-238x150.jpg "FRC claims ‘a lot of support’ for revised stewardship definition")
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has been at the forefront of political discourse in the US and beyond in the opening weeks of 2025.
In an unprecedented move, the new US administration has declared war on the concept, eradicating DE&I programmes in federal departments and threatening legal action against companies that pursue diversity goals.
DE&I was also a key topic in Responsible Investor‘s Women in Finance Survey 2024 – but far from seeing corporate programmes as malign, many of the 264 respondents felt they did not go far enough.
While 40 percent felt their organisations had good DE&I policies, the same proportion said such policies were not effectively implemented.
Other findings also pointed to a disappointing lack of structural change.
Nearly half of respondents said their organisation did not have good representation of women at senior management level and more than 40 percent that it made no efforts to promote women internally.
Even more strikingly, 43 percent of investor respondents – who made up two-thirds of the total – said gender was a barrier to their progress in the organisation.
There were some bright spots, with a majority of respondents saying their employer took work and family balance into consideration and had a good parental leave and caring policy in place.
But overall, as in the 2023 survey, the bad outweighed the good. Respondents flagged continuing use of non-inclusive language and behaviour, little progress on the appointment of women to investment and decision-making roles, and a lack of understanding of the challenges women face in the financial industry.
Has the situation improved over the past 12 months? We would like your help to find out.
Once again, our survey is fully anonymised and is primarily quantitative.
Our aim is to track progress over time, so the questions are the same as last year. However, we are also very keen to hear your thoughts on any of the issues raised, particularly in light of recent development in the US, so we have again allowed space for qualitative contributions.
The survey closes on Sunday 2 March and we will publish the results on Friday 7 March ahead of International Women’s Day.
