anonymous opt-in surveys to talk about ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. That data is set against data from the general population to make diversity assessments.
Others say the key is finding terminology that resonates with European companies when talking about DEI. Ms. Jongerius, the consultant, hones in on the benefits of creating an equitable work culture in order to increase innovation and productivity.
“You have to focus on business benefits and how to increase well-being,” says Ms. Jongerius, “That’s the language they speak.”
