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Walt Disney has replaced diversity and inclusion as a standalone metric in setting executive pay, following volleys of criticism from conservative politicians who accused the entertainment group of pushing a “woke” agenda.
In an internal memo sent on Tuesday, the company said it was updating “how our values are embedded in our leader compensation programmes”. A new metric, “talent strategy”, was added to its executive pay scheme to replace the “diversity and inclusion” category, though it said “important concepts” from the old plan would remain in place. Its other performance categories, “storytelling and creativity” and “synergy”, were unchanged.
Disney is also removing advisories that it plays ahead of some old films, such as Dumbo and Peter Pan, which warn viewers that they “include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples or cultures”, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The moves, which were first reported by Axios, come after a wave of other large corporations have backed away from DEI programmes since the election of Donald Trump as president in November. Meta, McDonald’s and Target are among the groups that have scrapped their diversity and inclusion programmes. Goldman Sachs on Tuesday abandoned diversity rules for initial public offerings.
Disney, which has a large and active base of LGBT+ employees, positioned its shift as an adjustment rather than a wholesale scrapping of DEI policies. It promised to keep hiring processes “barrier-free” and vowed to “purposefully champion a culture where everyone belongs”.
In 2022, Disney came under withering attack for its response to a Florida law to restrict discussion of sexual or gender identity in primary schools — a proposal that was labelled “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics.
Disney, which operates huge resorts and amusement parks in Florida, initially was criticised by LGBT+ employees for not taking a stand against the bill. But when Disney eventually opposed the proposal, the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took a series of actions to claw back Disney’s 50-year-old ability to run the property around its theme parks. The publicity around the episode made Disney a target for conservative activists seeking to row back DEI initiatives.
Since his return to the company in November 2022, Disney chief executive Bob Iger has sought to tamp down impressions that the company is pushing a political or social agenda.
“What I’ve really tried to do is return to our roots, which is to remember we have to entertain first. It’s not about messages,” Iger said at a 2023 conference. Iger said Disney had “lost sight of what their number one objective needed to be . . . if you can infuse it with positive messages, have a good impact on the world, fantastic. But that should not be the objective”.
Anti-DEI campaigners and Republican politicians — including Trump — have hit out at Disney for featuring queer and minority characters in its films. Trump in December told supporters that former Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter had “got out of Disney because they went woke”.
“He didn’t want woke Donald Duck, right?” Trump said. Disney ousted Perlmutter in 2023.
In 2022, the Pixar film Lightyear attracted criticism from conservatives who were angered by the inclusion of openly gay characters. Last year, Pixar removed transgender themes from a streaming series called Win or Lose.
In a sign of the delicate line it has to walk between employee concerns and an array of complex political pressures, Disney also announced on Tuesday that it was changing the name of an employee group to appear more inclusive. The “B” in the group once known as the Business Employee Resource Groups has been changed to Belonging.
