Survey Shows Significant Increase In Percent Of Multicultural Women Who Are Top Earners

 

New York, NY, May 15, 2012—Working Mother has selected a record 25 “Best Companies for Multicultural Women” for their ability to hire, retain and advance multicultural women. This year, multicultural women at the manager level represent 14% of all management promotions at the Best Companies – an increase of one percentage point over 2011; and women of color make up 14% of all top earners, a significant increase over their representation last year of 11%.  The report is featured in the June/July issue of Working Mother and online at multicultural women. This is the 10th anniversary of the initiative.

The 2012 Top 10 Best Companies for Multicultural Women are American Express, Cisco, Deloitte, General Mills, KPMG, The New York Times Company, Procter & Gamble, PwC, State Farm Insurance and Verizon Communications. The complete list of Best Companies can be found at: TK Link.  IBM and American Express have earned the award all 10 years.

Working Mother Media President Carol Evans writes in the magazine, “We’ve built a dialogue that’s ongoing, that doesn’t stop, that includes women all over the country, that makes people comfortable talking about race and gender, that shifts the culture of our companies, that joins with other dialogues and other voices and stories to impact the culture of our country.”

Multicultural women make up 21% of total employees at the Best Companies, while multicultural men represent 15% of the total. The 2012 Multicultural Women’s Conference will be held on July 17 and 18th at the Marriott Marquis in NYC.

The Best Companies support initiatives specifically designed to recruit and retain multicultural women. A total of 92% of the winning companies design specific recruitment initiatives for multicultural women, 88% have special programs to retain minority women employees and 80% run professional development programs for women of color. Interestingly, 88% of the Best Companies offer mentoring programs specifically geared toward younger multicultural women or those early in their careers. And 84% of the Best Companies have performance appraisal objectives for managers that include their management of diversity issues, while 36% tie manager’s pay to advancing multicultural women.

“The Best Companies for Multicultural Women value the power of a diverse workforce and work hard to make sure their pipelines are filled with talented women of color,” says Jennifer Owens, director of the Working Mother Research Institute. “Even beyond mentoring and networking programs, these companies are reaching out to professional and school groups and sponsoring recruitment events to attract the best multicultural women talent.” Please visit us on Twitter @_workingmother_ as well as at facebook.com/workingmother. Working Mother is owned by the Bonnier Corporation.

Methodology

The Working Mother Best Companies for Multicultural Women were selected based on their answers to 391 questions on representation, hiring, attrition and promotion rates, recruitment, retention and advancement programs, and company culture. The Working Mother Research Institute created a scoring algorithm based on the previous year’s benchmark results to determine the winners.

About Working Mother Media

Working Mother magazine reaches 2.2 million readers and is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers; WorkingMother.com (workingmother.com) gives working mothers @home and @work advice, solutions, and ideas. This year marks the 27th anniversary of Working Mother’s signature research initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, and the tenth year of the Best Companies for Multicultural Women. Working Mother Media, a division of Bonnier Corporation (bonnier.com), includes the National Association Female Executives (NAFE, nafe.com), Diversity Best Practices (diversitybestpractices.com), and the Working Mother Research Institute. Working Mother Media’s mission is to serve as a champion of culture change.

Contact:  Andrea Kaplan, andrea@andreakaplanpr.com , 917-836-2741