Let The WICT Network be your guide in diversifying your team.
Research shows that gender diversity within companies greatly improves culture, boosts innovation and retention, and contributes to the overall success of the organization.
Let’s make an impact together.
Serving nearly 10,000 members through 24 domestic and international chapters, The WICT Network is the leading organization representing women in media, entertainment and technology. Since our founding 45 years ago, our mission has been to create women leaders who transform the industry. We accomplish this through highly acclaimed training and development programs designed to educate women at every professional level. The WICT Network also embraces a spirit of collaboration with leading companies that value diverse and inclusive work environments because top leaders recognize the strong business benefits of DE I.
Here are just a few examples of why diversity matters:
Innovation and Problem-Solving
- Gender diversity increases the range of skills, perspectives, knowledge and social networks available to a firm. These resources increase a firm’s creative capacity and breadth of knowledge, resulting in better decision making, more innovation, and higher productivity. – An Institutional Approach to Gender Diversity and Firm Performance, Harvard Business School
- Inclusive teams are over 35 percent more productive and diverse teams make better decisions 87 percent of the time. – Why is Diversity and Inclusion Important?, LinkedIn
- To experience a significant jump in innovation revenue, leadership teams need to be at least 20 percent female. And that revenue increase jumps even higher when the percentage of diverse leaders increases. – Boston Consulting Group
Profitability
- Organizations in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25 percent more likely to financially outperform their peers. – Diversity Wins, McKinsey & Co.
- Diverse companies earn two and half times (2.5x) higher cash flow per employee. – Why is Diversity and Inclusion Important?, LinkedIn
- Women exert vast buying influence, accounting for $20 trillion in annual consumer spending and controlling over 65 percent of all purchases, and 55 percent of U.S. consumers would rather buy from a brand that reflects the customer’s personality. – Diversity Drives Sales Success, Forrester Consulting
Recruitment and Retention
- 80 percent of job seekers said they want to work for a company that values DEI issues. – Why is Diversity and Inclusion Important?, LinkedIn
- Research shows that having women leaders in a company’s ranks gives employees a greater sense of teamwork and higher workplace morale. – An Institutional Approach to Gender Diversity and Firm Performance, Harvard Business School
- Companies with more diversity on staff have a 22 percent lower turnover rate. – Gallup
The research tells the story:
Gender-diverse teams are more innovative.
- Having women as decision-makers helps a company better serve women consumers. COQUAL, a business-backed think tank, found that a diverse workforce “can be a potent source of innovation, as diverse individuals are better attuned to the unmet needs of consumers or clients like themselves.”
- According Accenture’s 2019 Getting to Equal report, a culture of equality is a powerful innovation and growth multiplier. In fact, employees’ innovation mindset is six times higher in the most equal cultures than in the least equal ones.
- Companies with above-average diversity within their management teams have innovation revenue of 45%, versus 26% for those with below-average leadership diversity. To experience a significant jump in innovation revenue, leadership teams need to be at least 20% female. – Boston Consulting Group
Companies with gender-diverse leadership are more profitable.
- Companies whose boards are in the top quartile of gender diversity are 28 percent more likely than their peers to outperform financially. – Mckinsey
- Companies with gender diversity in leadership outperform their less diverse peers. On average, their advantage is seen in a 48% higher operating margin, a 42% higher return on sales and a 45% higher earnings per share. In addition, gender-diverse teams make better business decisions up to 73% of the time. – World Economic Forum
- The top quarter of Fortune 500 companies with the greatest number of women representatives on their corporate boards outperform those in the lowest quartile by at least 53% in return on equity. – Deloitte
Women are key drivers in the global economy.
- Women direct 83% of all consumption in the U.S. and control over 31.8 trillion dollars globally. – Forbes & Catalyst
- A recent World Bank study concludes that additional and targeted inclusion of women in the workforce would advance economic growth and trade outcomes by 26 percent of the global GDP by 2025 – World Bank and World Economic Forum
- American women earned the majority of doctoral degrees in 2020 for the 12th straight year and outnumber men in grad school 148 to 100. Additionally, women have earned more undergraduate degrees than men since 1996. – Council of Graduate Schools, U.S. Census Bureau and American Enterprise Institute
Sponsorship and professional development opportunities make a difference.
- There is evidence formal learning and networking programs can speed career growth for women. For example, attending a women’s conference can double a woman’s likelihood of receiving a promotion within a year, triple the likelihood of a 10%+ pay increase within a year, and increase her sense of optimism by up to 78%, immediately. – Harvard Business Review
- Training, greater flexibility and commitment to work-life balance are the most powerful drivers of an innovation mindset, accounting for 70 percent of innovation mindset gains. – Accenture
- Women in STEM careers who are sponsored are 22 percent more likely to be satisfied with their rate of promotion. There is a 37 percent greater likelihood that these women will ask for a raise and a 70 percent higher chance their ideas will be endorsed. Additionally, they have a 119 percent higher rate of having their ideas developed and a 200 percent higher rate to see their ideas implemented. – Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Economist and Author, The Sponsor Effect and Founder, Center for Talent Innovation
Inclusivity matters.
- In addition to providing tangible, measurable benefits, such as greater innovation, a truly inclusive workplace is critical for employee retention. Research by Bain & Co. found that opportunities for professional development and growth boost employee inclusion across all populations. – Bain & Co.
- Data comparing teams with managers demonstrating low vs. highly inclusive leadership skills suggests inclusive leaders have direct reports with 90% higher team innovation, 50% higher team performance, 140% higher team engagement, and 54% lower turnover intention. – BetterUp Labs
- Research demonstrates that what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included. And this really matters because the more people feel included, the more they speak up, go the extra mile, and collaborate — all of which ultimately lifts organizational performance. – Harvard Business Review
- McKinsey & Co. found 51% of employees who recently quit their jobs cited a lack of belonging at work as a critical reason for leaving. Employees from underrepresented identities were even more likely to cite this reason.
- Employees whose companies are diverse at senior levels are 2.4 times more likely to feel a strong sense of belonging. – Inc. and Achievers Institute
- Allies are catalysts for change and we need them. The evidence shows that when men are deliberately engaged in gender inclusion programs, 96% of organizations see progress — compared to only 30% of organizations where men are not engaged. – Harvard Business Review
- 95% of companies considered DEI leaders measure inclusion goal progress at least annually; 51% track inclusion goal progress at least quarterly – more than twice as often as other companies. – Harvard Business Review and SHRM
