Toyota has scaled back some of its DEI efforts, halting LGBT sponsorships, and exiting external DEI rankings.
Toyota Motor Corp. has announced significant changes to its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, halting sponsorship of LGBT events and scaling back participation in external DEI rankings.
The changes follow a wave of similar corporate rollbacks across the United States.
In a memo sent to its U.S. employees and dealerships on Oct. 3, Toyota said it would no longer support cultural events, such as Pride parades, that fall outside of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce-focused initiatives.
The carmaker will also refocus its employee groups—known as Toyota Business Partnering Groups—to ensure that their activities prioritize professional development, networking, and mentoring, with a clear alignment to driving the company’s business.
“We will continue narrowing our community activities to align with STEM education and workforce readiness,” company executives wrote in the memo. “As a result, we will no longer sponsor cultural events such as festivals and parades that are not related to STEM education and workforce readiness.”
In the memo, Toyota also pledged to end participation in third-party cultural surveys, such as the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, which had previously awarded Toyota a
perfect score for its DEI efforts.
Toyota announced the changes not long after a social media campaign was launched by anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck, who
announced on Sept. 26 that he was targeting Toyota for what he described as “woke” policies, including hosting LGBT events at corporate facilities, mandating DEI trainings, and dividing employee groups by race and sexual orientation.
Currently, Toyota’s policies reflect a strong commitment to DEI.
The company’s most recent
sustainability plan, updated in June, includes a range of diversity initiatives aimed at changing the composition of its workforce based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. The plan outlines hiring quotas for female staff, such as increasing the number of women in managerial positions fivefold by 2030 compared to 2014 levels. It also highlights initiatives such as “unconscious bias” training and DEI scorecards for senior executives to track managers’ progress on such diversity initiatives.
Starbuck alleged that the company had lost sight of its core customer base and said Toyota customers should voice their opposition to the company’s DEI programs. In a follow-up
message on Oct. 3, Starbuck featured the memo, linking Toyota’s newly announced DEI-related changes to his earlier post about the company’s DEI policies.
“I have to give the executives credit for taking this unifying action,” Starbuck wrote. “It’s not easy to do but they’re preparing their business for future success by adopting corporate neutrality. The companies who adopt neutrality will win the future because they don’t violate the core beliefs of the consumers they rely on.”
Toyota did not respond to a request for comment on the DEI policy shift, which included a request for clarification on whether the Oct. 3 memo was a response to Starbuck’s campaign.
The company’s recalibration of some of its DEI policies is part of a larger trend in corporate America, in which companies are facing increasing public pressure to shift focus away from social activism and back to core business aims. Companies such as Caterpillar, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Molson Coors have all
scaled back their DEI efforts in recent months.
The Human Rights Campaign has criticized the recent wave of corporate retreats from DEI,
saying that these actions could have negative consequences for companies, both in terms of business success and their ability to attract “diverse workforces.”
