Reading Time: 2 minutesHere at Mustard, as a women founded and led business, we foster an environment of diversity. The work of Women in Research and the MRS’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion reports have been vital elements in promoting and advocating for women in insights. As profession continues to evolve, there has been a growing push towards recognising the value of diversity in all areas of business.
But we have far to go. MrWeb’s new ‘Raidar’ ranking published earlier 2023, showed that in the top 40 global insights companies ranked, only one had a female CEO. https://www.mrweb.com/results/raidar2023118151910.htm#table. At this rate, according to WIRe’s 2022 Gender and Career equity survey, we will reach parity of male: female CEOs in 2067. This is in spite of the finding that companies with female leaders scored higher overall job satisfaction, with 26% of workers saying they were extremely satisfied with their jobs as opposed to male-led insights companies that only scored 19%.
The waste of talent and potential is bad enough but in order to truly reflect the needs and perspectives of all those we reach out to for research, it is imperative that we first ensure diversity within our own company structures. We must encourage women not to just sign up to work in insights, but also facilitate their advancement to more senior roles. Only by embracing the true diversity of society can we effectively and authentically represent the voices of the public through our research.
Which is why we at Mustard would like to offer our sincere gratitude to Greenbook for providing a platform for our own woman in leadership, Colonel Mustard Lucy Davison, to chair a panel of female leaders to discuss the topic at IIEX Asia Pacific. The panel included Juda Kanaprach, the co-founder and chief commercial officer of Milieu Insights, Nikki Lavoie, currently the head of global experience strategy at Savanta and former CEO and founder of Mindspark, Lara Truelove, the program leader for SAP’s Centre for experience management, and Bharati Dixit, who is currently utilising over 15 years of design and market research experience as the lead in UX Research for HP.
Together they shared their experiences as women in market research, their insights into what needs to change, their perspectives on how they elevate the voices of women in research, and how they recruit and manage diverse teams to achieve success – not just in support of themselves but the industry at large. Creating opportunities for women to share their experiences, insights, and perspectives is a crucial step towards achieving gender equality in the workplace this is particularly important in market research, where the ability to understand and represent diverse perspectives to deliver accurate and insightful findings is paramount.