Today's modern world is full of richness with the flavours of the world’s cultures, because of this a lot of first world countries understand the need for diversity and inclusion and have initiatives that strengthen their society and build communities were local governments, businesses and schools can all thrive and benefit in having safe environments where everyone feels included and heard.
Three-quarters of the world’s major conflicts have a cultural dimension. Bridging the gap between cultures is a necessity for peace, stability and development within any country
But what happens if a country decides to racially discriminate against a particular group of people based on the fact they want to foster home grown talent to help boost opportunities for 'their own' talent?
What is Race? In the United Kingdom, for example, the term race generally refers to a group of people who have in common some visible physical traits, such as skin colour, hair texture, facial features, and eye formation.
The 4 Types of Diversity
There are generally four different types of diversity take a look at the list below:
Internal - Internal diversity characteristics are ones related to situations that a person is born into. They are things that a person didn’t choose for themselves and are impossible for anyone to change e.g race, ethnicity, national origin, cultural identity, gender identity and so forth.
External - External diversity is used to describe things that are related to a person but aren’t characteristics that a person was born with. While external diversity can be heavily influenced by other people and their surroundings, they ultimately are aspects that a person can change and often do over time, examples of external diversity include personal interests, education, appearance, citizenship, religious beliefs, location, relationship status, socioeconomic status and life experiences.
Organisational - Organisational diversity, also known as functional diversity, relates to the differences between people that are assigned to them by an organisation—essentially, these are the characteristics within a workplace that distinguish one employee from another.
Regardless of your position or the pay you receive, any form of work that you do may help solidify your belonging to an organisation. Whether you’re working for a private, nonprofit, public sector, or governmental organisation, and even if you do volunteer work for free, you are a part of an organised group. This could be as small as two people or anything higher, as long as it’s more than one independent person, that constitutes an organisation.
However, there are different subsets within organisational diversity, which include:
Job function
Place of work
Management status
Employment status
Pay type
Seniority
Union affiliation
Worldview - The fourth type of diversity is commonly known as worldview. Even though there are a multitude of factors that come together to form our worldview, including our internal, external, and organisational diversity characteristics, at the end of the day, everyone has a worldview that they align with. Worldview diversity is another diversity type that changes with time—we conceptualise the world differently as we have new experiences and learn more about ourselves and each other.
There are still nuances within our worldviews, but some examples include political beliefs, moral compass, outlook on life and epistemology.
Why Cultural Diversity Matters
Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only with respect to economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life. This is captured in the culture conventions, which provides a solid basis for the promotion of cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is thus an asset that is indispensable for poverty reduction and the achievement of sustainable development.
At the same time, acceptance and recognition of cultural diversity – in particular through innovative use of media and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) – are conducive to dialogue among civilisations and cultures, respect and mutual understanding.
It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think.
There's an overall need for diversity in places of work, religion, politics, education and society in general, as diversity in itself is an asset to society, having people from different societies, cultural backgrounds, religious groups and race all together in a state where there's agreement and acceptance of everyones opinions is why society is thriving today. Diversity broadens peoples trail of thought and reasons with mindsets that have ultimately stopped certain individuals from particular opportunities, diversity in total helps the world thrive, and widens horizons.
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