In the past few years, conservatives have enlisted abstractions like “woke capital” to describe the strange way that Fortune 100 companies have become hotbeds of leftwing activism. These terms often mystify the issue and obscure how specific people created specific mechanisms that led to this outcome. Each year the Human Rights Campaign releases its “Corporate Equality Index”; this is one of the primary tools used to inject extreme gender ideology into corporate America. Despite constant warnings about the “woke mind virus,” the HRC just released their 2023 index ratings, and no one on the right seemed to notice.
The HRC Corporate Equality Index (CEI) is essentially a social credit score created by activists that is used to hijack corporations. The HRC is the largest trans lobbying group in the world, and their CEI tool ranks companies based on their policies regarding sexual orientation issues. At the start of the year HRC comes up with different ways to score points, and then sends surveys out to companies about their policies. Each year the criteria to receive a perfect score get a little more extreme. Companies can score points with initiatives like marketing that features trans people, or having health care plans that cover trans surgeries. Institutional investors like BlackRock can then use CEI scores as a way to direct investment and drive money towards companies that signal a commitment to “diversity and inclusion.” In this way, the HRC steadily marches corporate policies towards the left.
The CEI creates an incentive structure that rewards corporations for acting in a way that would otherwise be described as irrational. Why would Bud Light think it was a good idea to do marketing with a trans activist? Why would Target offend half the mom’s in the country by selling “tuck friendly” swimsuits for children? Without reference to the CEI, both of these initiatives seem like instances of a mysterious “mind virus” turning otherwise rational business leaders into unhinged activists. Both businesses were most likely attempting to increase their CEI score.