The Diversity Study 2020

Between July and August 2020, Kantar and Campaign Asia-Pacific anonymously surveyed 345 industry professionals from 18 countries across APAC as part of an annual study around diversity and inclusion in the marketing, advertising and comms industries across APAC. Some statistics may take into account the effects of the ongoing global pandemic.

The main findings include:

Gender

• 48% of people say that men and women are treated equally in their organisation, down from 68% in 2017.
• Almost half (47%) of people say that men are more respected by top management, a figure that has doubled since 2017 (28%). This is also worse in India, where more than half feel that men are more respected (58%).

Race

• 43% of people believe that they are judged by race (up 20% from 2017)
• More than a quarter (26%) feel that respect from top management is based on their race rather than what they do.
• A prevailing view across the region was that people feel that they are overlooked because their viewpoint doesn’t tie with the “white-dominated business world”.
• Overall, one quarter of people (21%) said that they had witnessed degrading comments towards others based on their race, and 10% had experienced it themselves.

Mental health

• The pandemic has taken a severe tall on employees' mental health. More than half said they feel very stressed at work (57%) and find it challenging to manage stress in their lives (40%).
• This is not limited to psychological impact as 46% say work has impacted their physical health negatively, causing them to lose sleep and feeling more lethargic (55%).

The report also puts forward a series of recommendations on how to improve the situation.

For more information and to download the report, click here.