News
From Gender Equality to Racial Equality
How lessons from UNESCO’s gender equality success can apply in overcoming systemic racism challenges
By Gulser Corat and Roberta Sydney
Brutal incidents of police bias and recent protests of social justice movements have laid bare the pervasiveness of systemic racism. Covid 19 has pulled back the covers further on these biases by showing the disproportionate deadly impact on black and brown lives. When the slaves were freed in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th amendment, blacks held 1% of wealth in the United States. In 2020, blacks still only possess 1% of the wealth in the US. Increasingly, as with the ESG movement, the private sector is performing a critical self-examination of its practices, and many corporations are committing to change for the good of their employees, their bottom line, and society. To compete globally, companies need to address these issues and make radical changes to embrace talent inclusively.
Are there lessons from UNESCO, a complex global organization, which took steps to embrace gender equality in its programmes and gender parity in its staffing and moved from 9% in 2004 to 51% by 2017 of women in decision-making roles? How can corporations around the globe understand these lessons and adapt them to overcome the challenges of systemic racism?
Race and Gender
Race and gender are social constructs that reflect the predominant societal prejudices. They both have seemingly biological underpinnings which themselves are social constructs. And crucially, both are used to attribute, justify, and defend the superiority of one group over another.
In that sense, they are the manifestation of the same desire to maintain an unequal arrangement. When challenged, that desire turns into a strong backlash. As Clay Shirky once quipped, for those who are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Taking on these challenges requires a solid strategy and an effort to avoid specific pitfalls.
This article summarizes how Gulser Corat and her Gender Equality (GE) team at UNESCO transformed the Organization through gender equality. The article also describes how deploying these strategies of alliance building, evidence disseminating, and progress monitoring can work to effect positive change in achieving racial equality.
Lessons from UNESCO’s Gender Equality Strategy
After joining UNESCO and becoming its first Director of Gender Equality, Gulser Corat developed a multifaceted strategy with the goal of integrating a gender equality lens into all its activities. Since culture and tone from the top are key, the first step was to ensure that a regulatory framework was in place. In 2007, after relentless advocacy, Gender Equality became one of the two global priorities of UNESCO, a 2,800 person worldwide organization at that time.
Building Alliances and Finding Influencers
Once leadership embraced the gender equality goal, the next step toward implementation was to build alliances and cultivate GE champions and influencers among the Secretariat and representatives from UNESCO’s 195 Member States.
To win over the hearts and minds within the Secretariat and UNESCO’s field offices, Corat developed a comprehensive training program regarding unconscious bias and gender equality. Although the training became available online in 2008, they chose to train each staff member in person which allowed them to identify potential allies and influencers.
As with racism, people have different perspectives on systemic gender inequality. They break down roughly into three groups, those who are indifferent, those who deny the issue exists, and those who are fearful to discuss it. Delivering the training in person allowed her team to identify into which group the person belonged and to target appropriate measures. The first group who were indifferent include those who did not believe gender equality applies to their work, which they saw as technical/scientific or gender-neutral. The second group were deniers; they do not believe gender inequality exists. And the third group are the fearful comprised of well-meaning colleagues so concerned about doing or saying the wrong thing, that they preferred to stay on the sidelines.
As a rule, Corat trained and then ignored the deniers as it would take a gargantuan effort to make a dent in their calcified point of view. She focused energy on enlisting those who were indifferent by sharing specific examples of how gender inequalities applied to their work after more careful examination. By providing concrete examples based on vast field experience of working in over 30 countries before joining UNESCO, Corat was able to engage most of the indifferent individuals. Ultimately, they came to understand that there was virtually no area in UNESCO’s work that did not require a gender equality lens. For the third group of the fearful, she provided specific language, facts, and figures to allow them to become effective advocates with relevant information to share.
In addition to training and ally-building efforts, her division helped launch the network of Friends of Gender Equality (FGE) composed of Member States’ Ambassadors to UNESCO. Knowing how important it was to cultivate champions from outside the affected group, they took pains to be unbiased about who would emerge as champions. Surprisingly, the FGE was headed not by a representative of a Nordic country, as might be expected. Rather, the Ambassador from Mauritius, a Muslim-majority country took the lead. By meeting regularly over brown bag lunches and exchanging information about progress, FGE members became gender equality ambassadors. Armed with facts, they advanced the GE agenda by asking pointed gender mainstreaming questions to senior management around UNESCO’s education, science, and culture mandates.
Her team also identified and cultivated “influencers” among those well respected in the organization and whose opinions carried weight. When these individuals made pro-gender equality arguments as senior officials who were not directly engaged in the implementation of UNESCO’s gender equality program, it was seen as objective and unbiased while her team’s interventions were more often seen as partisan.
