A Snapshot of the Problem

Journalism

Within the sector of journalism, women and people of color are largely underrepresented. According to the Pew Research Center, within newsrooms across the United States white, male employees dominate the space. In the newspaper, broadcasting and internet publishing industries 77% of all employees working in the field are white and 61% of all employees are men. When it comes to the day-to-day stories that shape public opinion and decision-making, society consumes information from a sector that has not made room for the perspectives and voices of women and people of color.

Film

When it comes to telling stories, shaping the collective imagination, and bringing it all to life on screen, women and people of color also have less power to dictate the storyline and who performs it. On any given evening, one has a disproportionately greater likelihood of watching a film with a white actor in the lead role. Why? Because Black, Latinx, Asian American, or Native American actors only comprise 19.8% of lead actors in movies. Across the board, people of color lack representation amongst film directors, film writers, and cable show creators, the very people with the power to write and envision the stories that influence and reflect both popular culture and haute-culture.

Academia

The world of academia—traditionally seen as the repository of knowledge, old and new—also perpetuates the creation and dispersal of narratives limited in perspective and breadth due to a lack of gender and racial representation. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Black males and females each made up only 3% of the population of full-time faculty teaching at postsecondary institutions in 2018. Similarly, Hispanic males only constituted 3% of the population as did Hispanic females. Asian and Pacific Islander males represented 7% of the population and Asian and Pacific Islander females, only 5%. Contrastingly, 40% of the full-time faculty were white males and 35% were white females.

Business and Private Sector

The private sector proves no better when it comes to representation. Only 1% of Fortune 500 companies are led by Black CEOs and women make up a tiny minority of these leaders; women are just 7.4% of the CEOs at the helm of leading organizations shaping the trajectory of corporate America and its clientele.

While these brief snapshots of a few sectors and industries cannot fully encapsulate the extent to which women and people of color are left out of conversations, excluded from meetings, denied access to the pen, silenced without a mic, and hidden from the spotlight, they do demonstrate one manifestation of racial inequity, the culmination of structural racism which erects barriers, limiting access to educational opportunities, social capital (which includes professional networks), and wealth—several factors that inform one’s ability to receive the credentials, make the connections, and build the skills that allow one to enter certain professional spaces.

Until the structural barriers that prevent women and people of color from accessing entry to certain sectors and industries and positions are dismantled, organizations and those in decision-making roles must continuously use their power and privilege to proactively amplify the voices, spotlight the presence, and elevate the contributions of racially underrepresented individuals who are present but consistently overlooked for opportunities.

Resources for Finding Diverse Voices in the United States

Our curated list is designed to make it easier for you to find and include more women and racially underrepresented voices in your panel line-ups, events, journalism, storytelling, workplaces, policy conversations, and more, in order to add complexity to the discussion, tell truer stories and get the first draft of history right.

We hope that this tool can help leaders and organizations deliberately seek and invite women and people of color onto the stage and into the spotlight. By influencing behavior and decision making, this list can help counteract the powerful and unconscious forces of implicit bias, “the negative associations that people unknowingly hold” which can inform decisions about who is qualified, worthy, or valuable as a guest and speaker to invite.

In addition to serving as an anti-bias tool, this list can also facilitate efforts to reach beyond existing professional networks that may not be racially diverse, thereby increasing the visibility of racially underrepresented experts and professionals and laying the foundation for the creation of new connections.

The ultimate goal of The Mission Visible List is to support anti-bias decision making, to seek gender equality, and to contribute to the larger mission of racial justice. We do so through proactive reinforcement of practices and actions—in this case, facilitating the creation of panels and events that feature racially underrepresented individuals as speakers and panelists—that have been shown to promote equitable access and opportunities.

The New Historia
Housed at NYU, the project aims to be the largest digital archive of women’s stories around the world and throughout history.

National Women’s History Project
Provides information, educational and promotional materials about the diverse and historic accomplishments of women.

National Women's History Museum

Tells the stories of women who transformed the United States of America through a growing state-of-the-art online presence and a future physical museum.

SheWrites and SheWritesPress
A community and publishing house for women writers.

VIDA Count
Vida, Women in Literary arts, tracks the gender and race of book reviewers, and books reviewed in 39 literary journals and well-respected periodicals.

Gendered Conference Campaign
The conference aims to spotlight the prevalence of all-male conferences, volumes and summer schools and the harm that they do perpetuating the stereotype of philosophy as male

WomenAlsoKnowStuff
Database of more than 1,000 female scholars in politics, policy and government.

The 3 Percent Movement
A movement to create more inclusive creative cultures in advertising, where, until recently only 3 percent of creative directors were women.

Innovation Women
Online speakers bureau for entrepreneurial and technical women.

The Drum's "More than 70 Women of Color who should be speaking at marketing events"
List compiled by this marketing and media news website in response to another all male panel.

CreateHER Stock
Authentic, visually appealing stock photographs featuring women of color

LeanIn Collection
Partnership between Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.org and Getty Images to provide stock photos that represent women and families in empowering ways.

