Repressive Equality Regimes: How Diversity,Equality and Inclusion Initiatives Constrain Equality and Conceal Politics at Work

Abstract

This paper examines how diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives (DEI) hinder better outcomes for the workforce labelled as diverse. Fieldwork in three Australian organisations demonstrated that the lack of progress towards equality was not just caused by the persistence of inequality but by how the practice of equality perpetuated a repressive status quo. Bringing together Joan Acker’s ‘inequality regimes’ and Herbert Marcuse’s ‘repressive tolerance’ explains how the understanding and enactment of equality constrain workplace change. From this, ‘repressive equality regimes’ is developed to explain how the ensemble of culturally organised sets of practices that seemingly promote DEI prevent achieving meaningful progress towards equality. ‘Repressive equality regimes’ registers the disassociating and segregating processes that create and maintain hierarchies of difference, limit the tolerance of ‘others’ and bound equality to an unchallengeable practice. To address structural inequalities and embed sustainable change at work it is essential to illuminate the political in DEI.

Keywords

diversity equality inclusion inequality regimes intersectionality repressive equality regimes repressive tolerance work

Introduction

Workplace diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives (DEI) have become normalised, especially in large Western country organisations. Over 96% of organisations with 1,000 employees or more report having DEI (Krentz, 2019). Such organisations have implemented wide-ranging DEI for recruiting for diversity, women in leadership support programmes, unconscious bias training, ‘employee branding’ based on gender and diversity, mentoring activities for women and employees from minority groups, and internal networks of women and diversity groups (Köllen, 2021).

Despite widespread implementation, DEI has not succeeded in meeting the goal of increasing participation and inclusion of disadvantaged groups across a broader range of occupations and hierarchies and at best its outcomes are mixed (Dennissen et al., 2020; Schlueter and Gold, 2025). This is a persistent problem because DEI is underpinned by an assumption that people outside of the dominant group are ‘lesser than’ and need to be integrated into unchallenged workplace cultures (Romani et al., 2019: 371), and because DEI focuses on single categories of difference (e.g., ethnicity or women) that renders invisible other forms of difference, including multiple marginalised identities (Knights and Omanović, 2016).

As resistance to diversity is deeply embedded at work and given the current developments that signal a rolling back of DEI, such as in the USA with its recent deregulation (Prasad and Śliwa, 2024) and in Australia with the rejection of the inclusion of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution (Vromen et al., 2025), it is important to evidence why workplace inequalities are perpetuated and why this matters (Calás and Holgersson, 2024). For this, Acker’s (2006a, 2006b, 2011) ‘inequality regimes’ and Marcuse’s (1969) ‘repressive tolerance’ are brought into dialogue for the first time to explain how inequality is structurally reproduced for the diverse workforce. Whilst these concepts reiterate the need for a political approach, they do not explore how equality is framed when addressing structural inequalities. To advance this gap, ‘inequality regimes’ and ‘repressive tolerance’ are extended through ‘repressive equality regimes’. The proposed concept captures the failures of DEI through a nuanced analysis of the interactions between the political, structural and discursive dynamics of DEI and how these depoliticise equality measures and hinder progress for those workers labelled as ‘diverse’ in the underexplored Australian context. The concept explains how the structures and discourses of DEI disassociate policy from practice and experiences of difference and equality and segregate the means to address inequality from equitable ends.

During times when DEI is under threat, taking on the political challenges of building fair and inclusive workplaces is critical. The paper addresses the question: how does DEI hinder better outcomes for the workforce labelled as diverse? It does this by first reviewing the critical literature on why DEI fails to achieve equality. Then, the concept of ‘repressive equality regimes’ developed for this empirical study is explained. The method used to collect and analyse data about DEI in three organisations in Australia is outlined. The findings highlight similarities and differences in the barriers to inclusion and equality of difference linked to DEI’s implementation around narrow categories and hierarchies of difference, the existence of limited tolerance for ‘others’ and change, and an understanding of equality devoid of political meaning. The discussion engages with the contextual, structural and discursive dynamics of DEI that repress equality and makes recommendations for change.

The shortcomings of DEI

Although DEI has been ‘mainstreamed’ as a central part of management practice, these initiatives have failed to represent the diversity of people in the communities where organisations operate and progress an equal agenda for people labelled as diverse (Dennissen et al., 2020; Schlueter and Gold, 2025). In Australia, where the research was conducted, despite the growth of DEI, the lack of fair outcomes remains a significant issue. Compared with similar Western countries, it has one of the most diverse workforces. However, even though 31% of Australians were born outside of the country (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2024a), business executives and government senior officials are predominantly from Anglo-Celtic (75.9%) or European (19%) backgrounds (Soutphommasane et al., 2018). Close to a third of workers identifying as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Nonbinary, Plus (LGBTQIA+) or as having a disability do not feel free to speak up openly at work for fear of criticism (Indeed, 2020). In a country where Indigenous people account for 3.8% of the population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2024b), 38% of Indigenous Australians stated that they had been treated unfairly at work and 44% had heard racial slurs because of their cultural background (Brown et al., 2020). Despite equal pay legislation for women being passed in 1969 (WGEA, 2019), there is a persistent gender pay gap favouring men in 72.2% of employers, with a median gender pay gap larger than 8.9% (WGEA, 2025). Further, notwithstanding relatively equal participation of women in the workforce, in 2021 only ten of Australia’s top 200 companies had a female CEO (Patten, 2021). Across the board, 46% of employees reported feeling unable to be their ‘true self’ at work (Indeed, 2020).

Australia’s failure to effectively manage inequality and discrimination at work reflects global trends (Morfaki and Morfaki, 2022). In the context of broad acceptance that inequality is morally undesirable (Scanlon, 2018) and that diversity at work is morally and commercially desirable (Byrd and Sparkmann, 2022), critical scholars have linked DEI failure to the commodification of DEI and the categorisation of difference.