Similarly, those working for systemic racism need to be drawing from the ranks of the unaffected groups. Identifying champions for racial equity is key. Arming the fearful with facts, educating the indifferent, while ignoring the deniers can galvanize powerful advocates for change at all organizational levels.
Using Data, Evidence and Accessible Language
Tacit complacency and belief in continuous progress without evidence were big issues to address. Corat made extensive use of data provided by UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics - a widely respected scientific office. They provided evidence that challenged the general impression that things were continually improving.
Using data and evidence was a cornerstone of galvanizing change at UNESCO. Nothing works better than verifiable facts and figures that starkly show the extent of the problem. When showing evidence to an audience that the percentage of adult illiterate women has not decreased at all over the prior twenty years despite countless literacy programs, people take note. Similarly, learning that at the current rate of progress, we would be waiting until 2086 to see all African girls enrolled in primary school was a fact that evoked consternation and sparked new gender focused approaches.
The delivery of facts and figures is equally important. Corat and her team could not afford to be too academic or professorial. When presenting startling facts, the audience should believe that even you were surprised when you first uncovered these statistics.
They avoided technical jargon and chose non-adversarial and non-threatening language. Some people took issue with the notion of sessions called training, believing that they already knew everything to do their job properly. In some contexts, calling it an orientation or a consultation was a better term to avoid triggering hostile reactions. The important point was to get everyone on the same side looking at the equality problem together to find workable solutions.
Facts and evidence galvanize awareness on systemic racism too. Revealing the percentage of racially diverse employees at each corporate level and measuring diverse employee retention can highlight gaps and begin to spark action steps. Increasingly, studies have shown that racially diverse teams perform better on innovation and profitability. Using data and education to build alliances with unconscious bias training and ways to develop and retain talent across the racial spectrum is good for employees and for business.
Setting Targets, Timelines and Measuring what Matters
A corollary of using data and evidence in advocacy is to do the same in measuring results. The GE division measured and monitored results and when results did not match the targets, they took mitigating actions. They reported to the Executive Board biannually on gender parity progress at the decision-making level. By measuring continuously and monitoring progress, they moved from 9% women in decision-making positions in 2004 to 51% by 2017.
They developed metrics to evaluate programs and activities, and how well they used a gender equality lens. They made sure that their methods, metrics, and results were fully transparent and open to public scrutiny. Through the GE training sessions, they encouraged all UNESCO staff to question the metrics and to start a dialogue about their relevance and validity.
These same methods work for identifying targets and monitoring progress for racial equity at each strata within a corporation.
Conclusion
We are led to believe that change, especially change that requires shifting attitudes, norms and organizational culture require a long time and significant resources. That belief can make us complacent. We often think that we cannot make a difference with a tiny budget and small team, which is self-defeating. It might surprise you to learn that the entire GE Division consisted of four full-time professionals and one administrative assistant. Further, the Division’s budget was equivalent to the annual salary of a Fortune 500 mid-level manager. Yet, UNESCO achieved outstanding results and is now considered the best practice case within the United Nations system.
With senior leadership buy-in, change is possible with limited resources as long as you have passion, vision, and a well-thought out and implemented strategy. The core strategic pillars of building alliances, using data and evidence, setting and tracking targets worked in improving gender equality for UNESCO. These same pillars may work in other organizations seeking to apply them to effect positive change in overcoming systemic racism.
ABOUT UNESCO: UNESCO is a United Nations specialized agency comprising 193 participating member states with headquarters in Paris, France.
About the authors:
Gulser Corat has spent the last 16 years of her career at UNESCO as the Director of Gender Equality where she successfully increased gender parity for women in decision making roles from 9% in 2007 to 51% in 2017 and mainstreamed gender equality considerations into all UNESCO initiatives. Prior to her tenure at UNESCO, she spent 13 years as Founder and CEO of ECI Consulting, and 8 years as a professor at Carleton University. She earned Executive Education Certificates from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. She holds a BA in Business Administration from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, a graduate degree from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium, a Master’s in International Political Economy from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and a PhD (a.b.d.) in Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Roberta Sydney is a former CEO, Fortune 500 Executive, and seasoned Board director. She serves on the Board of Tiedemann Advisors, a $22B private global wealth manager and has experience serving on private company boards in sectors such as technology, real estate, and construction. In her early career, Roberta held senior positions in public financial services companies, such as State Street Global Advisors, and the Boston Company before founding, growing, and successfully exiting her own real estate development company.She earned a BA from Wellesley College, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MS in Real Estate from MIT.
