Scrum.org has a diversity council that has been researching the topic from an agile perspective. How can Scrum Teams embrace diversity and what will be the gift from doing so?
At Scrum.org, we explore the value that diversity has to offer for Scrum Teams and their enterprises. Looking at the numbers shows evidence that teams with high diversity create more innovative products. In a globalized market, software is delivered worldwide and diversified perspectives serve diversified customer communities.
Our mission as trainer community at Scrum.org is to help our customers embrace diversity and inclusion in their Scrum Teams. We've created blogs, webcasts and other resources to help explore the topic. Our goal is digging the treasure that diversity brings to us in a global marketplace, where we need our collective capabilities to solve global challenges. The gift that Scrum has to offer is a framework that serves as a communication structure across culture, gender, race, ability, profession and others. This enables Scrum Teams to overcome the challenges of diversity. (see S1)
In the Webcast 7 Strengths of Highly Diverse Agile Teams we explored what helps agile teams to gain the most from diversity and overcome obstacles.
Gender seems to be the most uncomfortable aspect of diversity, although it is just one aspect. This aspect has many obstacles in times when we have gender debates like "metoo" in the mainstream media. Diversity seems more uncomfortable than it actually is. Scrum can help us mitigate these impediments. It gives structure and provides rules for the frequency of communication, while limiting endless discussions. These features are helpful to diverse teams, according to the research done at BCG (see S1).
See further resources:
Resources
Website
Scrum.org Diversity and Inclusion
Blogs
Diversity as a Competitive Advantage by Dave Dame
A Story of a Professional with a Disability - Moonlighting - Dave Dame
Why Diversity Matters by Uta Kapp
Webcasts
7 Strengths of Highly Diverse Agile Teams with Ravi Verma, Dave Dame, Uta Kapp
Statistics
S1: Boston Consulting Group - http://www.iberglobal.com/files/2017/innovation_diversity_bcg.pdf
S2: Thomson Reuters Diversity & Inclusion Index - https://financial.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/data-analytics/market-data/indices/diversity-index.html