Self-assessment test for gender equality
- Creator: Mujeres en la Industria de la Música
- Published in: 2022
- Keywords: self-assessment, gender equality, gender balance, work-life balance policies, parental leave, equal pay, accessibility
Aligning with its Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity in Cultural Industries in 2005, UNESCO called for “measures to support women as artists in the creation, production and distribution of cultural goods and services.” And Mujeres en la Industria de la Música (MIM), the biggest Spanish organisation on gender equity and music, firmly believes that “the processes of measuring and diagnosing the situation in terms of gender equality in music organisations are pivotal to move towards a more feminist and gender-equal cultural ecosystem.”
Aiming to make these measurements and diagnoses easier and more accessible to every company and institution, from music festivals to venues and record labels, MIM created a self-assessment test to check how these organisations are doing in terms of gender equality. It can also be downloaded as a PDF.
MIM recommends that the test should ideally be completed by the “gender desk officer of the organisation” but can also be filled in “by a member of the team with enough knowledge about the organisation to be able to provide answers related to cross-cutting questions.” It goes from general questions about the company or institution to very concrete and detailed topics. Questions such as: Do the internal communications within the organisation make use of gender-neutral language? Is the company familiar with the concept of “soft skills”? Or does it have a policy on caregiving and work-life balance schemes? Therefore, it is not even necessary to get to the final results of the test for the gender desk officer or member of the team to realise what is working in their company… and what isn’t.
There are five sets of questions: “Information about the organisation”, “Information on employment policies”, “Information on employment and work-life balance policies”, “Information on artistic programming and booking” and “Information on audiences”, which are meant to be answered only when relevant to the companies. The test combines the sets with general recommendations on every one of them.
Within 10 minutes, the applicants will receive their results and also tailored recommendations depending on the answers that were provided: MIM advises to retake the test, which is accessible in Spanish, English, Catalan, Gallego and Euskera, every year to get an annual diagnosis on how the organisation is improving in terms of gender equality.