By Gulser Corat and Roberta Sydney
Brutal incidents of police bias and recent protests of social justice movements have laid bare the pervasiveness of systemic racism. Covid 19 has pulled back the covers further on these biases by showing the disproportionate deadly impact on black and brown lives. When the slaves were freed in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th amendment, blacks held 1% of wealth in the United States. In 2020, blacks still only possess 1% of the wealth in the US. Increasingly, as with the ESG movement, the private sector is performing a critical self-examination of its practices, and many corporations are committing to change for the good of their employees, their bottom line, and society. To compete globally, companies need to address these issues and make radical changes to embrace talent inclusively.
Are there lessons from UNESCO, a complex global organization, which took steps to embrace gender equality in its programmes and gender parity in its staffing and moved from 9% in 2004 to 51% by 2017 of women in decision-making roles? How can corporations around the globe understand these lessons and adapt them to overcome the challenges of systemic racism?
Race and Gender
Race and gender are social constructs that reflect the predominant societal prejudices. They both have seemingly biological underpinnings which themselves are social constructs. And crucially, both are used to attribute, justify, and defend the superiority of one group over another.
In that sense, they are the manifestation of the same desire to maintain an unequal arrangement. When challenged, that desire turns into a strong backlash. As Clay Shirky once quipped, for those who are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Taking on these challenges requires a solid strategy and an effort to avoid specific pitfalls.
This article summarizes how Gulser Corat and her Gender Equality (GE) team at UNESCO transformed the Organization through gender equality. The article also describes how deploying these strategies of alliance building, evidence disseminating, and progress monitoring can work to effect positive change in achieving racial equality.
Lessons from UNESCO’s Gender Equality Strategy
After joining UNESCO and becoming its first Director of Gender Equality, Gulser Corat developed a multifaceted strategy with the goal of integrating a gender equality lens into all its activities. Since culture and tone from the top are key, the first step was to ensure that a regulatory framework was in place. In 2007, after relentless advocacy, Gender Equality became one of the two global priorities of UNESCO, a 2,800 person worldwide organization at that time.
Building Alliances and Finding Influencers
Once leadership embraced the gender equality goal, the next step toward implementation was to build alliances and cultivate GE champions and influencers among the Secretariat and representatives from UNESCO’s 195 Member States.
To win over the hearts and minds within the Secretariat and UNESCO’s field offices, Corat developed a comprehensive training program regarding unconscious bias and gender equality. Although the training became available online in 2008, they chose to train each staff member in person which allowed them to identify potential allies and influencers.
As with racism, people have different perspectives on systemic gender inequality. They break down roughly into three groups, those who are indifferent, those who deny the issue exists, and those who are fearful to discuss it. Delivering the training in person allowed her team to identify into which group the person belonged and to target appropriate measures. The first group who were indifferent include those who did not believe gender equality applies to their work, which they saw as technical/scientific or gender-neutral. The second group were deniers; they do not believe gender inequality exists. And the third group are the fearful comprised of well-meaning colleagues so concerned about doing or saying the wrong thing, that they preferred to stay on the sidelines.
As a rule, Corat trained and then ignored the deniers as it would take a gargantuan effort to make a dent in their calcified point of view. She focused energy on enlisting those who were indifferent by sharing specific examples of how gender inequalities applied to their work after more careful examination. By providing concrete examples based on vast field experience of working in over 30 countries before joining UNESCO, Corat was able to engage most of the indifferent individuals. Ultimately, they came to understand that there was virtually no area in UNESCO’s work that did not require a gender equality lens. For the third group of the fearful, she provided specific language, facts, and figures to allow them to become effective advocates with relevant information to share.
In addition to training and ally-building efforts, her division helped launch the network of Friends of Gender Equality (FGE) composed of Member States’ Ambassadors to UNESCO. Knowing how important it was to cultivate champions from outside the affected group, they took pains to be unbiased about who would emerge as champions. Surprisingly, the FGE was headed not by a representative of a Nordic country, as might be expected. Rather, the Ambassador from Mauritius, a Muslim-majority country took the lead. By meeting regularly over brown bag lunches and exchanging information about progress, FGE members became gender equality ambassadors. Armed with facts, they advanced the GE agenda by asking pointed gender mainstreaming questions to senior management around UNESCO’s education, science, and culture mandates.
Her team also identified and cultivated “influencers” among those well respected in the organization and whose opinions carried weight. When these individuals made pro-gender equality arguments as senior officials who were not directly engaged in the implementation of UNESCO’s gender equality program, it was seen as objective and unbiased while her team’s interventions were more often seen as partisan.