The commodification of DEI

The commodification of DEI has occurred because of its mainstreaming and the availability of a standard repertoire of interventions. The repertoire of DEI, initially designed for legal compliance, has been informed by a liberal egalitarian ‘business case’ for diversity at work. This rationale mainly focuses on managing representation, rather than changing underlying structures, and including diversity through assimilation into a dominant culture, rather than acceptance of differences (Noon, 2007; Squires, 2005; Vincent et al., 2024). The proliferation of standard approaches to DEI is problematic because they are rarely adapted to workplace contexts and ignore the legitimacy of social justice arguments (Sinicropi and Cortese, 2021).

Jin et al. (2017) found that who is in leadership has implications for the type of DEI and equality outcomes for diverse staff. When initiated and shaped by leaders whose training and education aligned with dominant Western masculine stereotypes (Cohen et al., 2023), DEI embody a tendency to regard diverse people as sub-categories of workers, ‘less than’ the norm, that need to be managed (Romani et al., 2020), or as commodities to be controlled to create economic value (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). At a leadership level, these initiatives sideline opportunities to develop forms of leadership beyond the ‘White male’ standard (Hekman et al., 2016) and conventional leadership styles remain common practice (e.g., Ng and Sears, 2012).

Under commodified DEI, people labelled ‘diverse’ are ‘required to perform to negotiate, manage and inhabit their difference in valuable, legible and (thus) include-able ways’ (Burchiellaro, 2021: 781); learning that workplaces control their difference. Therefore, the commodification of DEI not only commodifies difference but also segregates and stereotypes ‘diversity’ because it limits what is understood as diverse (Knappert et al., 2024; Vincent et al., 2024) and renders DEI ineffective (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007).

Categories of difference

The failure of DEI has also been attributed, in part, to the pre-established single-category approach commonly used to manage difference at work. In practice, the categorisation of difference in DEI is informed by superficial and apolitical understandings of diversity (Tyler and Vachhani, 2021), which limit DEI’s ability to challenge fundamental power dynamics and structures (Holck, 2018; Plotnikof et al., 2022). This approach treats diversity categorically and demographically rather than experientially and as emergent and ignores or suppresses the complexity of diversity and its politically laden nature, including intersectionality (Cook and Glass, 2016; McBride et al., 2015; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012). Single categories of difference in DEI ‘normalizes the idea of separate identity categories and facilitates the continuous avoidance of the complexity of intersectionality in diversity networks’ (Dennissen et al., 2020: 235). Segregating gender, culture, ability and sexuality assumes these categories are fixed (DiTomaso, 2021), and reifies difference (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). On the other hand, approaches to DEI based on ‘colour blind’ ideologies can, under the guise of meritocracy, perpetuate inequalities through ‘whitewashing’ whilst ‘resisting policies and procedures that would allow for equality in reality’ (Ray and Purifoy, 2019: 141; see also Konrad et al., 2021). When single categories are challenged, the problem becomes the responsibility of the individual who finds themself silenced or marginalised (Dennissen et al., 2020).

These insights about the shortcomings of DEI emerge from intersectional approaches that make visible forms of difference not available when focusing on single categories (Knights and Omanović, 2016). ‘Intersectionality’ addresses the complex social, political, and legal forms of discrimination faced by those whose identities render them subject to multiple and specific forms of marginalisation and oppression (Crenshaw, 1991). The concept was developed collaboratively through women of colour activism in the 1960s and 1970s (Alexander-Floyd, 2012; McCall, 2005) and was subsequently adapted to examine how ‘the dynamics of difference and sameness has played a major role in facilitating consideration of gender, race, and other axes of power in a wide range of political discussions and academic disciplines’ (Cho et al., 2013: 787).

Research gaps

Research on the commodification of DEI and categories of difference demonstrates how in Europe and the United States progress towards equal treatment and improved diversity in organisations can be stymied by how DEI is conceptualised in practice, and what types of difference are included or excluded. These findings raise the question of whether it is possible for DEI, as currently construed, to overcome the political and structural articulations of inequality to achieve equality. To answer this question, research is needed to explore how DEI in a variety of cultural and organisational contexts can move beyond superficial initiatives to create meaningful organisational change that adequately addresses the complexities of workers’ identities and experiences of difference and the role of leadership and politics at work in progressing or hindering equality (Cohen et al., 2023; Dennissen et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2017; Ng and Sears, 2012; Romani et al., 2020; Tyler and Vachhani, 2021).

Achieving equality at work for people labelled ‘diverse’ can be obstructed by how DEI is conceptualised, and the lack of progress of DEI towards achieving equality requires critical appraisal. Greater understanding is required of the implementation and outcomes of DEI in specific professions, workplaces and cultures, and how the experiences of acceptance and resistance to workers with complex identities and from a wider range of marginalised groups (Morfaki and Morfaki, 2022) contribute to nuanced, contextualised, intersectional and thus politicised accounts.

Theoretical framework

To analyse why current forms of DEI fall short of achieving equality, Acker’s (2006b) concept of ‘inequality regimes’ and Marcuse’s (1969) ‘repressive tolerance’ are brought together to think through the study’s empirical materials. In that process, ‘repressive equality regimes’ was developed to explain what prevents meaningful DEI progress based on contextual, structural and discursive nuances.

