Publishing industries still struggling with diversity issues

on Jan 28, 2022

People in the publishing industry have been complaining about racial pay disparities in industry for years. According to a new report, many publishing houses released statements by pledging to be inclusive and increase the ethnic diversity of their staff. However, it seems like there’s a long way to go.

For the first time ever, Harper Collins released its ethnic pay gap report and it’s appalling to see the data in it. The company surveyed its employees and 77% voluntarily chose to share ethnicities and they want the staff to be more diverse. The data majorly helped them to recognize the gap and gather a relatively accurate picture of ethnic representation within their workspace. John Athanasiou, director of people of Harper Collins stated they aim to improve on this figure in the next report.

Data showed that only 10.1% of the publishing staff were from an ethnic minority background. What’s even more disappointing is that an 8.23% ethnicity gap exists within the company. It clearly states that the average pay to white employees is 8.23% more than average pay to people with minority backgrounds.

This phenomenon clearly can be seen in HarperCollins’ executive committee where only one is from an ethnic minority community. The publisher claims that these disparities are driven by a lack of diversity.
"One of our key priorities is to increase the ethnic diversity of our senior leadership teams. From 2022 we will be using ethnically diverse, balanced shortlists for senior management to executive roles and will be developing further partnerships with specialist search firms to support this work," the report stated.

In the past years, other publishing companies had released their own figures regarding the diversity of their staff. Penguin Random House shared its first-ever ethnicity pay gap report in 2020. The data is based on 53.8% of the workforce who voluntarily disclosed their ethnicity.
Earlier in 2020, writers from ethnic minorities exposed racial pay disparities in the publishing industry using the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe. Two years later, there is still a major gap and there’s so much to be done to address this issue.