The results of the latest Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey — a survey meant to look at diversity in publishing — were just released. This is the third iteration of the survey, with the previous two versions having come out in 2015 and 2019. It goes without saying that a lot has happened since 2019, but what has that meant for diversity in publishing?
Well, it’s interesting.
I say that because, before getting into the particulars of the findings, what would you personally expect to see? If you’re like me, you may think of how publishing has been very vocal about increasing diversity since George Floyd’s murder in 2020, and assume that there has been some improvement. And there has been, but not much.
The survey began in January 2023 and took more than a year to complete. More than 24,000 surveys were sent out, and there was a response rate of 36%, which was actually up from previous years — which, again, publishing companies have been very vocal about their support of diversity efforts, so this is good but not surprising.
As for results, they’re mixed. Publishing is still overwhelmingly white, with 72.5% of staff identifying as such. This percentage is down just a bit since the last surveys were distributed in 2015 and 2019 (79% and 76%, respectively). Black staff account for 5.3%, which is about the same as previous years, while staff who identify as Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander also remained the same as previous years, at 7.8%. Then the disheartening news: Latine representation actually decreased to 4.6% (down from 6%), and Indigenous American and Middle Eastern representation sit at the low points of 0.1% and 0.5%, respectively. People who identify as biracial/multiracial are the only ones who increased their number (over 5%) within the industry in the time since the last survey.
On the topic of gender identity and sexual orientation, cis women and straight people still account for most staff, but there has been a significant increase (+19.3% ) in queer people since 2015. There’s also been an increase in those who identify as disabled — 11% in 2019 compared to 16.2% in 2023.
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