Persistence of inequality through structural processes

For Acker (2006a, 2006b), inequality is central to the logic of capitalist production. Their idea of ‘inequality regimes’, explains the generation of structural inequality in organisations, and continues to provide novel insights into intersectional discrimination. Acker (2011) suggests social inequality based on unfairly legitimised forms of difference (e.g., gender, race and class) underpins how we relate to each other in workplaces, defining‘inequality regimes’ as ‘loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations’ (Acker, 2006b: 443) that work against what is now called ‘intersectionality’. ‘Inequality regimes’ identifies the bases, shape, degree, visibility and legitimacy of inequalities, and the processes that reproduce inequality in organisations (Acker, 2006b). By focusing on power and privilege at work, ‘inequality regimes’ provides a way of understanding how inequality is reproduced by rendering it invisible. Thus, addressing systemic inequality requires using that visibility to contest the legitimacy of the systems and interests that reproduce inequality and block change (Acker, 2006a, 2011).

Whilst foundational, Acker’s concept was critiqued for inadequately dealing with how intersectionality materialises across a broader range of difference, for being difficult to use as a systemic analytical framework in empirical and comparative studies, and for not allowing an analysis of how inequality regimes evolve over time (Healy et al., 2018; Sayce, 2019).

Maintenance of marginalisation through discursive processes

Marcuse (1969) suggests that in most Western democracies, ‘tolerance’ is oppressive. Whilst there is an ideal form of tolerance (i.e., ‘true’ tolerance) where all are accepted for who they are, an oppressive ‘false’ tolerance is embedded in the dominant structures of power without challenging the status quo. Tolerance is inverted (i.e., false) through the proliferation of multiple opinions, theories and propositions that see minority, emerging and dissenting voices presented alongside dominant voices seemingly as equal. However, in practice, only the marginal views that do not upset the dominant ones can be expressed. Moreover, their position amid the loud, well-established views only results in their silencing. Echoing this, Essed (2009) showed how the assumed cultural norm of tolerance keeps the ‘other’ in ‘its place’ because of the false assumption that incidents of racism and discrimination are cultural aberrations, rather than an endemic part of culture.

As Marcuse’s ideas were informed by the 1960s, the concept has been critiqued for no longer being relevant to our contemporary society. Further, it has been considered contentious because of its perceived support of censorship and how implementing ‘true’ tolerance would lead to authoritarianism (Ingram, 2024).

Repression of equality through disassociating and segregating processes

Acker and Marcuse remind us of the depoliticisation of the relational in capitalist societies. Whilst Acker focused on structures to demonstrate how inequality and intersectionality are depoliticised at work; Marcuse focused on discursive practices to demonstrate how tolerance – as a proxy for equality – is depoliticised in everyday life. ‘Repressive equality regimes’ connects and expands these concepts in the context of DEI to capture the nuances in the interactions between the political, structural and discursive dynamics of DEI and how these depoliticise equality and hinder progress for those workers labelled as ‘diverse’. This new concept surfaces organisational practices that are inadequately addressed by ‘inequality regimes’ in that it explains how the structures and discourses of DEI perpetuate inequality for the multiple forms of marginalisation at work – beyond gender, race and class. It expands ‘repressive tolerance’ to look at equality regimes more broadly. The concept also challenges liberal egalitarianism and performative inclusion by showing how what is proclaimed and practised as equality, even in best practice DEI, serves to repress equality at work.

‘Repressive equality regimes’ advances our understanding of how DEI, though intended to combat workplace inequality, can construct relationships between diverse and non-diverse employees in ways that ultimately limit and undermine the very equality it seeks to promote, due to a series of interdependent relational, structural, and discursive mechanisms, as outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Repressive equality regimes mechanisms.

The concept provides an explanation of how DEI falls short of achieving its stated outcomes because, on the one hand, it disassociates policy from the experiences of difference and equality, and, on the other hand, it segregates the means to address inequality from equitable ends. ‘Repressive equality regimes’ points to how efforts to bring about change and equal outcomes are dissipated by creating and maintaining hierarchies of difference, obfuscating intersectionality, keeping divergent perspectives silent, constraining who can be heard and when, and rendering underlying and multi-dimensional structural discrimination invisible through a smokescreen of idealised – and unchallengeable – equality.

Method

Fieldwork was undertaken using mixed methods and a multi-case study approach. A thematic analysis was applied to understand who is considered diverse at work, what constitutes DEI and how these initiatives affect workers.

Data collection

With approval from the authors’ university ethics committee, data were collected by all authors over 28 months from three Australian organisations with which the researchers had no prior relationships. The organisations were selected because they were known for their best practice in DEI. They were: PlayEnterprise, a sports company that prided itself on having a high percentage of women and Indigenous staff and members, and being one of the first in their industry to have introduced anti-racism rules; TechServe, a large technology sales and servicing business that had progressive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Human Resources Management (HRM) policies that sought to address issues of modern slavery in their supply chain and increase the number of women in leadership and cultural representation of staff; and ComLink, a small community liaison agency which had DEI as its core business. The organisation’s names have been anonymised, and specific industries generalised to ensure confidentiality.

All staff from the three organisations were invited to participate in interviews. To ensure the research captured the range of meanings and practices of diversity at each site and for all participants, no academic definitions of key terms (e.g., diversity, inclusion, inequality, equality) were provided. Semi-structured interviews of 90 minutes were conducted with executive and senior managers (individually and as teams) to establish their organisation’s practice and meaning of diversity. Staff at all levels of the organisations were then interviewed to elicit their experiences of diversity and DEI. Where appropriate, follow-up interviews were conducted to expand discussion, clarify meaning and respond to participants’ requests. In response to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed by the Australian government during the fieldwork, an online survey based on the interview questions was developed using SurveyMonkey for one organisation.

Observations of day-to-day interactions (e.g., work activities, meetings, and other semi-/formal work interactions) were conducted. Interviews and observations were face-to-face, and via online video-conferencing systems in select cases. Fieldnotes were made to record details and impressions of observations and interviews. Additional notes were made about unfolding events and key changes within the sites during and up to six months post-data collection. Reflexive fieldnotes about the researcher’s engagement with the sites and participants were made to account for events and reflect on changes emerging from these relationships. Organisational documents providing an overview of strategy and people management (e.g., exit data, staff satisfaction surveys, policies, plans and charts) were also included in the dataset and analysed.

