NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Working Mother magazine has named the 2019 Best Companies for Multicultural Women—an honor recognizing U.S. companies that create and use best practices in hiring, retaining, and promoting multicultural women. This year, the list has expanded from 25 to 50 winners because applications more than tripled. The winners will be featured in the June/July issue of Working Mother and at workingmother.com.
The Working Mother Research Institute has conducted the initiative since 2003, tracking corporations’ progress in creating cultures that encourage multicultural women to join and rise through the ranks.
“As the demographics in our country continue to move toward a growing minority population, companies recognize that they must create an inclusive workplace environment for multicultural women or else they will miss out on that portion of the talent,” said Subha V. Barry, President of Working Mother Media. “The fact that we expanded our list to 50 companies this year reinforces the notion that companies are taking the hiring, mentoring, sponsoring and promotion of multicultural women seriously, and are more confident in their progress on this front.”
“I am excited to see the growing number of multicultural women represented at the manager level,” said Meredith Bodgas, Editor-in-Chief of Working Mother. “Our Best Companies continue to create policies and initiatives that are crucial to the success of multicultural women in the workforce, and we hope that more organizations follow their example.”
Key findings of the 2019 Working Mother report include:
- Increased multicultural-women representation at manager level and above: 15 percent in 2019 versus 13 percent in 2018 in management roles; 11 percent in 2019 versus 8 percent in 2018 in senior-management roles; 6 percent in 2019 versus 3 percent in 2018 in corporate-executive roles.
- The most significant change since 2018 is a steady increase in Asian women in almost every category, especially in the most senior ranks. Significant gaps remain, especially for black women and Latinas.
- Better participation of multicultural women in sponsorship and leadership development. The rise in formal sponsorship, in which a senior person advocates for a more junior person, has significantly impacted the progress of multicultural women at more-senior levels. As such, 76 percent of companies offer formal sponsorship, up from 64 percent in 2018.
- Increases in CEOs holding leadership accountable for diversity results.
Best Companies Workforce Composition
The 2019 Best Companies for Multicultural Women employ about 2.3 million people at 38,000 worksites in every state across the following 13 industries: automotive, consumer products, financial services, hospitality, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, nonprofit/not-for-profit, pharmaceuticals, professional services/management/accounting, retail and apparel, science/technology/engineering/aerospace/medical devices, and telecommunications.
Methodology
The Working Mother Best Companies for Multicultural Women application is available only to companies that have at least 500 U.S. employees. The winners were selected based on their answers to an extensive questionnaire covering representation; hiring; attrition and promotion rates; recruitment, retention and advancement programs; and company culture. The Working Mother Research Institute created a scoring algorithm based on the previous year’s benchmark results to determine the winners.
ABOUT WORKING MOTHER MEDIA
Working Mother Media (WMM), a division of Bonnier Corp., publishes Working Mother magazine and its companion website, workingmother.com; The Working Mother Research Institute, the National Association for Female Executives, Diversity Best Practices and Culture@Work are also units within WMM. WMM’s mission is to serve as a champion of culture change, and Working Mother magazine is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