The 67 Percent Project
Partnership between refinery29 and Getty Images to provide a collection of photos that reflect the fact that 67 percent of American women are size 14 and above, yet make up fewer than 2 percent of the images we see. #Seethe67

WOCinTech Chat Stock Photos
Photos of women of color in tech, free to use under Creative Commons license

Women Photograph
A private database of more than 500 independent women documentary photographers based in 87 countries.

Foreign Policy Interrupted
A “visibility platform,” newsletter and information clearinghouse for new voices in foreign policy.

Inclusive Security
More than 2,000 women peacemakers in the Women Waging Peace Network who aim to change who makes decisions about war and peace.

Women’s Foreign Policy Group
Membership group designed to promote women’s leadership in international affairs

WoX Network

An online platform where female experts can create profiles and event organizers can find experts.

Women in Defense
Professional organization that supports the advancement and recognition of women in all aspects of national security.

Women in International Security
Member organization dedicated to advancing the leadership and professional development of women in international peace and security.

Emerging Leaders Institute
Fellowship program for diverse new and mid-level managers in news organizations across platforms organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

BlogHer
Conference and community for women online content creators.

Journalism and Women Symposium
Professional organization that supports women in journalism and also runs its own in-house Diversify Your Panel service.

MediaDiversity
List of “web journalism rock stars of color” gathered by journalists of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, UNITY: Journalists for Diversity, and other organizations.

Online and Print Newsroom Diversity Survey
Survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The Op Ed Project
“Whoever tells the story writes history” Through mentors and training,the project aims to develop and support diverse new writers to “increase the range of voices and quality of ideas we hear in the world.”

The Status of Women in the News Media
Annual report published by the Women’s Media Center of gender diversity across all media platforms and in areas including education, engineering and technology.

Women’s Leadership Accelerator and CNN Diversity Fellowship
Online News Organization’s fellowship programs focused on increasing diversity in digital journalism.

Alliance for Women Film Composers:

A directory of women composers which features their biographies and work.

Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film
Research reports include Boxed in 2016-17: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television.

Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Researches gender representation in media and advocates for equal representation. “If she can see it, she can be it.”

The Alice Initiative

Initiative creates curated lists of female directors and filmmakers to increase their recognition by producers and studio executives.

Women and Hollywood
Organization that blogs, educates, advocates and agitates for greater gender diversity in Hollywood and the global film industry.

Women at Sundance
Supports women filmmakers through fellowships, education, networking, financing and research.

Equalizer Project
Spotify, Music Publishers and MXM Music are working to balance the distribution of men and women among songwriters and producers where men are heavily overrepresented.

CreateHER Stock
Authentic, visually appealing stock photographs featuring women of color

LeanIn Collection
Partnership between Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.org and Getty Images to provide stock photos that represent women and families in empowering ways.

The 67 Percent Project
Partnership between refinery29 and Getty Images to provide a collection of photos that reflect the fact that 67 percent of American women are size 14 and above, yet make up fewer than 2 percent of the images we see. #Seethe67

WOCinTech Chat Stock Photos
Photos of women of color in tech, free to use under Creative Commons license

Women Photograph
A private database of more than 500 independent women documentary photographers based in 87 countries.

Women in Astronomy
Database of women in astronomy and astrophysics maintained by the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women.

Association of Women in Energy
Member organization designed to encourage and unite women working in the energy industry.

Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment
Nonpartisan member organization that provides policy neutral forums on energy and environmental issues

Women’s Energy Network
International organization of professional women who work in energy

Society of STEM Women of Color

Membership organization of STEM women of color that provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data on STEM women of color, builds community, seeks social change in the academy, and provides resources for professional development.

Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN)

Professional network that creates projects, initiatives, and trainings to equip advocates with the tools and information they need to support women in the field while promoting diversity and inclusion.

Society of STEM Women of Color

Membership organization of STEM women of color that provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data on STEM women of color, builds community, seeks social change in the academy, and provides resources for professional development

Women in Microbiome Research
Database of women in microbiology, with links to other lists of women ecologists, evolutionary biologists, virologists and others, including Binders Full of Women in Science.

Society of STEM Women of Color

Membership organization of STEM women of color that provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data on STEM women of color, builds community, seeks social change in the academy, and provides resources for professional development

AnnesList
Highlights female systems neuroscientists.

BiasWatchNeuro
A group of neuroscientists that tracks the speaker composition of conferences in neuroscience, lists best practices, case studies and offers a BWN Rating based on the base rate of women in a particular field.

Society of STEM Women of Color

Membership organization of STEM women of color that provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data on STEM women of color, builds community, seeks social change in the academy, and provides resources for professional development

Behind the Tech
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott’s photographic profile project, elevating the images of the women who work in the technology field.

Black Women in Computing

An online community created to provide support and resources aimed at increasing the number of black women and other underrepresented groups in computing-related fields.

Change the Ratio @ChangeTheRatio
Effort to increase the visibility of women in tech and new media. Co-founded by Rachel Sklar after a "power list" of 100 tech industry leaders included only seven women. Motto: Visibility begets access begets opportunity.

Project Include
Nonprofit that uses data and advocacy to accelerate diversity and inclusion solutions.

Society of STEM Women of Color

Membership organization of STEM women of color that provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data on STEM women of color, builds community, seeks social change in the academy, and provides resources for professional development