Multi-case study approach

Eisenhardt’s (2021) multi-case study method was employed to explore the contested relationship between DEI and equal outcomes at work. The multi-case study method is suitable in situations where empirical evidence is limited or conflicting, little theory has been developed around the phenomenon, the study focuses on a new setting (e.g., DEI in Australian organisations), or an unusual approach or framework is used (e.g., ‘repressive equality regimes’).

The multi-case method requires a specific approach to sampling where cases are chosen to explore patterns of similarities and differences within and between case studies. For Eisenhardt, the case method allows for saturation and generalisation to emerge from data. The similarity between each organisation was advanced engagement with DEI, with differences emerging in how categories were valued, included and resisted.

Reflexive thematic analysis

Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019) was used to make sense of the theme, subthemes and connections. This approach includes a ‘coding process [that] requires a continual bending back on oneself – questioning and querying the assumptions we are making in interpreting and coding the data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2019: 594). Themes were constructed through data coding processes and reflexive dialogue between the authors and with other studies and theories about (in)equality, DEI, and leadership practices. The authors’ reflection and analysis helped to surface salient, yet often tacit, aspects of practice, and the effect of actions and discourses on how people related to each other around DEI.

With the support of the software NVivo12, the iterative coding process surfaced key themes and subthemes around DEI definitions, practices and impact, and the attitudes and experiences of case study ‘actors’. NVivo also helped to reveal connections between themes and subthemes and to highlight similarities and differences between sites. Themes, subthemes and connections were reflected on and analysed during team meetings. By focusing on the tensions and discrepancies around experiences, discourses and observed interactions framed by DEI, the coding revealed three key findings: hierarchies of difference, limits of tolerance, and idealised equality.

The fieldwork was approached with the full knowledge that inequality can be reproduced by the context and interactions of research, requiring researchers to practise reflexivity in their interactions with others. Because of that, it was important for us to acknowledge our position as a team of three researchers from different disciplines – social anthropology, organisation studies, and business ethics, and all from critical or feminist perspectives – and personal backgrounds – a Black woman, a White woman, a White man, all middle-aged, heterosexual and first-generation migrants to Australia –DEI was constrained by how and the potential intersectionality that could emerge and be constructed between researchers and participants. Conversely, our different backgrounds allowed us to develop trust and engage more deeply with distinct groups of participants. For example, the first and second authors conducted the interviews with female executives and managers, the first and third authors tended to conduct interviews with White male executives, and the first author conducted interviews with other workers.

Participants were interviewed by deciding which of the three authors would be better placed to ensure their confidence or break through the status quo and organisational rhetoric. Strong relationships with participants were established, following up with them when needed to support them in their reflections and deep questioning (Pullen et al., 2023).

DEI case studies

The findings are based on data collected from 67 participants interviewed (28 out of 97 staff at PlayEnterprise, 27 out of 537 staff at TechServe, and 12 out of 70 staff at ComLink) and eight participants from ComLink who completed the survey. Participants included 31 women and 36 men. They were employed as officers (17), middle managers (39) and executives (11) (Table 1).

Table 1.

Participants’ gender and hierarchy in the organisations.

	Officers		Middle Management		C-Suite		Total
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Total
PlayEnterprise	3	1	16	4	2	2	28
TechServe	4	4	9	6	1	3	27
ComLink	0	5	0	4	1	2	12
							67

Speaking with the leadership teams and reading their policy documents presented affirmative pictures of the organisations. Talking with people across work functions and levels generally confirmed each organisation’s genuine commitment to equality at work. In practice, diversity was more complex and equality more elusive than the official talk. Despite all organisations promoting, celebrating and championing DEI in unique ways, data revealed how the efficacy of DEI was constrained by how ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘equality’ were understood and enacted based on narrow hierarchical categories of difference that marginalised and silenced more nuanced expressions of diversity and requests for inclusion. The analysis also revealed how tolerance for change was bound by the need not to challenge the status quo and the legitimisation of an idealised version of equality not grounded in the political reality of the lived experiences of difference at work and maintained by a disconnect between grand discourses and messy practice.

Hierarchies of difference

Similarities between the organisations included how DEI was operationalised according to narrow hierarchical categories of difference. A hierarchy of diversity was apparent at the leadership level across all sites. This took the form of the appointment of female executives as the primary way of responding to the pressure for the composition of the senior executive to reflect the broader diversity of the Australian population. The women appointed were seen as being able to play the ‘game’ and/or steer the organisation out of a crisis. As an example of the first point, at TechServe, the only female executive remaining after recurring restructuring was described by her female colleagues as ‘one of the boys’. An example of the second point, the first female CEO at PlayEnterprise was appointed at the beginning of the pandemic to manage a downturn.

Although female representation was seen as the starting point for equality across the sites, differences surfaced around the other types of differences prioritised and why, as well as which ones were ignored or silenced. For example, at ComLink, where social cohesion and cultural diversity were part of their core business, cultural diversity was the difference of ‘choice’. This top category was followed by sexual diversity, as represented by a male executive who was part of the LGBTQIA+ community. However, when it came to the leadership team, class, which was never discussed, seemed to matter more than cultural or ethnic backgrounds. Whilst some of the leaders were visibly not White male – they were people with second-generation migrant backgrounds (coming from Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern European countries) – they had been recruited or maintained their positions because they had similar class attributes to the dominant White male executive type (i.e., degrees from elite universities and living in affluent suburbs).

