In January, 2025, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation requesting federal funding to strengthen Python against cybersecurity attacks. Python is one of the world’s most popular programming languages, underpinning all sorts of applications across multiple industries. Vulnerabilities in Python could be disastrous to the supply chain and the economy as a whole.

In October, PSF announced that their grant proposal was accepted with $1.5 million recommended for funding, but with one stipulation: that PSF end all programs that advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Rather than comply with this demand, PSF immediately rescinded their application. Refusing to turn their backs on their diverse community of programmers, PSF reaffirmed their commitment to DEI and have decided to look to private donors and sponsors for funding.

Even—or perhaps especially—in a climate of fear and uncertainty, we can’t lose sight of right and wrong. But a commitment to DEI isn’t just an ethical disposition. It’s a concrete recognition of the fact that a diverse workforce is a more effective and innovative workforce.

The Current State of DEI

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are under attack. 2025 began with a number of executive orders effectively ending DEI initiatives throughout the federal government, and corporate America soon followed suit. In February and March of 2025, dozens of businesses from Amazon to Walmart announced the cancellation of diversity initiatives. It would seem that DEI is officially dead.

Why has DEI drawn so much ire from people in places of power? Detractors will say they want to hire the best person for the job, not fill a quota. They will claim that DEI leads to mediocrity, with less-qualified workers taking spots from more-qualified ones. While these fears are common, they are a misunderstanding of what the purpose—and effect—of DEI actually is. These initiatives are there to help businesses do exactly what some think DEI prevents them from doing: they help ensure you are hiring the best person for the job and not passing them over due to implicit biases, and they help prevent the best person for the job is ignoring your business because they get the impression that they wouldn’t be welcome. Diversity isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about stripping away implicit bias in order to assemble the strongest team you can.

Diversity Offers a Competitive Advantage

DEI might be on the ropes at a handful of massive corporations seeking to curry political favor, but for the millions of small and medium-sized businesses across the country, DEI is most certainly alive and thriving, and helping those businesses to thrive. It still has a place in the strategy of many small businesses because they see the benefits a diverse, inclusive workforce brings everyday. Businesses with diverse teams know that diversity is a competitive advantage whose rewards are creativity, innovation, and empathy for all customers, coworkers, and communities.

When you look at the actual effects of DEI initiatives, you find the complete opposite of what its detractors claim. The most diverse businesses are 36% more likely to outperform on profitability, according to McKinsey. Deloitte, meanwhile, found that inclusive businesses are twice as likely to meet financial targets and six times more likely to be innovative and agile.

These results are due to the fact that a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion eliminates (or at least mitigates) the biases that cause better-qualified candidates to be overlooked in favor of lower-quality candidates who look more like what a hiring manager or AI resume-vetting program thinks a successful candidate looks like. The traditional resume screening process, on which some AI candidate-vetting products are trained, can be swayed by a certain kind of name or a degree from a certain institution.

These biases in hiring exist, but they are often implicit rather than intentional. Hiring managers are not necessarily intentionally trying to exclude whole categories of candidates, but there is a set of beliefs working unconsciously in their decision-making. These biases aren’t only based on gender, race, and sexuality. There are a number of assumptions we make at all levels of the hiring process that are rooted in implicit bias. Someone might find a resume more impressive if the candidate went to a college or worked at a company they associate with success. They might throw out a resume containing a single typo despite everything else indicating a perfect fit for the role. They might react more favorably to an interviewee they find attractive or charming, regardless of their ability or the substance of their interview answers. DEI is about making these implicit biases explicit. It’s about confronting them and rooting them out. It can be uncomfortable, but growth is often accompanied by a little discomfort.

Bias isn’t inherently discriminatory. It’s a survival mechanism deeply rooted in the evolution of humanity: we have to filter out certain information so we can focus on the information that will help us survive. We’re not looking for predators or foraging for food anymore, but the mechanism remains. There are so many resumes to review and only so much time to devote to each one. Someone tasked with reading them all might latch onto anything as an excuse to eliminate one resume from the endless digital pile looming over their workday. In such cases, bias, in whatever form it takes, is a heuristic, a problem-solving tool. The problem is that it’s just not a very good one. It helps you get the job done faster, but it gets the job done badly.

