The 90TEN Award for Excellence in Corporate Communications - External Stakeholders

Sponsored by

Highly Commended

Making Gender Diversity Matter: Five Burning Questions

by Aurora for MSD

Summary of work

We live in an increasingly diverse society. Diversity brings new ways of thinking, and leads to opportunities for growth, learning and collaboration. But diversity alone is not inclusion. Companies and society are missing out on this ‘diversity dividend’ because of a lack of genuine equality.

This ambitious project by MSD and Aurora sought to move from platitudes to proactivity in the realm of equality. It focused on one of the most far-reaching inequalities in most workplaces, but particularly in the STEM sector, gender.

Gender equality cannot be achieved by one organisation, individual or only by women. It takes everyone. That’s why this project’s success was measured on reaching a wide audience of people with the power to make a real difference and influencing them to act.

We believe the best use of this executive summary is to spread the learnings of this project rather than to sing our own praises for doing it. So, here are some things that every organisation or individual reading this can actually do to move our society and workplaces towards gender equality:

  • Call out inappropriate behaviours
  • Ensure everyone has a voice and is listened to
  • Set diversity goals that are meaningful
  • Instil gender diversity into all your actions, including what you click/like on social media.

Judges’ comments

This campaign was all about driving progress, with simple objectives, which were clearly delivered. It had strong stakeholder feedback and the audience was clearly defined. An important issue, addressed very well.