Equity, diversity and inclusivity: Once more, with feeling

Abstract

This article examines how gratitude influences the practice of British television production workers. It does so through a case study which asked television production workers to consider their work through the prism of gratitude: were they grateful for their work? Using semi-structured interviews, the data revealed that yes, workers were grateful but still identified many punitive working practices. These practices have simultaneously been identified by the industry itself, and there is an improvement discourse through the equity, diversity and inclusivity agendas. I argue here that equity, diversity and inclusivity measures are ineffective – as they have been proven to be elsewhere – because they do not consider the feeling(s), such as gratitude, of working in television. In failing to make this a consideration, equity, diversity and inclusivity work cannot address the inequalities it is there to resolve. This is because understanding the felt experience illuminates the fuller encounter of working in a particular environment. This includes the potential inhibition that gratitude can catalyse through indebtedness. In understanding what these feelings catalyse when cooperating in what they know to be an unfair system, equity, diversity and inclusivity work can be progressed beyond a model predicated on assimilation, to something that achieves substantive change.