Mounting pressure from the political right is beginning to impact the corporate programmes that are typically companies’ most visible commitments to the S of ESG.

This week has seen several large US firms either announce a change of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy or hit the headlines for having scrapped such schemes altogether.

Harley Davidson and John Deere were both covered in several media articles, with the former stating that it was “saddened” by “negativity on social media over the past few weeks, designed to divide the Harley Davidson community”. It clarified that it had already changed aspects of its DEI approach in April.

It is fair to say it had been coming, with so-called ‘woke wars’ a popular and persistent topic in the right-leaning press, and the connected issues having been increasingly politicised over the past couple of years. Companies with activist investors, or that get dragged into conversations either because of what they do, or something someone else has said, can find themselves stuck between wanting to improve fairness and heading off scornful public criticism.

This interesting piece in Forbes makes a case for equity being the most important aspect of DEI, but also the most politically contentious. It’s a strong summary of the evolution of the aspects of DEI over the past few decades, concluding that “it's unlikely that the pressure against DEI will stop, especially with the conservative-stacked Supreme Court and States passing legislation that erases what progress has been made.”

And of course, there’s also the question of who becomes US President after this November’s election, and what impact that may have on the current right-wing pressure.

A piece in Harvard Business Review this month took up the same topic, making a case for retaining the E in DEI, and that “removing equity is not progress, it’s regression.”

All of this is happening not just in the run-up to that election, but at a time that major companies will be thinking about their annual ESG report, or specific DEI reports, and considering how to communicate their actions alongside the main corporate financial reporting season early next year.

Every company will have its own reasons for targets, programmes, commitments and internal initiatives, but the public pressure some are coming under does create a new context in which the progress being made is shared. And even if a company is sticking to its guns in driving change through an unchanged DEI programme, it may want to reference the external pressure, or at least be prepared to further justify its course.

DEI is being put to a stiff test and that may only increase. How companies respond, and are seen to respond, will likely have an impact well beyond the next reporting cycle, or political term.