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New report: ‘You can’t have diversity without inclusion'

We are delighted to launch our latest report Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: women in media, creative and cultural sectors in Scotland. 

This new Scotland-specific report delves into women’s lived experiences of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives in the creative industries. 

Women working in various sectors across culture – film, television, journalism, theatre and music took part in this study, describing their first-hand accounts of EDI initiatives. 

Our findings show that the key opportunities for advancing EDI initiatives include harnessing the power of external training and ensuring that EDI is championed by leadership and adopted throughout an organisation. The women in our study pointed out that often the burden of creating, maintaining or adding intersectionality to EDI programmes often falls to women, particularly women of colour.  

The women in our study also pointed out that in many cases we now have good initiatives and schemes to broaden access to the cultural industries, but that we have not yet progressed to building mid and late career progression initiatives and that this leads to women leaving the sector.

We know that EDI initiatives can work, when funded and managed well. Our previous research shows that where an organisation makes a commitment to gender parity in their board by a certain date, they most often achieve it (EMCC, Diversity at the Top 2023). We also know that seeing women in leadership positions is key to increasing visibility and improving conditions for women. For example, under 25% of directors of Scottish national arts and culture bodies are women (EMCC, Diversity at the Top 2023).

Dr Fiona McKay of the University of Strathclyde who led the research, stated:

“The women who took part in our report expressed a real desire to facilitate and promote equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives in the creative industries, yet too often these fall on the shoulders of these women, when organisations should make them a priority for everyone. Our report highlights that there is good work and a desire for change in these sectors in Scotland, yet there could be more joined-up thinking and cross-learning to ensure more intersectional and collaborative approaches to enact real change.” 

Researcher and campaigner Talat Yaqoob, who worked on the report says:

“This research comes at a time when we are seeing an unevidenced global pushback against efforts to create more inclusive and equal workplaces but reaffirms why these efforts matter, and why they must be more meaningful for women who experience intersecting inequalities.

Equality and inclusion programmes are not simply tick boxes, they require investment and accountability in order to really make change. What we see too much of is the superficial rather than the depth and consistency of delivery we need. Time and again evidence proves that this is good for society as a whole and it is good for the future sustainability of media and culture sectors.” 

Katie Goh, EMCC Project Manager said of the report:

“This report is being published at a time when Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is being vilified in global politics. Yet this research shows the importance of EDI remaining a focus in the workplaces of culture and media, to improve the working lives of everybody, but particularly for marginalised women. The women interviewed in this report offer nuanced and considered commentary on EDI initiatives in Scotland’s culture and media sectors: how they can be challenged and improved; how they can produce material change; and how important they are for true intersectional inclusion in the workplace.” 

This International Women’s Day, we ask organisations to consider their current EDI efforts and where they can improve – can they invest more in programmes? Do they have buy-in at leadership level? These difficult questions need to be asked in order to ensure the progression of equality for women in the culture sector.

Read our report in full.