Each Friday at 1pm CET (12pm BST) WIA-E invites you to join a virtual meet up with the community.

Bring your lunch and meet WIA-E members from all over Europe at our virtual lunch party hosted on Zoom.

This week’s Virtual Friday Lunch will focus on the topic “Diversity and Inclusion beyond gender: Strategies for an Inclusive Work Culture” 

Hosted by Michela Cantesan, LG Bremen:

The Occidental World is an “ethnocentric” society. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own group, ethnicity, or nationality is superior to others. That one’s own culture is “in the centre of the world” and the way of thinking, eating, dressing is the only acceptable way to live. An ethnocentric society approaches other cultures from this perspective, attaching a negative value to the different other.

In contrast, an “ethnorelative” world view is an acquired ability to see many values and behaviors as cultural rather than universal.

But how can a society move from denial to acceptance and ultimately to adaptation of difference?

As Ida Castiglioni states in her book “Intercultural Communication: Rules and Practices”: “The contact between different groups of people does not guarantee an improvement on the relations. If the groups are not prepared and are no ready to accept the diversity can be the cause of potential conflict.”

During our Friday lunch we would like to invite you to discuss the differences between “ethnocentric” and “etnorelative” perception and resulting expectations, and to look for strategies to manage these differences in order to avoid conflict.

Feel free to share your projects, ideas, and questions prior to the event as well as in the chat on Friday.

Access details are the same every week, but will also be sent to you as a reminder a few hours prior to the start of the meeting.

Would you like to host a lunch yourself, introduce a topic, or share expertise? Let us know!