Humanitarian leadership fails on diversity

CANBERRA — New research by the Humanitarian Advisory Group on diversity of humanitarian leadership has delivered concerning results — despite showing that diverse leadership leads to innovation, better management of risks, and an increased ability to listen and act on views shared within the team or by local communities. After surveying 1,479 people in 115 countries in five languages, “Data on Diversity: Humanitarian leadership under the spotlight” reports that 69% of the most senior humanitarian positions held in high and extreme security risk countries are held by men. “Just because you have more national or local leadership, this does not immediately translate to more diversity and inclusion.” --— Kate Sutton, director, Humanitarian Advisory Group But diversity is not just about gender — analyzing age, disability, cultural background, sexual orientation, social and economic background, profession, education and work experience all help create an understanding of how the humanitarian sector is performing on diversity. The research finds that humanitarian leadership is failing on many fronts. According to the survey, just 4% of humanitarian leadership roles are held by people who identify as having a disability. Over 60% of the workforce is made up of staff aged 30 to 49. Sixty percent of leadership roles are filled by international staff. And 95% have a degree — 75% at a master’s level or above. All create barriers to inclusion and diversity in the sector. “You can have a room of 50% men and 50% women but [if] they have all been educated at an Ivy League institutions, then you can be very sure that you don’t have diversity in that room,” Kate Sutton, director of the Humanitarian Advisory Group, told Devex. Building the evidence base Sutton explained that the objectives for the Humanitarian Advisory Group in conducting this research was to build an evidence base for the link between diversity and performance metrics — an area of research missing from inclusive policies. “The area that I have always found frustrating is that people talk about diversity inclusion, but we're not able to — at this stage — in our humanitarian sector demonstrate why this is important,” she said. “What was so exciting about this research was to say we actually now are able to develop a clear link between diverse teams and programming outcomes. It shows we’re not becoming more diverse and inclusive because it is the right thing to do, but because it’s going to bring about better outcomes for the people we are trying to work with.” The research, Sutton believes, is important for the humanitarian sector who are facing declining amount of money available with increasing amounts of people in need. “We are really being challenged to do things more creative and better — diversity provides the opportunity for us to be more transformative.” A focus on qualifications The issue of education qualification creating a socioeconomic barrier to careers and diversity in development has been identified in the sector — but through the new report, the impact it has on inclusion is clear in numbers. “For me this was one of the most interesting insights from the report, particularly because there has been a lot written on gender diversity and other types of diversity,” Sutton said. “But really there has been very little said — and very little evidence around — the economic background of leaders. It came through really clearly.” Increasing competitiveness and professionalization, she explained, were identified in the report as being a core reason for lack of socioeconomic diversity. In order to wade through the heaps of CVs that come through for a job, the quickest way is to make cuts based on the listed qualifications. “It means we are not really thinking through the skill sets we need, and who are the people to do that job,” Sutton said. “At the end of the day, strong qualifications don’t mean you have the skillset to engage with the affected populations in the field. And it certainly doesn’t create diversity in thinking.” Does localization produce diversity? The survey results allowed comparison between various humanitarian actors — including United Nations agencies and INGOs. In comparing these two, the report found that INGOs were twice as likely as U.N. agencies to have local staff in senior positions. “It came through with INGO interviews just how seriously they are taking the localization agenda — and the number of initiatives they are taking on to promote and engage local staff at local level,” Sutton said. But the research also found that perception of diversity and inclusivity rated U.N. agencies higher. “One of the challenges is that localization doesn’t immediately result in diversity,” Sutton explained. “Just because you have more national or local leadership, this does not immediately translate to more diversity and inclusion. One of the interesting things to be unpacked, that we couldn’t do with a survey, is looking at the link between localization and diversity. There could be an argument that an increase in local leadership will lead to less diversity.” Perceptions of diversity The report highlighted a number of areas where perceptions differed from numbers, leading to interesting results that Sutton hoped to unpack with future research. Some of the people spoken to for the research felt that gender disparity was higher than the data suggested — despite it already being quite high. “If you look at gender diversity in really fragile contexts, when you see much fewer women in the higher levels,” Sutton said. “The thing that was the most interesting was the pipeline. There are not only differences at the senior level, but you see women drop off — there are far, far more women in lower levels of leadership that drop off.” The data found that life experience could lead to differences of perceptions — evidence showed differences between men and women’s perceptions on how diverse their leadership teams were with men in general perceiving their teams to be much more diverse and inclusive than women. Personal experience could also skew results. “If someone is frustrated that they are not being heard in an organization, then they would associate that with a lack of social inclusion — and it doesn’t always correlate with the statistics,” Sutton said. Unpacking these insights to understand and test perceptions aims to be the next stage of research, utilizing solid data from humanitarian organizations to field test diversity and inclusion — and generate a better evidence base to push for more diverse humanitarian responses.