In 1961, US president John F. Kennedy signed executive order 10925 making it illegal to discriminate against people in the workforce on the basis of race, creed, colour, or national origin. This change was replicated across the globe, and in Australia, laws were enacted in 1975 and 1984 prohibiting racial and sexual discrimination respectively.
Decades later, however, we are still talking about the best way to ensure diversity and inclusion are taken into consideration when hiring. In Australia, only 3.5% of ASX 200 companies have a female CEO, graduate salaries for women average 9.6% less than those for men, and while unemployment sits at around 5% for the population, this leaps to over 17% for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.