Dr. Johanna Mugler gives a talk at the Spring Conference of ökofinanz-21 e.V., a network for sustainable asset management, March, 19, 2026.

Description of event:

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) remains a critical and ongoing topic for large and transnational companies, despite public rhetoric about a pullback or even its «death».

The conference covered topics such as gender-lens-investing or examined how investment houses focused on sustainable investments perceive and respond to the strategic reframing of DEI policies and the repositioning of DEI units within US and other globally operating corporations. Johanna Mugler’s contribution served as a reminder that diversity does not automatically lead to equity and inclusion. She highlighted the structural role that difference and diversity play for the functioning of global supply and wealth chains. Global production relies upon regulatory unevenness, for instance in labour, tax and environmental policies, as well as on the reproduction of racialised and gendered difference and the differentiation of citizenship status.