Not All Gender Diversity Wins Are Equal

Many years ago, as a series producer working in BBC documentaries, I once recommended a young Assistant Producer to a fellow series producer who was staffing up a primetime documentary series for BBC1. I thought she would be perfect for the gig – she was a strong self-shooter and had just finished working on an observational series following the lives of a few key characters. All qualities the primetime series would need.

She happened to be black.

She had an informal chat and a coffee with the series producer. We all know the type of thing – this is not an interview/interview type of scenario.

Afterwards I asked her how it went.

Not good – came the response.

She told me the series producer had asked her if she thought she would have problems filming and forging relationships with white contributors.

The series she had just finished working on was filming the lives of black people – this new job was more “mainstream” following the lives of predominantly white people.

I should mention at this point that the assistant producer in question worked in the BBC an had been born in and lived her entire life in the UK. White people were not an alien group to her.

She didn’t get the job.

It is impossible to say if it was due to her race that she didn’t get the job – there are a million and one reasons why people don’t get work in the highly competitive field of television. However, what was interesting is most of the final production team were women – from senior producer roles to junior researcher jobs. In fact the only senior role held by a man was the series producer.

This was over 10 years ago, but in today’s lingo it would be described as a win for gender diversity – but was it really?

I was reminded of this incident after the publication of a new study looking at gender diversity in Psychology of Women Quarterly.

First the good news…

Over the course of four experiments the new study found that white men were not only open to more gender diversity they positively embraced it.

White men thought companies that promoted gender diversity were not only more forward looking but more prestigious.

Now for the bad news…

After establishing the positive link that white men had between gender diversity and a companies success the researchers wanted to see what effect race would have on those perceptions.

In one experiment they took a company brochure that had been viewed favorably and substituted some of the pictures of white women with African-American women. The fictional company immediately went down in people’s perception.

In another experiment they attributed statements to a woman with a “white sounding” name from a company versus statements from a woman with a more typically “African-American name”, again the perception of the company went down for the company with the woman with an African American sounding name.

And a third experiment looked at how white men viewed statements attributed to a white man from a fictional predominantly white male company, versus statements attributed to a white woman in a more gender mixed but predominantly white fictional company versus statements attributed to an African-American woman in a more racially mixed fictional company. The respondents rated the statement by the white woman the highest, followed by the white man with the African-American woman coming in last.

This new study is important for a number of reasons.

In recent years there has been the concern that there has been a pushback against gender diversity generally. According to UCLA Anderson Management “In consulting firm PwC’s 2019 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, 68% of directors surveyed felt investors were paying too much attention to gender diversity, nearly double the percentage of the previous year.” What this study tells us, is if you want your company to be viewed favorably those 68% of directors are wrong. We need to pay more attention to gender diversity - not less. There is still a long way to go in television – where women still make up less than a third of television directors and every UK broadcaster has a gender pay gap issue.

However, what the study also tells us is that if we are not careful it will be white women who will be the beneficiaries of those gender diversity gains while black women are left behind. Much like my very unscientific anecdote at the start of this piece.

Championing diversity is essential and we should celebrate all diversity gains. But it is also important to recognize that not all diversity gains help all diverse people – even when they might be perceived as being in the same group.