Near the end of January, Goldman Sachs issued a new policy. Its chief executive officer David Solomon proudly stated in an interview with CNBC that Goldman would no longer take companies without at least one “diverse” board member public. This, he claimed, was important because companies that had at least one female director performed better.
Solomon also stated that by 2021, the bank aims to have not one but two diverse board members. Two diverse board members in the year 2020! This is all very exciting, but I think we have to define what exactly a diverse person is.
Allegedly, Solomon wants to “focus on women.” Since then, multiple publications have come out stating how the executive missed the mark because he didn’t account for intersectionality and how race affects how people advance in the field. White women benefit far more than women of color from initiatives like this, but this is not the biggest issue with this plan.
Although the announcement does sound grimy, the actual problem is the bank’s intention. It sounds like it wants boards to accumulate minorities to display on their mantels. Initiatives like this do nothing to help the underrepresented groups they’re targeting.
This example is one of many corporate attempts at co-opting social movements for the sake of image. This kind of strategy has several names, such as purplewashing, when companies use feminism as marketing, and greenwashing when using environmental sustainability. Ultimately, these strategies are different variations on making bad business practices shiny under the guise of altruism.
In 2015, Volkswagen claimed that diesel could be sustainable because their cars used elite technology that emitted fewer pollutants. It was later revealed that the company rigged their cars with devices made to cheat the emissions tests, and they actually produced pollutants as much as 40 times more than the legal limit.
Goldman Sachs’ new diversity policy is equally corrosive.
First of all, it is currently in arbitration for a lawsuit filed against them for gender discrimination by 1,000 former female employees. This suit has dragged on for 14 years because Goldman Sachs has tried to force them into arbitration. In 2018, District Court Judge Analisa Torres issued an order to certify the plaintiffs’ damages class, meaning the court ruled to allow it to be a class action suit.
Before Goldman goes around demanding people hire a single woman to their boards, they should deal with their toxic corporate culture that allegedly sustained the gender pay gap and disproportionately promoted men over women.
Second, and most importantly, having “diverse” people at the helm of corrupt organizations does nothing to solve the inherent toxicity and poison of the organization itself.
Take, for example, Raytheon, which Boston University invited to participate at a career fair. Raytheon tweeted that they had partnered with the Girl Scouts of America because, “Raytheon’s vision about making the world a safer place and the Girl Scouts vision of making the world a better place couldn’t be more well-suited as partners.”
Raytheon was also the producer of bombs used by Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen, of which the attacks have contributed to the deaths of 100,000 people and horrific famine conditions. Writer Kara Ellerby put it best when she told In These Times, “Sure, it’s great that you have a woman at the head of Raytheon, but what about the women who those bombs are being dropped on?”
Of course, you could say Goldman Sachs and Raytheon are different in the degree of how “bad” they are. But such a distinction doesn’t invalidate that these corporations have no business pretending to be progressive.
Goldman Sachs defrauded investors and profited off the collapse of the mortgage market. Female CEOs do not help all women beat the patriarchy. It’s not that I don’t want women to succeed — it’s just that I don’t want them to succeed at predatory lending practices.
In masking their corruption under social justice movements, these companies cheapen the tenets of social movements. They dilute feminism into something as benign and simple as half-assed representation. Female CEOs don’t automatically guarantee a gender discrimination-free corporate culture, nor do they automatically solve the gender pay gap which disproportionately affects women of color.
Having one white woman smiling frigidly next to a sweaty and stuffy group of white men in the company board picture is not progress.
Goldman Sachs is in part directly responsible for the predatory lending practices that led to millions of people losing their jobs and houses. As college students, we’re intimately familiar with the nightmarish student loans that will take years to pay back. Either way we’re getting screwed over. Would you feel better if your executioner were a woman? I think not.
