We want to achieve a FAIR SHARE of women in leadership positions in the international civil society sector. We collect data on the percentage of women in senior management teams and boards of the largest social impact organisations and call on them to achieve gender equality in their organisations by 2030. We track and share progress towards this goal annually with the FAIR SHARE Monitor. We also promote Feminist Leadership as an approach and tool to create transformational change in the sector’s culture.
An organisation has achieved a FAIR SHARE of women leaders if it has
In contrast to many other sectors, the proportion of women in the civil society workforce is on average higher than 50%. This should be reflected in the management and board positions of social impact organisations. Otherwise, this imbalance would suggest that a man has better chances to reach a leadership position than a woman.
The FAIR SHARE Monitor is a data-based accountability tool tracking progress towards gender equity in the social impact sector. Since 2019, we collect data on women on staff and in leadership positions at some of the largest and well-known international social impact orgaisations on an annual basis. We publish the results in the FAIR SHARE Monitor, creating annual ranking of organisations who have a FAIR SHARE of women in leadership. Learn more about our thinking behind the Monitor.
Currently, our database features 61 international social impact organisations. In addition, we present a number of organisational Monitors, which include data of both the international secretariat and national affiliates or country offices.
In March 2020, we launched our first national FAIR SHARE Monitor for Germany. We intend to add many of the world’s key countries over the next few years.
To participate in the FAIR SHARE Monitor 2023, email monitor@fairsharewl.org
We ask all organisations to commit to achieving a FAIR SHARE of women by:
So far, 28 international and 21 German organisations have signed the commitment. Learn more here.
While we recognise the exclusion of people who do not identify with either option in the gender binary, for the accuracy of our results, we seek the data of people who currently identify as women. We see gender as a matter of self-determination, so our definition of ‘woman’ includes cis women, trans women and everyone else who currently identifies as a woman. It does not include people assigned as women or girls at birth who do not themselves identify as such.
As a team, we are aware we are in a constant process of unlearning the norms that have led to exclusion and marginalisation. We strive to work together with our community and learn how we can be part of a just and inclusive movement for change. This approach should be reflected in our choice of language, thus we regularly review our terminology.
Currently our Monitor does not capture data on non-binary or gender non-conforming individuals and we are exploring how to change this. Given that women represent the majority of the sector’s workforce, we plan to maintain a focus on women’s representation in leadership alongside any possible expansions of the gender options in our data collection process.
Such a change necessitates careful consideration and consultation, for example due to the fact that not everyone is comfortable sharing this identity in their workplace. It would also require technical expansion that we currently lack the resources for. However, as we do not wish to uphold harmful notions of a gender binary, we are committed to seeing how we can make the Monitor more inclusive within our current limitations.
We understand that ethnic and racial identities as are not always clear-cut or fixed, but rather fluid, complex and context-dependent (For example, the widely understood definition of Blackness in Brazil may differ from the definition of Blackness in Canada). For that reason, we do not provide ‘one-size-fits-all’ definitions of these terms; any definition we might develop would require deciding who to include in or exclude from certain categories.
Therefore, for the purposes of data collection for the FAIR SHARE Monitor, we invite participating organisations to report the number of staff who self-identify with these terms. As there are organisations that do not collect such data, we also give organisations the option to state this during data collection.
We recognise that the term we are applying ‘BIWoC’ is not free of critique, yet it best captures the experience of “those negatively racialised or racialised as ‘other'” (source: Equinox) in a given context. And this is what we aim to collect data about. Due to histories of colonialism, the majority of social impact organisations have their headquarters in the Global North; hence, this is the context or perspective from which we ask participants to self-identify with the term ‘BIWoC’ or not.
Making the FAIR SHARE Monitor a more inclusive and intersectional tool will be an ongoing process of learning and adapting, and we expect to continually refine the Monitor based on feedback from the organisations we work with.
Women are half of the population and deliver most of the work in the sector. Thus, we focus on the largest under-represented group in the leadership of these organisations for which data is available. As a first step towards intersectionality the FAIR SHARE Monitor 2021 collected data on the number of Black, Brown and Indigenous women and women of colour. We understand that more diversity in terms of age, race, sexual orientation, religion, social background or nationality in the management and governance levels of civil society is vital for a credible sector and want to contribute to this necessary cultural change with our initiative. Therefore we also advocate for an intersectional approach in our sector with other activities, such as the Feminist Leadership Project and the Action Circle.
