The following is the transcript of Becky Slack’s speech at our Understanding People event, which took place on Wednesday 8 March 2023. Check against delivery.
When was the last time you did something that you thought was against your self-interest but did it anyway – just because someone else asked you to for their benefit?
I’m not talking about things like going to visit your grandma when you’d rather be at the pub or offering up your seat on the train. I mean the things that you think would put you at a significant disadvantage compared to others – such as calling out the bad behaviour of someone online at risk of being attacked yourself? Voting for a political party whose policies you believed would make you poorer? Or putting your own career aspirations to one side to allow a colleague to progress instead?
While you’re thinking about that, I’m going to talk for a few minutes about communications from the perspective of equality and diversity – something I’ve been passionate about for many years. I’ve written about it within my role as a journalist – including as editor of LEAD magazine; I focused on it during my recent Masters in Political Strategy and Communications; and just yesterday, Rogare launched its latest gender issues in fundraising research, to which I was delighted to make a small contribution (you can find out more about this and read a piece by me in the copy of Fundraising magazine on your chairs)
One thing that has been frustrating me over all these years of thinking about diversity and human rights and social justice is why is it taking so long to create the equal and just society that we all need and deserve? Why are we still having to persuade people that women make good leaders? Why did it take the brutal murder of George Floyd in America to make people pay attention to racism?
Is there something in the way in which we communicate about these issues that’s hindering progress?
I’ve been trying to find an answer to that question and so today I’m going to share some of what I’ve learnt with you. This isn’t everything I have to say on the issue and I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I hope that what you’re about to hear will be a good starting point for further discussion.
I’m going to focus on gender, race and class, and as Vic and Joe have both expertly done in their sessions before this one, I’m going to focus on self-interest. In particular, I am going to argue that if we want to bring more people into the social justice and equality movements, we need to work with their self-interest in order to further our own.
Let’s start with class.
As someone who originates from a former mining community in Derbyshire – as you can probably tell by my accent, I’ve been on the receiving end of my fair share of classism. I know what it’s like to have the door to an exciting career shut in your face because you can’t afford the internship, and I know how it feels to be overlooked for promotion because you didn’t go to the right school or university.
So I was really excited to work with the Social Mobility Foundation on their organisational narrative where I explored attitudes towards class in the workplace. I wanted to find out why it’s harder for working class people to get those top jobs when they’re just as qualified as their middle class peers. What I learnt was that there's lots of good old-fashioned prejudice and stereotyping at play – nothing new there, right? But also identity and self-interest.
For example, did you know that one in four middle class people misclassify themselves as working class? The reason for this is because they don’t want to be viewed as privileged – they want their position and status to be recognised as the result of their hard work and skill, not because their parents had money or connections. So that’s the identity part.
Self interest comes in when it comes to making space for working class folk in the workplace. Why should middle class people give up their position or be overlooked for promotion when they’ve also worked hard to get where they are? Of course, there is an assumption here that they are actually the best people for the job and that they haven’t taken advantage of what I call the ‘class dividend’ to land jobs they’re not really qualified for – but let’s put that to one side for now. Let’s keep our focus on the people who we want to change their attitudes and behaviours and make space for working class colleagues – these middle class people will have career goals they want to achieve and the belief that they deserve to be successful. They don’t want to miss out because of some new diversity initiative, and why should they?
So a need to protect self interest appears to be one of the reasons why progress in this area is slow.
There was a similar learning to emerge out of work I’ve done on racial discrimination - part of my ongoing mission to be a more effective ally and to make a positive contribution towards racial justice. Again, the research pointed to self-interest playing a key role.
Only in this instance, it’s a case of right-wing politicians and commentators using people’s self-interest as a tool to harm anti-racism initiatives.
Let’s look to America for a moment. Lots of white America is feeling very financially insecure – they were told that if they worked hard and played by the rules, they’d be rewarded. Instead, their jobs are at risk, health care is unaffordable and the American dream feels very very far away. By tapping into this precarity and by blaming people of colour for this, Donald Trump and others like him have created a shared sense of aggrieved entitlement; the belief that they – white men – are the rightful heirs of America’s fortunes and have had what should be theirs taken away from them and given to undeserving minorities. Trump and co have very expertly used white America’s self-interest to demonise Black people and increase opposition to policies that aim to address difficulties faced by minorities.
It's not just America where this happens. You can see examples of it here in the UK. The Conservative party’s immigration policy being a prime example.
And so to gender.
And again, as with class and race, it can be argued that the reason why it’s taking far far too long to achieve gender equality is down to self interest - because many men feel that it puts them and their ability to succeed in life at a disadvantage.