For workers, the hierarchy of difference surfaced around how some forms of diversity were made visible or invisible depending on their usefulness at work. The hierarchies of difference changed over time and across contexts (e.g., the workplace, profession and sector/industry). At PlayEnterprise, ‘women’ and ‘Indigenous Australians’ were the diverse categories of choice. Women were included because the organisation’s female external stakeholders had lobbied to reverse their minority status in this male-dominated industry by seeking more opportunities to be involved at all levels (e.g., players, umpires, club organisers, office workers, managers). Indigenous Australians were a primary category because of their higher-than-national representation in the organisation and as external stakeholders. These two categories were followed in the priority listing of difference by ‘multicultural’, because of its untapped potential, and ‘disability’, because of increasing interest from community members to participate.

In addition to the push from key stakeholders to be considered as fully contributing members, another major reason for the hierarchy and inclusion of the four categories was the availability of government and philanthropic funds to increase their participation in the industry:

the [X] programme that we run out in West Sydney [. . .] employs three Indigenous people and they wouldn’t be employed if it wasn’t for the fact that government gives us money to run that programme. (Robert, Senior Human Resources Manager)

In comparison, at TechServe, the primary category of difference was ‘women’ followed by ‘ethnicity’, ‘sexuality’, ‘refugee’ and ‘disability’. These categories had emerged because of the CEO’s personal interests and a group of DEI ‘champions’:

I would like to think I’m somebody that supports those principles and lives by those principles. And had them instilled in me by my mother when I was little [. . .] it would seem like a betrayal of what I understand being a decent human being means if I did not propagate greater diversity through the organisation. (Cameron, CEO)

These categories were supported by the moral case for DEI, but the symbolic benefits also presented an additional justification to the moral case because of the increased status, influence and praise received from peers or powerful industry or political players, as a manager explained about TechServe:

It has been a multiple award-winning recipient. That’s not a commercial driver, because that’s an accreditation that we seek. But there’s only 300 companies in Australia that have that. . .it’s a really prestigious group to belong to.

The various categories and hierarchies were also justified by some leaders because they provided a competitive advantage to grow the business and improvements in the personal status of individual staff. These justifications commodified forms of difference because of the economic returns from investing in women and employees from diverse backgrounds, as all PlayEnterprise leaders made clear.

Hierarchies and justifications were not fixed. Even though some employees’ understanding of the importance of DEI and equality at work was underpinned by a single rationale, many others switched between categories and justifications depending on their audience, allowing them to adapt to situations and better promote or advance DEI, their work or themselves. This was evident across the organisation where the justification changed according to whether DEI was internally or outwardly focused. Outwardly focused DEI supported commercial objectives (e.g., growing their market or attracting new clients) often by projecting an image of organisations that care for ‘others’ and engage with social justice. Yet these equity values and practices were not necessarily upheld in the workplace.

Some TechServe executives understood their CSR strategy as addressing internal and external DEI. For others, it was perceived as a marketing exercise to increase their reputation as an industry leader –’the diversity is probably a real key thing for us to be able to understand the full market we go to’ (Jarod, Technician) – and not relevant in holding them to account for internal practices that contravened the values promoted in their strategy:

we have window dressing. We’re [Workplace Gender Equality Agency Certified], we’re this, we’re that. People are held up and go off to this, but behind the scenes, I can tell you it’s nothing like that. (Nadege, Senior Manager)

The findings surfaced differences around the order, inclusion and exclusion of differences based on industry and the organisation’s socio-historical development. They also showed that across the organisations, the hierarchy of diversity revealed a perception of certain forms of difference as more legitimate and valued than others, which served to categorise and commodify forms of difference, and obfuscated intersectionality. This hierarchisation tended to be made visible through outwardly facing discourses (e.g., CSR statements) and with the overwhelming presence of men from European descent in executive positions, women in top management positions, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in community-facing positions.

The limits of tolerance

Whilst sexism, racism and intersectionality surfaced in the three organisations, there were differences about how staff seen as ‘diverse’ were discriminated against, marginalised and saw their opportunities limited. For example, at TechServe, despite policies that aimed to address issues of gender parity, sexist recruitment practices were widely reported, including cronyism:

recruiting old mates from the industry. [. . .] it’s definitely 80% male, especially in sales [. . .] they won’t look outside of the industry and go this female, she’s been a great manager in Telco. You want to say this is my mate, he’s been in the industry. He knows these 50 customers that have a loyal following of him, and he’ll be able to bring them all over. (Betty, Compliance Manager)

When HRM staff tried to address this issue by upholding the organisation’s hiring policies and reputation as a champion of gender equality, the predominantly female HRM staff were ignored by the predominantly male sales staff. Over the years, this had turned into a silent war between women defenders of compliance and rules and men generating external income and maintaining the business. A clash of values and ethics occurred between men and women. Women were seen as policing men rather than carrying out their responsibilities. As a form of retaliation, women were subjected to sexist abuse by some men, ranging from jokes to aggressive stances and pressure to resign.

At TechServe sexism in recruitment was clearly against internal policies, but at PlayEnterprise, sexism in recruitment was justified based on merit and young women were turned down in favour of ‘White males’. Whilst the discourse of merit clearly favoured men, it was at times inverted to suggest that women had equal chances:

[The company] invested money in training and development [. . .] to make their female candidates able to stack up against a male candidate, and then be chosen on merit. I’m a big fan of calling it out, putting it out there and making it top of mind for everyone. (David, Marketing Director, PlayEnterprise)

These merit-based discourses occurred in a male-dominated industry that kept women out of roles historically constructed as both masculine and senior. It kept women out of PlayEnterprise regional manager roles and out of TechServe technician roles – thought to require muscular strength for machines that no longer needed to be moved. Merit discourses were also used as a mechanism to protect the privileges associated with what were recognised as prestigious high revenue-generating, income yielding and status positions (e.g., sales and executives)

Frequently, sexism was reported as being overlaid with racism, highlighting instances of intersectionality. At PlayEnterprise, the only Indigenous woman in the parent company leadership talked about discriminatory treatment from her male peers in the industry and their cultural groups:

most of them are smug arseholes who look down at me [. . .] I don’t get treated with the same respect as my peers by some of them and partly it’s obviously I’m Black, partly it’s I’m a woman. (Harriet, National Director)

Although the CEO of ComLink had appointed women to the executive team, these women excluded self-identified ‘brown’ women. These women were employed at the lower levels of the hierarchy and when they raised concerns with their supervisors and the CEO about how women of ‘colour’ were systematically bypassed during promotion, they were made to feel like ‘troublemakers’ as Tasha (Officer) stated: ‘There’s been a lot of these things where I’ve spoken up [. . .] but [. . .] we’re seen as troublemakers’. Eventually, Damsa (Officer) who educated the executives and senior managers on intersectionality and rallied women of ‘colour’ to her cause, resigned, burnt out and resenting the compliant behaviour of those most impacted by discrimination.