Furthermore, we recognise that men are also not a homogenous group and may experience discrimination according to their ethnicity, religion or sexuality (for example). However, FAIR SHARE’s mission is to measure and call attention to the position of women of all racial/ethnic backgrounds in leadership positions in the NGO sector specifically. We believe this approach can complement the work being carried out by peer organisations who focus on other forms of discrimination. See, for example, the Racial Equity Index.
Based on our first data analysis, we can say:
Find the results and analysis of our most recent data, the FAIR SHARE Monitor 2021, in this report.
Each year, we get in touch with the senior leadership of some of the largest and well-known international social impact organisations and ask them to provide us with the following data about their organisations:
Note: organisations who sign on to the FAIR SHARE Commitment also commit to data updates every year.
Second, we research publicly available information on the websites and in annual reports of the organisations to the best of our knowledge and belief.
Third, we share the data researched by us with the organisations who did not deliver the data for their review and edits as necessary.
Fourth, we insert the data in our Monitor, adhering to our aforementioned methodology.
In summary, this is how data is collected:
We know that equality and justice can only be reached with an intersectional perspective. Thus, since the FAIR SHARE Monitor 2021, we ask organisations to give us information about the amount of Black, Brown and Indigenous women and women of colour (BIWoC) in their teams:
We think of this a start to a much-needed conversation within the sector, rather than a requirement for participation in the Monitor. We provide the option to indicate that they do not have this data, and organisations that cannot report this data will not be penalised.
When organisations do not provide us with their data, we find it important in terms of accountability that the process doesn’t just end there. That’s why we take it upon ourselves to research the relevant data via publicly available information on their websites – i.e. looking at photos of their board and management team.
We realise that this assuming someone’s gender based on a photo is not a perfect process. Someone presenting in a typically ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ way does not necessarily mean they identify as such. However, we have to work with the information we can find to hold organisations accountable for change – and we do also give them an opportunity to confirm this researched data.
Researching data for Black, Brown, Indigenous women and women of colour is arguably even trickier. Race is socially constructed, meaning, for example, that ‘white’ means different things in different contexts. Someone perceived as white in Brazil may be perceived as a person of colour in the UK.
So how do we go about this when researching data on BIWoC for organisations who haven’t provided it? Due to legacies of colonialism, the majority of power and resources of the social impact sector are concentrated in the Global North – so we take this as our context in the research process, asking: is it more likely that this person would be read as white or as a person of colour in a country in the Global North? With this framework, we hope to also take into account how structures of white supremacy are reproduced (though not identically) outside of the Global North.
Again, this is not a perfect or even ideal process. But if we didn’t take this approach, we simply wouldn’t know how BIWoC are faring in comparison to their white counterparts when it comes to women in leadership. And we don’t want to let the sector off the hook for intersectional gender equity.
The data collection process for the FAIR SHARE Monitor is composed of the following steps:
We focus on the largest international organisations covering a wide variety of issues including poverty, children’s rights, environmental protection and humanitarian work within the international social impact sector. In addition, some organisations who wished to join the initiative approached us. We aim to add further organisations in the coming years to show a wider picture of gender equality in our sector.
Currently, our database features:
We endeavour to broaden our reach to key countries with large social impact sectors.
The FAIR SHARE Index shows how well or poorly women are represented in leadership based on our criteria for a FAIR SHARE (see point 2 above). It takes into account:
The lower the index, the more fairly women are represented in leadership. The perfect Index would be “0” but to acknowledge fluctuations in staff, we defined an index below 15 as a desirable FAIR SHARE. Over the years, we aim to measure whether an organisation’s FAIR SHARE Index improves or declines. The detailed figures for the Monitor 2020 can be downloaded here.
However, calculating the index this way meant organisations with more women leaders than the share of women staff received a negative score, and the higher the proportion of women leaders, the worse this score would be. For example, an organisation made up of 40% women staff and 60% women leaders would be penalised for this gap, even though it actually indicates a positive shift from the norm and a willingness to go beyond the minimum benchmark of 50/50.
