This is just my subjective experience, but the only people I've ever seen complain about "DEI" in real life were the most incompetent men I've ever met. These people were clearly aware, on some level, that "DEI" is a threat to them specifically.

We had a physical laborer position in the datacenter (lift and shift) get "flagged for diversity (female)" and sit open and unfilled for a year because we were unable to recruit a woman. THIS is the kind of thing that causes problems: some HR analyst pulled the datacenter team stats, saw there were no women working in the grunt team, and decided to try and change that by force. We had LOTS of women in the datacenter group, majority in analysts and coordination, pretty balanced overall, but just none in the grunts. No thoughts were given to why women didn't and likely wouldn't apply for that role. By god, I tried. The few I got to interview noped out once the job responsibilities were made clear. We eventually closed the position unfilled as part of a scaledown/budget giveback.

I'm sure an argument could be made about how the org should seek equity by restructuring the way the team works to eliminate the need for physical strength and replace it with machines, allowing any operative to do the job, but those arguments never seem to come with a budget attached to buy lifts or powered carts to allow us to change the way things have been done in the computing center for 50+ years. Talk is cheap, companies are cheaper. Furthermore, overcoming societal norms such that a woman would choose to apply for that role over a less physically taxing, traditionally male-coded one is likely to be more difficult even than finding budget for machines.

Just at the administration and say with a straight face that it's meritocracy in action. Hah.

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