There are also AI screening tools that help you get the job done faster. Used poorly, they’re no different from relying on uninterrogated biases: they get the job done fast but with poor results. There are numerous high-profile examples of the inherent biases of AI systems implemented haphazardly, such as the Netherlands’ experiment in using AI in its social benefits system. These biases stem from the training data. AI cannot create new ideas; it simply pulls from its training material, with all of the biases of that data sealed in place.

Here's an example of how that can harm your business. According to statistics compiled by the US Bureau of Labor, 80% of general and operations managers are white, and only about 1/3 are women. A 2023 study in the journal Nature found that while “AI can provide faster and more extensive data analysis than humans,” these AI algorithms “cannot eliminate discrimination alone.” Furthermore, “If the underlying data is unfair, the resulting algorithms can perpetuate bias, incompleteness, or discrimination.” If these algorithms are not tuned with equity in mind, they are going to be biased toward white male applicants because that’s who gets hired for these positions historically. You might get all of the best applicants from that one particular demographic, but potential hires better suited to the role could get left out. If you don’t intentionally eliminate the potential for bias, you’ll never know.

Gain a Larger Pool of More Qualified Applicants

By mitigating these biases, your business can gain a number of advantages. First of all, you’ll have a larger pool of high-quality candidates to choose from. Often, women and people of color will simply pass on applying for a job if the company culture doesn’t seem welcoming. How many exceptional candidates are looking over your website and your social media and receiving the message that they don’t belong? You probably don’t intend to send this message, but look at your business through the eyes of someone not like you. Putting yourself in their shoes, would you feel represented? Would you feel welcome?

Grow Your Business With More Creativity and Innovation

When you make applicants and employees from various backgrounds feel valued, welcome, and respected, you’re also making customers from various backgrounds feel valued, welcome, and respected. You’ll gain a different perspective on your operations, your marketing, and your products.

For example, imagine a company with culturally homogenous staff wants to market a new product to POC customers. The one person of color in the room suggests that the proposed product name could be seen as offensive, trivializing their shared history and struggle, and thus turning off the very people the business wanted to gain the trust of. Without that one POC in the room, the product launch could have been a disaster.

Just simply having that employee in the room might not be enough. If they didn’t feel that their point of view would be respected, if they thought the rest of the team would become defensive and resentful rather than open and eager to learn from a different point of view, that employee may have stayed silent. Even within diverse teams, equity and inclusion must also be a part of the culture.

A diverse workforce who knows that their concerns and points of view are welcome will instantly improve performance in all areas. Marketing targeting men or women might advance harmful stereotypes about either gender, but if your marketing team doesn’t include voices from multiple genders, you might not notice. A particular product or website design might be difficult for people with disabilities to use, and it might take a disabled employee to point that out.

As we argued in this article on website accessibility, designs that accommodate disabilities don’t only help people with disabilities; they help everyone. Ramps and crosswalks and building entrances don’t just benefit people in wheelchairs; they make environments more accessible for people pushing strollers, shopping carts, hand trucks, or walkers. When you take the needs of diverse populations into account, you make better products and services that are more appealing to a wider range of customers, and you’re less liable to alienate potential customers.

It’s a diversity of backgrounds, learning styles, and worldviews that make these kinds of innovations possible. Research from Boston Consulting Group supports this claim, finding that diverse leadership teams generated 19% higher revenue from innovation. The gains you’ll see from a diverse workforce are even larger for small businesses. Adding one different voice to a team of 10, 20, or 50 can make an immediate impact, transforming culture and the way the rest of the staff approaches decision-making.

Innovation and Adaptability Require Difference

A diverse workforce melds different personalities, backgrounds, and experiences into something greater than the sum of its parts. A team that sees only one point of view or approaches problems in only one way ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

An equitable workforce is one in which diverse talents are treated with the same level of respect. A workforce without equity becomes resentful of the success of others and less likely to share information and own up to mistakes.

An inclusive workforce is one in which everyone is welcomed, valued, and taken seriously. A workforce where team members fear speaking out or offering a different opinion condemns good ideas and important insights to die in silence.

Different perspectives, sharing mutual respect, developing ideas that no single member of the team could have devised on their own: that’s the definition of a successful business. It’s also the definition of DEI.