Gender and the Economy

Tag: Diversity+inclusion

Research briefs, news, and event recaps related to diversity and inclusion.

  • New Toronto company can alert firms to unintended consequences in their AI

    New Toronto company can alert firms to unintended consequences in their AI

  • Making strides towards change: the Rotman School’s ongoing efforts to combat racism and promote diversity

    Making strides towards change: the Rotman School’s ongoing efforts to combat racism and promote diversity

  • When companies stop pretending ‘meritocracy’ explains all-male boards, women advance

    When companies stop pretending ‘meritocracy’ explains all-male boards, women advance

  • How gendered economy sets women up to fail

    How gendered economy sets women up to fail

  • Is your name ruining your life?

    Is your name ruining your life?

  • Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm Than Good?

    Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm Than Good?

  • Embrace and celebrate diverse names in science

    Embrace and celebrate diverse names in science

  • The GIST challenges gender inequality in sports media

    The GIST challenges gender inequality in sports media

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    Overview

    The professional sports industry is largely dominated by men, from management to media. The GIST has challenged this gender gap by creating a sports media source for the largely untapped market of women and casual sports fans who have often felt excluded from this industry that has been an old boys’ club for too long.   

    Course Topics:
    • Innovation and entrepreneurship
    • Business design 
    • Diversity and inclusion 
    • Business of sports 
    • Media industry 
    • Gender analysis  

    Introduction:

    The origin story of The GIST—a sports media start-up based in Toronto, Canada—has become the stuff of legend. Three friends, Ellen Hyslop, Jacie deHoop, and Roslyn McLarty, were chatting over dinner one night back in the winter of 2017 when conversation turned to a recent win by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Hyslop had excitedly brought up the win because it meant the team was headed to the playoffs for the first time in four years. Her friends were riveted as she spoke animatedly about the game and its ramifications, leaving the women wanting to hear more—something they did not typically feel when talking about sports. 

    It was this conversation that caused deHoop and McLarty to wonder why, despite having participated in competitive sports, their past experience had not translated into a continued passion for sport as adults.  Through researching the answer to this question, the three women found that not only are professional sports themselves male-dominated, but the industry as a whole, from management to media, is as well. They found that “less than 14% of sports journalists are women, only 4% of sports media content is dedicated to female athletes, and less than 2% of c-suite executives in major-league sports are women.” This male-focused content had persisted despite the fact that “women make up 47% of highly engaged, passionate sports fans” across a collection of thirteen of the world’s most popular sports. It was from this realisation that the idea for The GIST was born: a sports media source created by women for all those underserved fans that have not always felt sports are for them. The founders began their journey challenging the status quo of conventional sports media with a bi-weekly newsletter covering men’s and women’s sports, with an emphasis on Toronto’s professional sports teams. From these modest beginnings The GIST has expanded across North America and become a uniquely female voice leveling the playing field of an industry that has for too long been the epitome of an old boys’ club. 

    The GIST Thumbnail

    View and download the full case study.

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    __________________________

    This case was written by:

    This case was written by Victoria Sahagian and Ana Baseio. The authors prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Sarah Kaplan, with guidance from Alyson Colón, Bonnie Lam and Vanessa Serra Iarocci and research assistance from Carmina Ravanera. The authors are grateful for the participation of Jacie deHoop in this project.

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  • AccessNow: The app creating a more accessible world

    AccessNow: The app creating a more accessible world

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    Overview

    AccessNow is an app that empowers people with disabilities to find accessibility information for locations around the world. This case study shows how founder Maayan Ziv innovated and used human-centred design to not only create the app but also to generate awareness and a cultural shift around accessibility.  