These findings show that despite active work to support the best-intentioned DEI and equality measures, workplace cultures and leaders had low tolerance for difference outside of the legitimate forms of diversity and for staff seen as ‘diverse’ who pushed the boundaries of what was deemed acceptable forms of equality and change. Those who overstepped the boundary were not only blocked from promotion but also faced ostracism and silencing.

Idealised equality

The analysis of organisational policies to ensure equal opportunities and treatment of staff highlighted a gap between policy, practice and experience. Whilst staff supported DEI in principle, DEI’s failure to materialise aspired-to or proclaimed equality change was linked to a latent lack of genuine support, at various levels of the organisations, for plurality and difference – beyond the business case for market growth, competitive advantage, and employee satisfaction – and the tensions between the unchallengeable idealised version of equality upheld by organisations and staff’s complex experiences of diversity. The gap was most evident when discrimination was called out and leaders felt challenged in their understanding of equality and positive change, when some staff passively resisted DEI because of lack of ownership, sense of imposition, or perceived attack on their ways of ‘doing things’, and in the active resistance to or trivialisation of DEI.

The trivialisation of DEI emerged when staff perceived difference as unimportant or a threat to their work status or place in the organisational hierarchy. Trivialisation was also used to show loyalty to other staff in positions of influence who undermined DEI. Further, the resistance or lack of engagement from middle managers acted as a barrier to two-way communication about the impact of DEI between leaders and other staff.

Additional explanations for the gap included how policies were open to interpretation – especially when designed with an outward focus – and realities of implementing standard well-intentioned DEI were inevitably more complex than considered by senior executives. For example, at ComLink, all DEI policies had been designed for their client-base and seldom applied to their internal practice. The policies approved at the top of TechServe and developed by HRM professionals were not conveyed to the rest of the organisation by middle managers. Instead, this task was left to the dedicated DEI team and diverse staff to follow up, imagine and implement as activities (e.g., committees and harmony day) for all staff participation.

Shifting responsibility for implementing and enacting change onto the ‘other’ down the hierarchy maintained the status quo and further highlighted the separation between individual action and the consequences of implementing systemic equality change. This shift was, however, at the risk of those individuals who carried the burden of championing DEI, translating policies into action and monitoring practices.

Leaders who often took a hands-off approach to the practical implementation of DEI, relished the awards but were unable or unwilling to deal with the realities of discrimination at work. For example, at ComLink, Shiva was feeling excluded by the leadership team but initially rationalised it as differences in management style. However, after attending unconscious bias training with the leadership team where the CEO was comforted in the belief that he had achieved gender equality by appointing many women from his close circle and social class, she began to reflect on the power dynamics and intersectionality at play:

[An] Indian woman in another section that’s been a [level] 9/10 for years [. . .] And it suddenly occurred to me that all the women of ethnic backgrounds, there’s a ceiling. And other people have come in above that. Even to the extent that they’ve created roles for when there hasn’t been one. A [White] person should be in 11/12. We’ll create the 11/12 role. We’ll advertise it and they’ll get it. And that’s happened to be part of the leadership group now.

TechServe provided another example of a leader championing DEI and accepting responsibility for equality at work yet shielding themselves from the realities and complexities of implementing DEI, preferring to lead from a distance and imagining alternative realities. Bex, the Director of Corporate Services and only remaining female executive, was pressured into resigning her post, when considering her position as a female executive in a company awarded for its gender equity programme to be safe and counting on her positive relationship with her CEO and his perceived compassionate nature, she voiced her concerns to him about other executives’ sexist and bullying attitudes. Raising these issues was met by the CEO with refusal to acknowledge the situation. It resulted in some of the direct female senior manager reports who had also expressed similar concerns about sexist and racist work to resign.

The disassociating of policy from practice and experience and the shifting of responsibility away from leaders, enabled them to maintain an idealised version of equality. Taking responsibility only for approving the initial development of policies and segregating the means to address discrimination from the ends of equal outcomes, resulted in the marginalisation and silencing of ‘diverse’ staff and alternative understandings of equality. Staff who openly challenged leaders on the level of progress of DEI were ‘cancelled’ to protect the organisation’s myth of equality.

Discussion

Scanlon (2018) found that by interfering with dominant rules and values, equality becomes objectionable. This was the case in the three organisations where equality was repressed because, even in well-intentioned workplaces, the mainstreaming of DEI meant that an understanding of inclusion that embraces all forms of diversity as equal and inclusive of minority or marginalised groups could not be accepted if it interfered with the liberties of the privileged few.

Repressing equality and the possibility of change

Research on the commodification of DEI highlighted the impact of mainstreaming and lack of contextual adaptation on DEI outcomes. The study revealed how DEI designed and implemented from a standard repertoire is ineffective because they limit and control what is understood as diverse (see also Burchiellaro, 2021; Knappert et al., 2024; Vincent et al., 2024). As was the case with other studies (Cook and Glass, 2016; DiTomaso, 2021; McBride et al., 2015; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007), the findings showed that the framing of diversity according to pre-established, apolitical, single categories of difference resulted in the commodification and erasure of the complexity of the lived experience of diversity at work, especially intersectional experiences.

