Research on stress responses and terror management suggest that in times of anxiety or when human mortality is salient (i.e. Covid-19), people reassert their existing cultural values. This could influence responses to gender balance because organisational decisions are made by people. In fact, DEI responses to Covid-19 were largely guided by organisations’ approaches to DEI pre-Covid. For example, Jennifer Hsiao, Head of Talent for Bain in APAC, noted that firms already having DEI woven into the “fabric of the organisation” made a conscious effort to maintain and expand the intensity of their initiatives. However, organisations in which DEI was what one interviewee called “nice to have” deprioritised it once the scale of the pandemic became apparent.