Monitoring diversity in biotech

Diversity is high on the agenda of many biotechs these days. So BIO has done an audit of 100 companies — parsing apart, for the first time, how the industry’s doing in terms of gender and minority inclusion. Some interesting facts: About 45% of all employees are female, but that figure diminishes in positions of power. About 30% of executives, and just 18% of board members, are women. 

Meanwhile, about 32% of employees, 15% of executives, and 14% of board members are people of color. The report noted that startups tend to be more diverse at all levels than the larger public companies. 

The effort to track diversity has been ongoing for the past three years, in the wake of the cocktail waitress kerfuffle at the 2016 J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco. Since then, companies throughout the industry say they have upped their efforts at improving diversity — with, per the soon-to-be-annual BIO report, 80% of employees and 73% of leaders demonstrating a commitment to improving this situation.