Gender and racial diversity in the leadership compositions of Fortune 500 companies are increasingly scrutinized – given the nature and competitiveness of their industries. In the non-profit sector however, one would expect the gender gap to be less astounding as non-profits are seen as social benefactors in their respective industries.
After taking a closer look at the gender data we collected on a number of non-profits, our assumption that non-profits minimize the gender gap appears to be dependent on the industry, or category of charity.
We broke down the gender data by the category of the charity. For categories like Education, Human Services, Human Rights, the ratio of male to female are close to 1:1.
However, there are few females in the leadership positions for charities categorized as Religion, Research, and Public Policy.
The data-set we analyzed consisted of 8,964 entities and 17,729 leaders from Charity Navigator, a non-profit directory.
We only counted CEOs and board members as decision-makers.
In this study, we look at Religion and Human & Civil Rights charities. Four hundred and thirty-six nonprofits belonged to the Religion category. Out of 836 decision-makers, 624 were male and 76 were female.
Human & Civil Rights nonprofits had the most balanced gender ratio. Out of 771 decision-makers in 390 organizations, 352 were female and 348 were male.
Non-profits are often seen as the backbone of social good, so we should be holding them accountable when it comes to gender equality.The data we analyzed suggests that the statement below can also be applied to gender equality in leadership of non-profits.
A lot of the racial equity work is looking at what we can do in our society…we’re really hoping the sector can take leadership in this area to show that change is possible.”
Frances Kunreuther, co-director of Building Movement Project (BMP)