Similarly, those working for systemic racism need to be drawing from the ranks of the unaffected groups. Identifying champions for racial equity is key. Arming the fearful with facts, educating the indifferent, while ignoring the deniers can galvanize powerful advocates for change at all organizational levels.
Using Data, Evidence and Accessible Language
Tacit complacency and belief in continuous progress without evidence were big issues to address. Corat made extensive use of data provided by UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics - a widely respected scientific office. They provided evidence that challenged the general impression that things were continually improving.
Using data and evidence was a cornerstone of galvanizing change at UNESCO. Nothing works better than verifiable facts and figures that starkly show the extent of the problem. When showing evidence to an audience that the percentage of adult illiterate women has not decreased at all over the prior twenty years despite countless literacy programs, people take note. Similarly, learning that at the current rate of progress, we would be waiting until 2086 to see all African girls enrolled in primary school was a fact that evoked consternation and sparked new gender focused approaches.
The delivery of facts and figures is equally important. Corat and her team could not afford to be too academic or professorial. When presenting startling facts, the audience should believe that even you were surprised when you first uncovered these statistics.
They avoided technical jargon and chose non-adversarial and non-threatening language. Some people took issue with the notion of sessions called training, believing that they already knew everything to do their job properly. In some contexts, calling it an orientation or a consultation was a better term to avoid triggering hostile reactions. The important point was to get everyone on the same side looking at the equality problem together to find workable solutions.
Facts and evidence galvanize awareness on systemic racism too. Revealing the percentage of racially diverse employees at each corporate level and measuring diverse employee retention can highlight gaps and begin to spark action steps. Increasingly, studies have shown that racially diverse teams perform better on innovation and profitability. Using data and education to build alliances with unconscious bias training and ways to develop and retain talent across the racial spectrum is good for employees and for business.
Setting Targets, Timelines and Measuring what Matters
A corollary of using data and evidence in advocacy is to do the same in measuring results. The GE division measured and monitored results and when results did not match the targets, they took mitigating actions. They reported to the Executive Board biannually on gender parity progress at the decision-making level. By measuring continuously and monitoring progress, they moved from 9% women in decision-making positions in 2004 to 51% by 2017.
They developed metrics to evaluate programs and activities, and how well they used a gender equality lens. They made sure that their methods, metrics, and results were fully transparent and open to public scrutiny. Through the GE training sessions, they encouraged all UNESCO staff to question the metrics and to start a dialogue about their relevance and validity.
These same methods work for identifying targets and monitoring progress for racial equity at each strata within a corporation.
Conclusion
We are led to believe that change, especially change that requires shifting attitudes, norms and organizational culture require a long time and significant resources. That belief can make us complacent. We often think that we cannot make a difference with a tiny budget and small team, which is self-defeating. It might surprise you to learn that the entire GE Division consisted of four full-time professionals and one administrative assistant. Further, the Division’s budget was equivalent to the annual salary of a Fortune 500 mid-level manager. Yet, UNESCO achieved outstanding results and is now considered the best practice case within the United Nations system.
With senior leadership buy-in, change is possible with limited resources as long as you have passion, vision, and a well-thought out and implemented strategy. The core strategic pillars of building alliances, using data and evidence, setting and tracking targets worked in improving gender equality for UNESCO. These same pillars may work in other organizations seeking to apply them to effect positive change in overcoming systemic racism.
ABOUT UNESCO: UNESCO is a United Nations specialized agency comprising 193 participating member states with headquarters in Paris, France.
About the authors:
Gulser Corat has spent the last 16 years of her career at UNESCO as the Director of Gender Equality where she successfully increased gender parity for women in decision making roles from 9% in 2007 to 51% in 2017 and mainstreamed gender equality considerations into all UNESCO initiatives. Prior to her tenure at UNESCO, she spent 13 years as Founder and CEO of ECI Consulting, and 8 years as a professor at Carleton University. She earned Executive Education Certificates from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. She holds a BA in Business Administration from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, a graduate degree from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium, a Master’s in International Political Economy from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and a PhD (a.b.d.) in Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Roberta Sydney is a former CEO, Fortune 500 Executive, and seasoned Board director. She serves on the Board of Tiedemann Advisors, a $22B private global wealth manager and has experience serving on private company boards in sectors such as technology, real estate, and construction. In her early career, Roberta held senior positions in public financial services companies, such as State Street Global Advisors, and the Boston Company before founding, growing, and successfully exiting her own real estate development company.She earned a BA from Wellesley College, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MS in Real Estate from MIT.
30 July 2020
Last update:20 April 2023