And the reason they feel like this is partly because we haven’t done enough to persuade them otherwise, and partly down to the Patriarchy – which as I wrote for Fundraising magazine – is just as bad for men as it is for women.
Now this may sound like a surprising thing to say about a system that is supposedly designed to maximise the power afforded to men at the expense of women, but it’s true.
The patriarchy dictates that for men to be successful, they need to be rich, powerful, funny, have a great job, great wife, drive the best car… This places pressure on men, limits their ability to participate fully in family life and makes it harder for them to make choices that are best suited for them and their loved ones.
So when they are told they must now compete with women in the workplace – or move aside to make way for women, this creates a problem. Under the rules of the patriarchy, this means women are now a threat. It is not in his self-interest to make way.
Or is it?
There’s a wealth of evidence that shows how men benefit greatly from gender equality, ranging from the way in which it contributes to more innovative and financially sustainable organisations through to extended parental leave and flexible working and lots of other things that contribute to a better standard of living.
Yet we don’t really talk so much about those benefits. Instead, the focus tends to be on why participation in gender initiatives, or those tackling classim or racism for that matter, are the right thing to do. Well, the right thing to do for who?
We can’t assume that people will stand aside or silence their own voices to make way for others simply because they’ve been asked to do so. We all have centuries of social conditioning and inground cognitive functions that influence our attitudes and beliefs.
Instead, we need to take into account the many complicated ways in which people invoke different aspects of their identities and experiences to advance their own interests and either disempower, or stand in solidarity with, other people.
So, what does all this mean for us communicators who are trying to persuade people to adopt different attitudes and behaviours when it comes to race, gender, class or other really important social justice issues?
First, we need to go back to basics. As all you excellent communicators will know, the number one rule for effective communications is to focus on your audience and their needs. It’s always all about them, not you. We apply this to consumer advertising, fundraising, employee relations, recruitment… but for some reason that rule goes out the window when it comes to communicating about diversity and discrimination.
Instead, we make it about us not them. We make demands of others that are based on our needs and wants, what we want and deserve. We tell people to check their privilege, go educate themselves…
Why do we do this? Shouldn’t we be telling them how great their lives will be, how good they will feel about themselves, if they were to buy-in to our mission?
Second, we need to understand their dreams and aspirations, past experiences, what keeps them awake at night – all of which will influence the frames they currently hold in their heads on these issues. And then we need to position our communications in a way that will fit these frames. As anyone here who has read George Lakoff will know – if the facts don’t fit the frames, the facts bounce off.
Third, we need to meet people where they are and help them make the mental journey to where we want them to be. Just telling people that they’re wrong or that something they believe to be true isn’t – this isn’t going to cut it. Cognitive dissonance is likely to kick in and people’s brains will try and find ways to disprove or ridicule whatever it is you’re telling them, which in turn makes them more resistant to change.
Instead, we need to ask questions, make suggestions and gently enable people to connect the dots and get to where we want them to be. This may take longer, and it might not feel as good as telling someone to go educate themselves, but research has proven that this is much more likely to achieve sustainable behaviour change than simply chucking new information at people and expecting them to accept it as true.
And fourth, our audiences don’t always live in the same bubbles as we do and so we need to think about the messages they are receiving from other people, including those who do not have our and our beneficiaries' best interests in mind – the people who are actively working against us. We need to make sure that our communications are not inadvertently reinforcing negative and harmful messages, and that instead we’re challenging those messages and showing people that another way is possible.
I want to end with an example of really excellent campaign framing, which I think really neatly encapsulates all of this.
A few months ago, I had the very good fortune to be able to speak with Ailbhe Smyth from the 2018 Irish abortion referendum campaign, which you may remember as successfully persuading a strong Catholic community to overturn the abortion ban.
What was it about their messaging that was so persuasive?
What she told me was this:
They were up against the church so wouldn’t win with a morality message.
A human rights message was too conceptual. And if they’d said something like “give her her rights, vote yes”, people would have thought, well what about my rights?
So they did some polling to find out what people’s fears were about abortion. They discovered that they were worried about being shamed by family and neighbours if it was discovered that they’d supported the right to have an abortion. They thought they might be rejected by their social group. They also cared deeply about women and did not want them to die.
Using this data, they focused on messaging that addressed these fears and which focused on women’s health. They made it about care and compassion and love. They showed how abortion care was something that had been, and would continue to be, needed by many women and that this vote was all about providing care for the women that voters knew and loved.
It worked. In May 2018, a two thirds majority voted yes to giving millions of women the right to make their own decisions about their lives and their health.
And this for me provides a really excellent example of a campaign that centres on human rights and needs, while framing it from the perspective of the people who have the power to make a difference.
That shows that it is possible to tap into the self-interest and identities of others in order to strengthen our own.
Thank you