    Course Topics:
    • Innovation and entrepreneurship 
    • Disability and accessibility 
    • Human-centred design, Universal design 
    • Business design

    Introduction:

    AccessNow is a crowdsourced app developed by Maayan Ziv in 2015. It is designed to empower those with disabilities to live more independently by making it easier to access information about accessibility for locations around the world. Driven by the mission to “share accessibility information around the world by mapping as many places as we possibly can,” Ziv has created a community of users who input data into the app. This community is composed of people living with or without disabilities, and user engagement is critical to ensuring the platform provides current and wide-reaching information. “Our goal is to develop a platform which will invite all people, with and without disability, to engage and share info about the accessibility of their own experiences, and overall, to help people get on with their life.” Born with muscular dystrophy, and a wheelchair user since childhood, Ziv understands the struggles that people with disabilities face when they try to find information on accessible places. This lack of information serves as another barrier to accessibility, and by extension, to freely living life. Ziv decided something needed to be done to fill this information gap and remove the barriers it created, not only for her own benefit, but for the entire disability community. 

    View and download the full case study.

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    __________________________

    This case was written by:

    This case was written by Ana Baseio and Victoria Sahagian. The authors prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Sarah Kaplan, with guidance from Alyson Colón, Bonnie Lam and Vanessa Serra Iarocci and research assistance from Carmina Ravanera.

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  • Wattpad’s commitment to diversity drives its success

    Wattpad’s commitment to diversity drives its success

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    Overview

    Wattpad is an online storytelling community that combines entertainment with technology. This case study focuses on how Wattpad used intersectional data collection to improve employee well-being, to support its diversity-driven business model, and to grow the business.

    Course Topics:
    • Diversity and inclusion in business
    • Innovation and entrepreneurship
    • Leadership
    • Human resources and organizational theory
    • Business design

    Introduction:

    Wattpad is in the business of storytelling, but it is the Toronto-based scale-up’s own story that is causing the tech industry to sit up and take notice. Founded in 2007, Wattpad’s “social storytelling” platform connects readers and writers with original, user-generated stories. Once a scrappy Canadian start-up earning just CA$2 a year in advertising revenue, Wattpad has since solidified its title as a global entertainment player with over 80 million monthly users worldwide, an estimated US$25 million in annual revenues, and ties to Netflix, Sony Pictures, and Penguin Books. Furthermore, the company is distinct from industry peers in that it is a majority-female technology company and employs well over the industry average of people of colour, multilingual persons, and other diverse groups. Notably, Wattpad attributes its success to its culture of inclusivity and community among both users and employees.

    A diverse team has proven essential to Wattpad’s ability to satisfy its diverse user base with unconventional stories. The company’s business model is premised on having the cultural competencies to uncover users’ needs and respond to them authentically. Developing a multilingual, multi-disciplinary team early on thus provided Wattpad with the requisite skills to compete globally. However, this eclectic team meant that Wattpad also faced the unique challenge of creating unity while maintaining enough dissimilarity to thrive. In an effort to address this issue, the company began collecting intersectional data to track employee well-being. By uncovering gaps in employee satisfaction and inclusion, Wattpad has been able to generate impactful, data-driven solutions that are sensitive to employees’ differing experiences within the organization. For example, after finding that women of colour at Wattpad were 13% less likely than white men to agree that they could be their authentic selves at work, Wattpad introduced a series of initiatives to address this concern and now reports that 97% of women of colour agree that Wattpad’s inclusivity efforts have positively impacted their workplace experiences. Since implementing intersectional data collection, Wattpad has seen meaningful increases in employee engagement and satisfaction across all groups, thus managing to improve team cohesion despite undergoing rapid organizational change. Today, Wattpad serves as a model for how a people-focused approach that prioritizes diversity and inclusion can accelerate a firm’s growth.

    Wattpad Case Study thumbnail

    View and download the full case study

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    __________________________

    This case was written by:

    This case was written by Stephanie Taylor, Sonal Gupta and Bashir Chalabi. The authors prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Sarah Kaplan, with guidance from Bonnie Lam and Vanessa Serra Iarocci and research assistance from Carmina Ravanera. The authors are grateful for the participation of Seema Lakhani in this project.

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