Recommendation What We Know
At an industry level, the EIC can help empower member organisations and the individual’s understanding of DEI principles and related concepts and vocabulary by developing and promoting education and training that provides individuals with the proper tools and resources to understand, reflect and empower them to work toward the goals and objectives related to DEI within the Equity Task Force’s framework and Equity Acceleration Plan. This first benchmarking study leaned heavily on questioning and testing knowledge, comfort and application of DEI which assume that each participant maintains a base level of understanding. Given the Task Force’s focus on racism and systemic racism, it is challenging to ascertain the level at which these issues are lived experiences for the individuals in the global events industry given the limited participation from diverse event professionals, and the previously stated deficiency of the survey questions to pose questions specifically around experiences or topics connected to racism. The survey design element which allowed participants the option to self-identify ethnically, and by sexual orientation highlights inconsistent and in some cases, insufficient participation rates for minority professionals, skewing responses to the higher-participating White and Heterosexual/Straight respondents of the survey. Observing solely two demographic categories, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, we find a severe under sampling and under participation of these groups when considering diverse and growing population rates. For these data sets, the responses were weighted. In real terms, only 232 of the total 1408 respondents (or 16%) of the total survey size reflect people of colour, and 95 of the total 1408 respondents (or 6.7%) were diverse from a sexual orientation standpoint, which could cast doubt on the adequate participation and representation of LGBTQ+ identifying individuals in this study. The deficiency in sample size among ethnic groups likely points to underrepresentation in the global events industry including potentially the diversity of the total audience for the survey, or lower participation rates and self-identification amongst people of colour who might not feel secure in identifying or participating in DEI-related research.
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