DEI Is Dead. But Decency Isn't.

The American government's war on woke is having far reaching consequences and creates a dilemma for those of us living in parts of the world where DEI is not just a corporate initiative; it's a legal framework. Women and all protected groups, whether defined by race, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation, are entitled to fair treatment under the law.

Yet DEI initiatives around the world are being dismantled due to pressure from US head offices or fear of losing American clients and opportunities.

And it seems anyone in the world who talks about women, race, inequity or diversity are being shadow-banned and their content suppressed on social media. Women all over LinkedIn have been making a lot of noise about this over the last couple of weeks. But the conversation is contained within a deafening echo chamber.

This shadow banning almost killed the 7th Tribe at birth, our launch posts reached a few hundred people, not the 15,000 followers I had built over ten years of leading narratives and producing powerful creative content. So I tried every 'how to increase your LinkedIn reach' trick from the 'experts' and held a webinar to present our findings.

The very next day a post of mine went viral, it used words people claim are on banned lists — like woman. It contained politics, a smattering of fucks oh, and an open call to revolution.

So how did it slip through? Because it was radically honest, raw and it powerfully demonstrated a looming societal problem via a deeply personal, relatable story.

Because the world is built on stories.

And that's how we change the world.

I believe we all want a world where human intelligence, creativity and cunning will always be ahead of the machines. The idea of humans evolving hand-in-hand with electrons and the endless potential of energy flows, creates a future that, honestly, I could spend days daydreaming in.

But it seems we're giving in at the first sign of resistance and instead of patiently teaching the machines who we are and what we want, we're bending ourselves to fit the algorithm.

What's worse, we're getting the machines to be our voice. If I nightmare instead of daydream the future, I see a place where historians puzzle over their ancestors, who feared AI, yet gave up control the moment a lazy thought could be turned into a social media post fully-optimised to generate views and provide an ego boost.

Storytelling is not easy. That's the beauty of it.

But it's a million times easier than it's ever been. For those of us who grew up in a world without computers, ChatGPT is like a magic library. Creativity is simply bringing together previously unrelated ideas and turning them into something beautiful or useful, Having a research assistant that can take your every 'what if' and find an answer in an instant is a blessing (but you do have to check ALL her work!)

So 'what if' we started writing our way out of social media censorship and corporate cowardice by using THEIR words to describe the programmes, ideas and progress they're trying to suppress.

Keep your DEI programme but call it a Meritocracy initiative. This will have a massive effect. Especially in the States, the group with the highest amount of college degrees are — wait for it — Black women.

Want entry level candidates from every walk of life? Brightest & Best programmes. The patriarchy interprets brightest as the one with the most qualifications and best as coming from the right schools. Anyone with an ounce of humanity will recognise the brightest lights, the brightest talents and the brightest personalities as the best people to train and employ.

Need to educate your staff to ensure fairness for all? Hold Business Ethics events.

But there's a huge problem that needs more than a rebrand. (It's so recent it hasn't even got a name yet.) But it needs to be fixed before it takes root, and it's what my viral post was all about. Entry level positions are being replaced by AI agents and women over 50 are once again the first to go in what seems like an endless round of redundancies. After spending years promoting the value of midlife women and creating, funding and promoting a successful initiative that reactivated women's careers. it's heartbreaking to get emails from women we helped telling me how they were treated in the workplace post November 2024 and, with the latest rounds of lay offs, they're back on an almost impossible job hunt. Many of these women face severe financial trauma because she has absolutely no way of downsizing or cutting her budget to survive. She's probably got to keep a roof over the head of her unemployed or minimum wage adult children long after she'd budgeted for. And her plan of using the last years of her career to build retirement savings is shot.

You don't need a programme, initiative or white paper to recognise the birth of a social catastrophe that will affect every single one of us. Because women over 50 have 30% of the retirement savings of men and the majority of single mothers have less than £5000 tucked away. What will happen to your tax rates when we have a massive proportion of an entire generation of women retiring in poverty? What happens to your kids when they leave university and there's no work? What happens to your job when you hit 50?

This is an issue to shout from the rooftops using all the banned words, politics, a smattering of fucks and the occasional call to revolution. The machines will learn exactly what we care about.

We have to stop playing it safe. The world has never been more dangerous.