Z for Zidane. And for Zero Discrimination.

Remember July 12, 1998. You were 7 years old. That night, you were watching TV with your family. You were 7 years old, and you already knew how historical that day would be. That night, Zinedine Zidane and the Black-Blanc-Beur generation won their first Football World cup against Brazil, the greatest nation of football (or soccer, as your American friends call it). That night, something magic happened. One of those rare moments when you and your sister cheered up together, when your brothers forgot to tease you just for one day, when your parents and grand-parents felt proud. When the entire family burst out into tears. All together. Out of joy, out of pride that one of yours made it to become a world champion.?

For the first time in your life, you felt like you belonged to your community. You didn’t understand why you and your family suddenly felt connected to a football team. Nobody had ever played football in your family. But that’s part of the magic of world championships and the Olympic Games: that irrational feeling of pride when an athlete of your country or your country of origin wins a medal.?

Close your eyes for 30 seconds and enjoy that feeling again. You are 7 years old, and it’s now decided and firm in your head: one day, you will raise that world cup too ! With your best friend Antoine, and with millions of other boys of your generation, you will join a local football club and hope to become the next Zidane.?

You are not like the other boys. Everybody knows it.

But there’s an obstacle. You are not like the other boys. And you know it. Your brothers know it. Your sister knows it. Your parents know it. Your schoolmates know it. Everybody knows it. If you want to join a sports team, you will have to be the best. The very best. As Niobe Way showed in various studies on masculinities, “being successful at sports is the best prevention against being called gay”(1). Yet, team sports are linked with violence and the stigma of inferiority. And that’s not all. The norm of masculinity, with “its emphasis on stoicism, toughness, and independence … [and] the pressure to “man up” is further reinforced through race and class domination”(2). Too bad for you!?

But you’re determined. So there is only one way to keep on dreaming: you’ll have to transform yourself by adhering to the codes of hegemonic masculinity. For seven years, you will train like Hercules. You will follow a discipline that nobody had ever taught you. With your friend Antoine, you will never miss a training session, may it snow, rain or shine. And God, you will be so good! Both of you. Scouts will come from all over Europe to check on you and your friend Antoine. Unfortunately, you both had a point in common: a sickly body, too puny for professional football. But even that won’t stop any of you, though.

You will become an accomplice to the bullies

However, something distinguishes you from your friend Antoine. And for that, you will have to hide or forget who you are, and you will accept the social order. You will even internalise the homophobia you are subject to and will become an accomplice to the bullies, reproducing insults and harassment of other marginalised boys. To avoid being perceived as being gay and out of fear of the violence attached to it, you will mimic straight boys’ practices in a permanent roleplay.?

But that won’t last. Your teenage years have started. And the secret will become more and more unbearable. With the heterosexual male dominance at school, where “peers are a kind of gender police, constantly threatening to unmask us as feminine”(3), you will start retreating. And that’s when you’ll experience solitude, the fear of being outed or bullied, the thought of being the only gay in the village. Your incapacity to fit into hegemonic masculinity group dynamics will be the explanation for your growing interest in solitary activities such as reading and studying. Your solitary confinement will also help you reduce the pressure from your parents, who might want to find in their quiet child a reason not to worry. This is described by Goffman as the tactic “whereby the discreditable person stays close to the place where he can refurbish his disguise, and where he can rest up from having to wear it”(4). All this masquerade will end that day when a scout will make it clear: you will never be a professional football player. Too shy, too soft, too fragile.?

And that will be it for your dream.?

You’re 14 now. And at the same age, your friend Antoine is sent to a Spanish football elite school. You will never see him again. Back to reality. Despite your indisputable talent, you did not belong to the football world. Everybody knew it but nobody told you. Until that scout. Your family supported you without believing in you. They knew you wouldn’t make it through. But they protected you as far as they could. When an individual – particularly a child of a working-class family – expresses signs of further aspirations, “their parents (...) live the fear or maybe the desire that [they] won’t make it”(5), considering that nothing would be worse than “losing everything to end up back as workers”.?

That scout is part of a system. Formally, discrimination is not allowed in football academies. Potential, discipline, merit and excellence are the only criteria to make a career. Yet, biases play their parts. Any time in the process. At any level in the process.?

You can’t expect an organisation to eradicate biases and discrimination, whether it be based on sexual orientation, ethnic or cultural background, religion, (dis)abilities, gender, age, parental status, or any other criterion which is unrelated to your engagement and contribution to an organisation’s purpose. Biases leading to privilege and discrimination can appear around any hidden corner. But you can require an organisation to be vigilant, to bring awareness, to put in place equitable policies and processes and to have zero tolerance for acts of discrimination.?

Discrimination “may never have as much symbolic force as when it appears as self-exclusion”

When you discriminate against an individual, you potentially discriminate against a whole group of individuals who share that same factor of exclusion. Their family, friends, community might internalise and accept their unfair destiny, the “legitimacy of their exclusion”(6). If an organisation is not made for the likes of us, why would we even start fighting for a place we do not belong to? This mechanism of self-exclusion may subsist in an infinite circle from one generation to the next and the next. Discrimination “may never have as much symbolic force as when it appears as self-exclusion”.

It’s 2018. Antoine Griezmann raises the world cup, twenty years after Zidane. You are his biggest fan. You are so proud of him. And you should be! His talent, his discipline, his sacrifices and determination have paid off. He deserves it. And so did you.?

You don’t know me, but I am your biggest fan. I will never know if you could have raised that cup together with your friend Antoine. Nobody will ever know, for the success of one individual hides the failure of many others.?

Individuals do not start from the same line

March 1, 2024. It’s Zero Discrimination Day. As a company, we must provide professional opportunities based on the sole merit and contributions. Fair merit. Merit that does not condone the reality of social inequalities. Merit that does not believe individuals start from the same line. To that end, we as a company need to start with educating our own workforce and by putting in place processes which mitigate the risks of having that scout appear from nowhere and tell you that you do not belong. For we need you and your talent, your determination, your discipline and your efforts. You might never get a gold medal. But you won’t have to. Nobody asks you to be the very best. You will just need to be yourself and to give the best of yourself. This will make you proud. Proud to be a contributor. In a place where you belong. Like 13.000 other explorers who innovate to advance humanity.?

Welcome to Syensqo!

Greg Renders

DEI Director Syensqo

1 March 2024

Quotes in this article :

1. Way, N. (2013). Boys’ Friendships During Adolescence: Intimacy, Desire, and Loss. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 23(2), 201-213. DOI: 10.1111/jora.12047
2. Way, N., Cressen, J., Bodian, S., Preston, J., Nelson, J., & Hughes, D. (2014). “It might be nice to be a girl... Then you wouldn’t have to be emotionless”: Boys' resistance to norms of masculinity during adolescence. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 15(3), 241-252. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037262
3. Kimmel, M. (1994). Masculinity as homophobia: Fear, shame, and silence in the construction of gender identity. In Theorizing masculinities (H. Brod & M. Kaufman ed., pp. 119-141). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
4. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Reprinted 1990 ed.). Penguin Books.
5. Ernaux, A. (1983/2021). La place. Gallimard
6. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1970). La reproduction: éléments pour une théorie du système d'enseignement. éditions de Minuit.