50:50 The Equality Project Impact Report 2022 Tim Davie BBC Director-General In the BBC’s 100th year, it’s more important than ever that we deliver value to all audiences, whoever and wherever they are. We cannot do this without ensuring that the content we make across every BBC channel, network and platform is inclusive and representative of all groups and communities across the UK. The 50:50 Project offers a vital tool for achieving this goal. What started five years ago as a simple idea on one BBC News programme is now helping to drive sustainable and measurable culture change right across the organisation. 50:50 Challenge Month is a moment for us all to prove our commitment to fair representation and push to go further. So it’s incredibly exciting to see that more teams than ever before have taken part, and to see the progress we’ve made on disability and ethnicity with more than 100 teams publishing this data for the first time. There is of course still much work to do to achieve equity in disability, ethnicity and gender representation, but we are moving in the right direction – not just at the BBC, but across the wider media industry and beyond. The success of 50:50 has led to 145 organisations worldwide joining the 50:50 global partner network, with more than half joining us in the 50:50 Challenge. That 73% of those who weren’t achieving gender balance when they first joined the project have seen an improvement proves the impact of 50:50 well beyond the BBC. Looking ahead, the launch of our new 50:50 Tracker developed in partnership with Stanford University is an important milestone that will help us further embed disability and ethnicity monitoring across the BBC and the 50:50 partner network. And we want to take this even further, with plans to pilot and roll out socio-economic diversity monitoring later this year. This will be an invaluable next step in our continued progress towards a more representative and inclusive BBC, alongside our new target for 25% of staff to come from a lower-socioeconomic background. I want to thank every champion, creator and contributor who has taken part in 50:50. I’m immensely proud of all you are achieving and grateful for the dedication and commitment of everyone involved – both inside and outside the BBC. It’s making a huge difference in ensuring the media we create truly represents society as a whole. 1 Contents Executive Summary 3 How It Works 5 Challenge Results 6 Tools For Change 8 Reframing Disability 9 Audience Impact 11 Inside the BBC 12 Outside the BBC 19 Appendix 26 2 Executive Summary 50:50 The Equality Project uses diversity monitoring and data to drive cultural change across the BBC and in other organisations. The aim is to ensure that the content we all create and consume better reflects the world around us. Starting as a grassroots initiative in the BBC’s London newsroom in 2017, 50:50 soon became the corporation’s biggest ever collective action to increase women’s representation on air. To date, 750 BBC teams and 145 partner organisations in 30 countries have adopted the simple, self-monitoring system to ensure gender-balanced content. More than 250 BBC teams have now also committed to monitoring the representation of disability and ethnicity in their content. In March 2022 the BBC held its fourth annual 50:50 Challenge, set by the Director-General Tim Davie, to see how many teams could achieve fair representation of women, disabled and black, Asian and minority ethnic contributors. Shortly before the start of Challenge Month, Russia invaded Ukraine. News and Factual programming were focused on one story. The majority were still able to achieve gender balance in their content. At the BBC, 61% of datasets* featured 50% women contributors in March, compared to 35% when they first started. For the first time the BBC has also published its progress on disability and ethnicity representation, in support of the corporation’s 50:20:12 aim – that is, to reach 50% women, 20% black, Asian and minority ethnic, and 12% disabled representation in its content and its workforce. Of those monitoring since the project expanded beyond gender in October 2020, 65% of datasets achieved their targets for ethnicity representation. Some 53% achieved their targets for disability representation – up from 18% doing so when they first started. Whilst there is some way to go to achieve fair representation for all, this report evidences how 50:50 has embedded diversity monitoring