Friday, September 28, 2018

New Gender Scorecard: Too Many Men at Think Tanks

Women in International Security (WIIS) has just released its new 2018 scorecard on gender in Washington, DC think tanks and the conclusion is no surprise: men dominate DC think tanks.  Here is more from a WIIS press release:

Think tanks in DC continue to be staffed and managed primarily by men with only three of  22 institutions having an equal number of men and women on staff, a report released today by Women In International Security (WIIS) has found.
The WIIS Gender Scorecard presents data with regard to the gender balance of 22 major thinks tanks that work on foreign policy and national and international security issues in the DC area. The scorecard reviews think tanks along four main axes: 1) percentage of women leading think tanks; 2) percentage of women experts; 3) percentage of women in governing bodies; 4) and number of think tanks with significant commitment to gender and/or women’s programming.

Here are some of the significant findings:
  • Heads of top DC think tanks: 68 percent men
  • Average percentage of experts in DC think tanks by gender: 73 percent men
  • Average percentage of Governing Board members in think tanks: 78 percent men
  • Think tanks with significant gender programming: 1 out of 22 

According to WIIS, the three think tanks that have gender parity at the expert staff level are the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Stimson Center, and US Institute of Peace (USIP).

Here is the full gender scorecard.

As Think Tank Watch recently reported, the Brookings Institution just announced a huge diversity push within the think tank.

Update:  Emma Ashford of the Cato Institute notes that the WIIS data is much less reliable for smaller think tanks, where one female expert can make a big difference.  "In this study, I represent 9% of Cato's foreign policy staff.  Compare to the Atlantic Council, where each woman is only 0.44% of all policy staff."