Toga fitting at de Togamaker

For my inaugural speech on April 6th, I am expected to wear the traditional toga in the Leiden University format. While the outside is black, the inside can be anything according to the infamous Togamaker who, situated on the Dutch canals, has for decades been creating custom-made togas for newly minted professors.

I chose to have a Leiden blue silk printed with the Declaration of Amsterdam in rainbow font.

The Declaration of Amsterdam ‘Call to Action’:
1. Employers must provide a safe, comfortable, equal opportunity workplace and promote authenticity for LGBT employees.
2. Employers should work closely with and benefit from the knowledge of other parties (employee networks and NGOs) dealing with LGBT workplace issues to achieve improvements.
3. Employers should identify and support leaders and decision-makers (LGBT and straight) that actively strive to create LGBT-inclusive working environments.
4. LGBT employees should actively strive to be visible at work and collaborate with their employers on diversity and inclusion, leading the way for all employees.
5. LGBT employees should guide their employers on measures to support this declarations goal's and implementing best practices.
6. Employers and LGBT employees should create and support structures in the organization that ensure progress.
7. Employers should embed the Declaration’s concepts in organizational principles, and include them explicitly in external communication such as Annual and Corporate Responsibility Reports.
8. Employers and employees should develop and establish measurements that identify the level and progress of LGBT inclusiveness within the organization and benchmark this externally.
9. Employers should dedicate a minimum of 1 euro per employee in the organization to support LGBT programs and Employee Resource Groups.
10. Organizations should visibly support the improvement of working environments for their LGBT employees in all the countries where they are active.

With Prof.dr. Kees Waaldijk on April 6th 2018

National Diversity Event

After the milestone of 100 signatories of the Diversity Charter in 2017, it was time to celebrate the successes of diversity in organizations! That is why, for the first time, Diversity at Work and the Municipality of The Hague organized the National Diversity Event on the 15th of February 2018.

It was an inspiring meeting with a broad variety of speakers, including Naomi Ellemers who provided a workshop on the psychological mechanisms that hinder objective judgement of the potential of individual employees.

Image Credit: https://diversiteitinbedrijf.nl/15-februari-nationaal-event-diversiteit/

National Diversity Event

Inspiring sessions today at the National Diversity Event on the theme of “Seeing Each Other” in the Hague. Naomi Ellemers presented our social psychological approach and introduced the Netherlands Inclusiveness Monitor to the audience.

50th Anniversary LGBT Movement Leiden

In 1968, four students from Leiden University founded the Leiden Student Work Group on Homosexuality, which was the starting point of the gay movement in Leiden.

On Thursday the 8th of February, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of this LGBT movement in the Town Hall in Leiden. Besides celebrating the achievements of the past years, it was a day to reflect on the importance of LGBT movements, within the university and beyond, toward the development of a diverse and inclusive society.

Read more about this day in Dutch or English

Photo Credit: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/nieuws/2018/01/hoe-studenten-50-jaar-geleden-de-leidse-homobeweging-ontketende

Masterclass at Van Lanschot Bankiers

This January, I was invited by Van Lanschot Bankiers in Amsterdam to talk about diversity and inclusion at the workplace. To this end, I gave a masterclass on evidence-based diversity policy “Toward a Diverse and Inclusive Workplace.”

Workshop by Robbie Sutton on conspiracy beliefs

I attended a workshop at Groningen University on the Justification of inequality: Conspiracy beliefs and sexism . In this workshop, prof. Robbie Sutton, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent, introduced us to his and others’ work on the social psychology of justice and (in)equality, with a specific focus on the psychological mechanisms associated with conspiracy beliefs and the role of ambivalent sexism theory in ideology.

My favorite part was the discussion of an article reporting that beliefs in mutually contradictory conspiracy theories are positively correlated. Prof. Sutton did not only gave an engaging presentation about this work, but also raised (and answered) some thought-provoking questions about the methodologies used. From the syllabus: “[The research showed that] participants who tend to agree that Osama Bin Laden died long before the US raid in Pakistan also tend to agree that he is still alive and hiding out somewhere, and those that agree that Princess Diana was murdered are more likely to agree that she faked her own death. It is widely cited as evidence that conspiracy theorists are ‘kooky’ – or at least that their “conspiracy mentality” leads them to embrace multiple conspiracy theories, no matter how incoherent.  We will be discussing this paper in light of the duality of agree-disagree scales, which by definition measure disagreement as much as agreement. Could it be that disagreement, rather than disagreement, with multiple conspiracy theories drives the correlation between them? How can we tease these possibilities apart?”

Resistance to Same-Sex Marriage

In our recent publication “In defense of tradition: Religiosity, conservatism, and opposition to same-sex marriage in North America”, we explore the mechanisms behind religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

Arguments opposing same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds. In five studies, we observed that religious opposition to same-sex marriage was explained, at least in part, by conservative ideology and linked to sexual prejudice. Moreover, results revealed that resistance to change was more important than opposition to equality in explaining religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

You can read the full paper here.

Toward effective and evidence-based diversity policy

The Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor (NIM) has been launched!

With the aim of bridging science and society, my research group at Utrecht University has teamed up with the National Integration Fund in developing an instrument to monitor organizations' diversity and inclusion practices and their impact.

The National Integration Fund is an initiative by CEO's of big corporations to contribute to a better and more integrated society through an evidence-based approach to diversity. We survey its D&I policy and employee perceptions, screen our findings in light of the latest scientific insights, and identify where progress can still be made. By repeating this annually and by benchmarking between organizations, we can monitor the progress and determine best practices.

See the press release (in Dutch) for more information or go to www.nederlandseinclusiviteitsmonitor.nl

ASPO 2017: Inclusive Work Environments

During the the Annual Conference of the Association for Social Psychological Researchers (ASPO), Wiebren Jansen chaired the symposium we prepared on “Inclusive Work Environments”, with contributions by Seval Gündemir, Onur Sahin, Wiebren Jansen, and Jill Knapen.

Image Credit: https://clipartart.com/images/diversity-in-the-workplace-clipart-6.png

Diversity in Science

Our research group hosted the Diversity in Science conference in Utrecht, honoring the 2017 Erasmus Prize laureate Michèle Lamont (Cultural Sociology - Harvard University). The speakers addressed a variety of themes related to the key question of who decides what is successful and valuable in scientific research?

See HERE for more information and the program