“We imagine that range, fairness and inclusion is a vital a part of our progress and simply the suitable factor to do.”
On the shareholder assembly, Griffith was quizzed on how the board may “may justify valuing floor traits over benefit” and why it prioritizes “pores and skin shade and reproductive organs” when hiring workers, the Washington Occasions reported.
Ethan Peck, an affiliate of the Nationwide Middle for Public Coverage Analysis’s Free Enterprise undertaking, which buys inventory in US corporations to showcase alleged political bias in boardrooms, requested the query.
“You stated that you simply wanted to mirror your prospects,” he stated. “Are you saying that folks with a sure pores and skin shade all suppose a sure method?”
Griffith reportedly responded: “No. We’d like to have the ability to characterize that. You’ll be able to’t put your self in the sneakers of any individual else when you don’t have a consultant group that represents the nation as a complete.
“You possibly can by no means know what it feels prefer to be a feminine, I may by no means really feel what it feels prefer to be a male, so we have to characterize everybody.”
Peck went on to accuse Progressive of adopting “woke” id politics after the assembly.
“It’s an extremely regressive and divisive world view,” Peck stated in a press release seen by the Washington Occasions.
This isn’t the one insurance coverage AGM to make headlines in latest weeks. British insurer Aviva’s latest shareholder assembly was marred by sexist remarks towards the agency’s feminine CEO Amanda Blanc. She was accused of being “not the person for the job”.