The Economist: The Corporate Closet

On the face of it, the corporate world has embraced gay rights with enthusiasm. More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies have policies to prevent homophobic discrimination. Both Lloyd Blankfein, the boss of Goldman Sachs, and Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, have spoken out in favour of same-sex marriage. In-house networks for homosexual staff, such as Glam (Gays and Lesbians at McKinsey) and Google’s Gayglers, have become part of the corporate furniture. Lord Browne says he has even heard of business students pretending to be gay in order to increase their chances of landing jobs at elite companies.

Look beyond the welcome signs, however, and the picture is not so good. Neither the Fortune 500 nor the FTSE 100 has a single openly gay CEO. Christopher Bailey will become the FTSE’s first when he takes over as boss of Burberry later this year. An estimated 41% of gay employees in the United States and 34% in Britain remain in the closet, the book [Lord Browne's The Glass Closet] notes...

Lord Browne is reasonably convincing that coming out is good for business. Embracing gay rights helps firms win the war for educated talent—not just because they stand a better chance of recruiting gay employees (who constitute perhaps 5-10% of the workforce) but also because it sends a positive signal to gay-friendly straights. Coming out probably improves the productivity of gay employees: he cites a raft of statistics, together with his own biography, to show that people are more creative if they are not using a quarter of their brains to hide who they are.

However, Lord Browne’s enthusiastic advocacy leads him to gloss over some of the difficult issues raised by the move towards more gay-friendly workplaces. He never has a bad word to say about the “diversity consultants” who provide him with most of the book’s statistics. He seems to have overlooked that these consultants are members of a self-serving industry that constantly redefines discrimination so as to keep itself in work. He praises bosses who speak out in favour of gay marriage, but says nothing about those with sincere reasons to oppose it, and their right to express their opinions—such as Brendan Eich, who was forced to quit as boss of Mozilla, a software firm, for this reason...

The Economist.

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