In addition, the findings point to how organisations used DEI to manage representation by creating hierarchies or priorities for specific groups. These hierarchies gave leaders permission not to engage with and be challenged by the complexity of and political nature of difference at work. Whilst these hierarchies reflected broader societal priorities and power dynamics evident in the government policies and funding schemes focusing on race (i.e., Indigenous Australians and people from diverse cultural backgrounds), gender and disability (Workforce Australia, 2025), they also reflected leaders’ preferences for one group over another based on their personal experience (e.g., LGBTQIA+).

Leadership’s influence and reproduction of dominant models was also evidenced. Leadership support of DEI was based on a dominant Western masculine model of leadership that considers diverse people as sub-categories of workers that need to be managed, including being contained or pacified (Romani et al., 2020). This resulted in the favouring of the ‘otherwise privileged’ within diversity groups (McBride et al., 2015) and in missed or blocked opportunities to develop forms of leadership beyond the ‘White male’ standard (Hekman et al., 2016). Women of ‘colour’ were blocked from progressing beyond a certain level or having access to professional development opportunities because they ‘played the game’ and their requests for change were dismissed on the grounds of lack of culture fit or merit to be part of the leadership, but also on the grounds of an implied debt towards the leadership group and the organisation for having invested in DEI (Allman, 2013).

As with other research on the impact of single categories of difference in DEI, the study surfaced how DEI reifies difference, renders intersectionality invisible, promotes ideas of merit, and limits the capacity to achieve equality for those who took on or were burdened with the labour – instead of the leaders. Although the organisations invested in DEI and offered internal and external activities for various stakeholders to take part in, instead of widening participation horizontally across roles and vertically across levels of the hierarchy, the status quo was maintained. The performance of difference led to burdening, silencing and depoliticising divergent voices around difference and reinforcing unequal status quo. Staff in dedicated ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ positions were coerced into performing ‘equity’, initially labouring under the impression that change was possible, only to realise – or not – that the potential efficacy of their work and practices was undermined or limited because it was detached from sources of power.

Furthermore, the study found that DEI could not achieve equitable outcomes because organisations mostly construed it as providing the means to help ‘others’ feel included by joining in with what the dominant ‘we’ were doing, thereby reinforcing the status quo. Equality was taken to mean that the minority could become de facto members of the majority rather than their differences and their participation being seen as equal. The responsibility still rested on minority or marginalised groups to seek inclusion into mainstream culture, which reproduced and heightened exclusion. Not only did the staff managing DEI lack the power to enact change, but the activities offered under that banner were prevented from engaging with power, leading to structural issues and the lived realities of diversity at work being pushed into the shadows.

Besides how DEI commodifies and categorises difference, the findings provide evidence of Acker’s inequality regimes, or how DEI generated structural inequality along the lines of various forms of difference (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, and class), including intersectionality. The study surfaced the tensions between those seen as diverse or enacting DEI within the legitimised frame of DEI, and those perceived as a threat or working against established DEI when they raised issues emerging from everyday work practices (see Ray, 2019). Whilst the organisations were overt in their acknowledgement of inequalities and were implementing ‘best practice’ DEI for its redress, that structural changes were being sidelined, ignored and/or rejected demonstrated not the invisibility of inequality, but the power of the invisibility of politics at work. Despite decades of progressive DEI, DEI in the organisations studied were informed by a liberal egalitarian ‘business case’ rationale for equality at work that supports the creation of economic value (Noon, 2007; Squires, 2005; Vincent et al., 2024; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007).

Marcuse’s ‘repressive tolerance’ clarified how the tolerance of ‘others’ evident in organisations’ policies and activities was bounded within dominant discourses. The presence of women did little to reorient the cultural sexism and racism at work because the tolerance of their presence was strictly bound by men’s threshold of tolerance and cancelled by their dominant interests (Blommaert and Verschueren, 1998). When employees sought to challenge these categories, this was seen as attempts to displace dominant practices or shift the central locus of power, which resulted in leadership making visible their limited tolerance of DEI and pitted diversity categories against each other and consequently placed minority perspectives in unequal competition for attention against and in conflict with dominant discourses. As a result, othering processes and sameness were reinforced, pushing ‘diversity’ out of sight. As seen with gender equality measures (Lup et al., 2018), the plethora of disconnected formal and informal DEI (e.g., policies, activities, events, committees, awards) created a mask of equality that had the aesthetic effect of making leadership be ‘seen to be doing’ something about inclusion of difference whilst remaining distant and reinforcing an idealised version of equality.

Moreover, the superficial understanding of difference meant that leaders received any request to deal with more nuanced expressions of diversity and DEI’s inability to deal with the political at work as challenges to their benevolence and tolerance of ‘others’ (Tyler and Vachhani, 2021). The mismatches and tensions between the meaning of and justification for DEI led to the breakdown of interactions at work and the reinforcement of the dominant order and the status quo according to the leaders’ interests. This breakdown constitutes a ‘rhetorical entrapment’ where DEI and the people enacting these initiatives and the people embodying diversity are cancelled, and critical, alternative, and radical discourses, strategies and practices are silenced (Squires, 2005). Consequently, the failure of liberation results in disengagement from political life and the prevention of the possibility for individuals to develop a core ‘political existence’ (Marcuse, 1969).

Beyond this, ‘repressive equality regimes’ accounts for how DEI failed to achieve equal outcomes for people labelled ‘diverse’, including those with multiple marginalised identities, because of a range of processes, discourses, and (inter)actions that rendered the politics in DEI invisible to those who benefit from the status quo. Furthermore, the political meaning of ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘equity’ was silenced, and progress cancelled because of the hierarchies that pitted certain diversities against others, a tolerance for others and change that did not tolerate being challenged, and leaders’ idea of equality that denied the complexity of lived experience.

