Who Are You and What’s On Your Mind? What We Learned From Our GenderAvenger Survey

First, thanks to everyone who filled out the GenderAvenger survey. Undoubtedly, the results reflect the attitudes and demographics of our most committed supporters, and that’s a good reason to pay attention to what we learned.

We also looked back at our last survey from 2016 to try to understand how our community is growing and where attitudes may have changed.

We’re happy to report that as the community has grown, the 35-54 age group has more than doubled from 22% to 46%. We have also engaged a more diverse group with people of color totaling 15%, which is up substantially from 2016 but still small. We hope that the most recent version of the GA Tally, which includes the ability to specifically count women of color, will help increase these numbers going forward. With the introduction of the GA Pledge, we are also engaging more men, who represented 22% of survey respondents, up from 8% in 2016. Finally, we are a highly educated group, with post graduate degree-holders remaining steady at almost 58%.

It is not surprising, given the events of this year, that those of you who describe yourselves as women’s advocates have risen from 38% to 55%, whereas those of you who identify as issue activists or political activists have dropped a bit. Also, perhaps because there is so much negativity in the media and social media landscapes right now, you prefer rewarding something positive vs expressing disappointment over something negative by a margin 56% to 43%. Hopefully we will keep finding, and you will keep alerting us to, organizations that merit a GA Stamp of Approval.

Sadly, the fields where you think women are missing have not changed much, with tech, politics, finance and science ranking as those most bereft of women’s voices. Add in your interest in the media, and you have identified the categories we should concentrate on going forward.

We are proud that a full 80% of you say that GenderAvenger has helped you notice gender representation at events or in situations during your daily life. We hope you will become one of the number of folks who use the GA Tally to showcase what you see, including using it throughout your day, not just at conferences. A number of you mentioned that you now regularly call out manels, and some of our GA Pledge signers report success in creating change.

Thanks again for helping us understand how to better ensure that women are always a part of the public dialog… because women’s voices count.

See you on Twitter and Facebook where almost all of you reside.