Following the demonstrations over George Floyd’s assassination, talent agencies and other Hollywood organizations faced their own reckoning with systematic racism and pledged to diversify their workforces.
So, two years later, how are they doing? That’s difficult to say because most large agencies have yet to publicly publish their workforce’s racial and gender demographics.
Endeavor, a Beverly Hills-based entertainment and media company, is an exception. For the second year in a row, the owner of talent agency WME released a thorough breakdown of its 7,000-person workforce by gender and ethnicity.
The statistics, which were shared with The New York Times, reveal that the corporation has progressed from a year ago but, like other media and entertainment companies, has a long way to go.
In 2021, 56.9% of employees identified as male, with males accounting for an even higher majority in leadership jobs (65.4 percent), however this is down significantly from 2020.
In comparison to 2020, the percentage of female employees was nearly unchanged last year (42.6 percent). Women in leadership positions increased by 3% from 2020, with more than half of the business’s 2,013 new recruits last year identifying as female, according to the corporation.
Endeavor executives acknowledge that they have work to do, but argue that sharing internal data, as was done this week, is a critical first step.
Romola Ratnam, head of impact and inclusion, stated, “It was incredibly crucial for us to start being more accountable because everyone might have these grandiose objectives and things that they claim they’re going to do.” “It’s a pretty valuable tool, and if a corporation is serious about this job, I would urge that they look into it because it’s a really fantastic method to keep oneself accountable and going.”