In 2021 we therefore adjusted the formula to ensure that a FAIR SHARE gap in favour of women (more women leaders than their share of staff) would not be penalised in the same way as a FAIR SHARE gap in favour of men (more male leaders than their share of staff). We do this by applying a 50% correction to the score of such organisations.
Our vision is not that eventually all organisations are fully led by women. However, given that for so long the norm has been that men dominate the ranks at all levels, we understand gender dynamics skewed towards women as part of the process towards gender equality.
We call for a FAIR SHARE and not for the highest percentage of women leaders possible. This means that also organisations who have a much higher percentage of women leaders than women staff members score lower. We are aware that to achieve gender equality in organisations there might be a need to have more women leaders on top during a transformation phase, but we cannot incorporate this in our FAIR SHARE Monitor in a meaningful way.
However, in 2021 we adjusted our formula to ensure that a FAIR SHARE gap in favour of women (more women leaders than their share of staff) would not be penalised in the same way as a FAIR SHARE gap in favour of men (more male leaders than their share of staff). We do this by applying a 50% correction to the score of such organisations.
We do want to appreciate these organisations and take especially their experiences and best practices to share with other organisations. We are convinced that these organisations are leading the transformation towards gender equality and aim to learn from and with them about best practise and the way forward. We therefore highlight them specifically in our Monitor analysis.
We first calculated the likeliness of women to make it to the top within individual organisations by dividing the percentage of women on staff by the percentage of women in leadership. We did the same for men within one organisation. Next, we divided the result for women by the result for men to calculate the comparative advantage for men. Based on the results by organisations we calculated the average figure across all organisations listed in the Monitor.
For the organisations that did not provide or confirm any data and where there was no public data available, we estimated the proportion of women in their workforce at 70%. According to the very few available studies, this is the average proportion of women in the workforce of the sector. However, our 2020 Monitor, for which we received data from 33 organisations, shows that for those 33 organisations the average number of women on staff is about 60%. The more data we collect over the years, the more accurate our averages will become.
No. Gender equality is a key objective for our societies; it is listed as one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and many countries have introduced laws on gender equality. Social impact organisations have a special responsibility to contribute to a more equal and just society and it should not be at their discretion whether they live up to this standard or not. Therefore, we have selected the largest organisations as the biggest levers for change to hold them to account. Organisations not yet listed are invited to join the Monitor voluntarily! Get in touch via monitor@fairsharewl.org
Our ambition is to reach the entire sector working on social justice, human rights and gender equality; including foundations, social businesses and other actors. Our leaders also come from a variety of backgrounds, for example women entrepreneurs. As we expand the Monitor, we will feature more organisation types to reflect this ambition.
We do not publish any personal data, but always and only the aggregated number of women at the different organisational levels. The holders of leadership positions are usually publicly available on the websites of the organisations.
The FAIR SHARE Monitor will be updated annually until at least 2030. We will continue exploring how we can make it a more intersectionatl tool, and also aim expand the Monitor to other countries in the coming years. In addition, we work with Committed Organisations on shared strategies, best practise and peer exchange when it comes to gender equality and Feminist Leadership. Recent initiatives include the Women Leadership Lab pilot in Germany and an eight-week webinar series on Feminist Leadership. We hope to continue and build on this work going forward.
The idea of FAIR SHARE came from several meetings between women from the development sector who were shocked by a series of reports on sexual and power abuse in the sector, and who wanted to make a difference. Since then, we have systematically started to build a movement with, for example, the Action Circle who leads our voice and strategy, the Chief Advisers who lend their expertise and network to FAIR SHARE and the many individuals who subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. FAIR SHARE of Women Leaders e.V. is a charitable non-profit association registered in Germany. Read more about us here.
The foundation and start-up phase of our organisation was supported by the feminist philanthropist Ise Bosch. Our work in Germany is supported by the Demokratie-Stiftung Campact, the BMW Foundation Herbert Quand and the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The Heinrich Böll Foundation supports our international work on Feminist Leadership.
We are actively seeking new partners to expand both the FAIR SHARE Monitor and our Feminist Leadership projects. If you see potential for a collaboration, please contact sophia@fairsharewl.org.
We are looking for strong partners and enthusiastic individuals to:
Interested, or have questions? Write to us at hello@fairsharewl.org