Organisational focus on diversity was well-intentioned and made a difference for some people. However, the lack of progress towards inclusion in the form of equal treatment of all workers was evident across organisations. The findings suggest that dominant work cultures and leadership practices prevented the realisation of DEI ambitions because the repression of equitable outcomes was woven into DEI. Whilst DEI was widely implemented across the organisations to signal a desire to address issues of inequality at work, the equality measures were rendered impotent by a range of structural and discursive factors that disassociated policy from practice and experience of difference and equality and segregated the means to address inequality from the ends of achieving equality.

Recommendations for change

The lack of successful equality outcomes does not mean that DEI should be discarded altogether. Change is possible. However complex and prone to failure, as repressive equality regimes attest, careful and critical consideration of how greater inclusion and equality at work can be redirected towards fundamental change for ‘true’ equality starts by acknowledging the dynamics of repressive equality regimes. Since it is a political, not a managerial, problem, genuine change calls for understanding the context in which identity, difference, diversity and the struggles for survival and equality are located at work (Acker, 2006b).

Change requires a top-down and bottom-up approach. Top-down, structural reforms and commitment from leaders to establish mutual trust and lines of responsibility across roles and hierarchies are required. Bottom-up, there is a need for social and theoretical mobilisation and agitation from diverse staff and allies to upset the legitimacy of understandings of categories of difference and enactment of equality imposed on an organisation by the dominant groups (Acker, 2006b; Ray and Purifoy, 2019; Risberg and Corvellec, 2022). For this, leaders, HRM and DEI professionals can benefit from understanding the historical and cultural context of their workplace (including what diversity, privilege and merit look like at work), rethink the relationship between leaders and followers (e.g., leaders becoming advocates and allies), and engage with the lived experience of differences at work. More specifically, for leaders and business managers to support the equality of diverse workforces genuinely and radically at all levels of organisations and the transformative potential of DEI, they need to take responsibility for the means and ends of change from policy to implementation as it relates to the specific cultural conditions of the organisation and how this culture has changed over time. They need to identify the various forms of intersectional discrimination that exist in their organisation and the enriching forms of difference. This will involve addressing systemic biases and developing knowledge within the workforce. For DEI and HRM professionals to overcome the limits of DEI and move beyond the business case for diversity and inclusivity at work, there is a need to shift the focus away from staff identification with single categories of difference, towards strategies that provide greater opportunities for meaningful involvement and contribution that values difference at work.

Limitations and future research

Whilst the concept of ‘repressive equality regimes’ explains why DEI fails to achieve its stated outcomes in three Australian organisations and may have relevance for organisations that have mature and best practice DEI policies and practices in place, it might not fully account for variations in how equality measures are enacted and experienced in other industries or countries with statutory quotas, for example. There is a need for further research on how DEI constrains equality and conceals politics at work in other organisation types, industries, countries, forms of difference, and cultural contexts.

Conclusion

This paper has developed the concept of ‘repressive equality regimes’ as a way of explaining how DEI constitutes false progress towards equality because these initiatives disassociate policies from practices and experiences of differences and equality and segregate the means of achieving inequality from the ends of equal outcomes for all. The concept identifies the mechanisms that depoliticise DEI, bound tolerance to maintain leaders’ privilege, and reassign the work and organisational responsibilities downward; mostly onto women of diverse backgrounds.

The study shows how the real political meaning of equality is repressed through superficial and hierarchical categories of difference, limited tolerance for others and their more nuanced and complex experiences and understandings of difference, and an unchallengeable equality ideal that silences competing narratives and interests at work. The paper conceptualises how DEI can operate as a ‘repressive equality regime’ that limits how workplaces can be inclusive of multiple forms of difference. In so doing, DEI inhibits pluralist equality at work.

Despite the potential for DEI to be self-defeating in its pursuit of equality, there is no reason to believe that organisations that strategically focus on DEI are not well-intended or do not make a difference for some people at work. However, our conclusion that DEI can operate as a repressive equality regime highlights the need for organisations to challenge their complacency in believing that they have achieved equality and to engage with the political (rather than managerial) dimensions of DEI, which will challenge the structural barriers of achieving genuine inclusion.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank the study’s participants for sharing their time, insights and lives with us. We also thank the reviewers and the editor for their constructive feedback.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Australian Research Council under reference DP180100360.

Ethics statement

The study was approved by UTS under reference ETH18-2728.

ORCID iDs

Celina McEwen

Alison Pullen

Carl Rhodes

Celina McEwen is a Senior Researcher at the UTS Business School. Celina has an interdisciplinary background with training and experience in social sciences, adult education and information science. She draws on theories, methods and processes from these disciplines to examine issues of inequality and social justice redress, with a particular focus on work and higher education. Currently, she collaborates with members at the Centre for Climate Risk and Resilience and Change for Good at UTS on several projects with a focus on the just transition to net zero.

Alison Pullen is Professor of Feminist Organization Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. She teaches qualitative research methodology and organization behaviour at the business school. Alison’s writing appears in journals and books in the fields of organization theory, gender studies, and management studies and focuses most recently on organizational responsibility for domestic violence and social justice. Alison is Editor of Feminism and Organization (Bristol University Press).

Carl Rhodes is Professor of Business and Society at UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. He writes scholarly papers, books and media articles that critically investigate the ethico-political dimensions of business activity and working life, with a special focus on justice, equality, resistance, dissent and democracy. Carl’s latest book, Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire (Bristol University Press) was published in January 2025. He sits on the editorial boards of Human Relations, Organization, Organization Studies, Organization Theory and The Journal of Business Ethics, and is series editor of Routledge Studies in Business Ethics.

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