Equity as a technical skill: The future of work
Are you really good at your job? Let’s talk equity as a technical skill
On Wednesday September 29th 1991, the Ottawa Citizen ran a job ad that specified “Candidates should have a sound knowledge of DOS, Win 3X, Windows 95/98 & the internet. Bilingualism is an asset.”
A quick review of LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, and the good old classified section in the Ottawa Citizen today, and you would be hard pressed to find an explicit ask for basic computer skills. Forty years ago, it was rare to find the need for computer skills in a job advertisement, twenty years ago it was a nice to have. Today, the ability to use a computer is considered so commonplace and common sense in North America, it goes unsaid.
Equity is on the same trajectory.
We are rapidly moving towards a future where the ability to assess the outputs and process of your work, understand who it is serving, who it is disenfranchising, and how to course correct - will no longer be a nice to have niche, but a necessity. At QuakeLab, we call this equity as a technical skill.
For decades, highly technical professionals (engineers, physicians, etc) have built their knowledge and practice under the guise of ‘neutrality’. This pattern has spread across industries from construction teams to policy analysts. Neutrality has allowed all of us as professionals to say: we build for everyone! We care about the safety, success and support of everyone. This guise of neutrality has rid us of the responsibility to investigate who ‘everyone’ actually is. Who is the prototype for everyone? The reality is neutrality does not exist because for hundreds of years the neutral, average, or normal has been built to reflect one kind of person. Our roads, medical equipment, medicine, cars, furniture, and so much more were built for white, middle class, able bodied, cis men. This persona, overtime, has become our neutral, our average, and our normal.
Building equity as a technical skill forces you to engage in the practice of thoroughly and honestly assessing who your ‘neutral’ is, and how that has informed the process you use to do your work, and the outcome it creates. The goal here isn’t to turn us all into DEI experts, but to ensure that equity becomes a technical factor in the way you make decisions about your work.
This involved tapping into your expertise, your knowledge of how you do what you do. The goal is to start altering processes piece by piece for outcomes that are more equitable. This will not take days, months or years, but will be a lifetime of small and large alterations that we will all build to standardize in our fields. It has taken decades, sometimes hundreds of years to weave inequity into the current systems that govern our work - so it will take time to undo them.
Many of us have sat in one-time training, even with the best trainers and facilitators, and felt at a loss. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes days, but eventually we all get to the point where we’re thinking:
That was great, I learned a lot… but I’m not sure how I’m going to apply this to my actual job.
This makes complete sense. When we are introduced to equity in the context of our work, although it may be helpful and illuminating to have general knowledge about oppression, we are left without any way to incorporate that knowledge into the technical aspects of our work where there is real potential to make change. So here’s where you can start:
Once again, investigate who your ‘neutral’ has been, and who that neutral is in direct conflict with (ie. if the assumption is that your ‘neutral’ is able bodied, how has that created barriers for disabled people).
As extensively as possible, break down your specific job: what is it exactly you do?
Go into detail, what are the tangible outcomes of your job? Perhaps for a communications professional it might be website copy, for a teacher it may be curriculum, for a program director it may be programming for youth, etc.You may have multiple outcomes, in that case capture as many as possible.
Once you have your outcomes, go through each and investigate what the barriers are to access and participation for the outcome(s). Here you’ll want to lean on the original question of who your ‘neutral’ is and who is outside of that perceived neutrality. Sometimes, to prompt our thinking we ask ourselves guiding questions eg. Does the outcome require a person to be able bodied, does the outcome require you to not be a primary caregiver, does the outcome require you to have Canadian citizenship, etc.
As you begin identifying these barriers, be mindful and clear about the processes that create the outcome, for instance are their best practices used to get to the outcome, is there a checklist or guide commonly used, etc. Make note of these because it is critical for sustainable change to be altered not just the outcome but the process.
Finally, one at a time, begin exploring what would need to be removed, altered, or created from scratch to eliminate or reduce the barriers to access and participation for each outcome.
It’s easy for us to write 6 simple steps and call it a day, we know the work isn’t that straightforward and quick in practice. Take your time, and we strongly recommend seeking support with those who can support and facilitate this process - like us! However, if financial resources are not available, we feel confident that your technical expertise will guide you through this with time and patience.
This is no longer a nice to have or a just a moral prerogative. In the near future, if you are unable to apply an equity lens into your technical work, you cannot consider yourself an expert.
