The NYT and GenderAvenger Numbers Are In, and Women Are Deeply Underrepresented In America's Faces of Power
GenderAvenger was impressed with the research in the September 12th New York Times “Faces of Power” article on racial diversity in Congress, the Supreme Court, the Trump administration and law enforcement,along with 12 industries that dominate American culture. The story reported that of the 922 leaders, 180 were African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, multi-racial and other people of color, and included a photo of each leader counted. The overall count was 20% people of color in a country with 40% people of color in its population.
GA loves counting — it’s our core mission! — so we saw the opportunity to provide another layer of research to the Times’ lists by counting how many women and women of color are among the 922 faces of power.
The numbers speak for themselves: women make up only 21% of people that the Times research surfaced as leaders in their fields, and only 20% of those women are women of color, even though women are 50.8% of the U.S. population. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that women have the opportunities to take on leadership positions where their voices will be heard.