The 50:50 story

In 2017 one BBC News presenter created a new approach to increase the representation of women. With the support of his team at Outside Source he proved it could work - and the 50:50 Project was born.

Back in 2016, after a long-time thinking about this issue, I became focused on three goals. I wanted: better data on the representation of women in our journalism and content; to explore the impact of embedding representation in our daily editorial and production thinking and processes; and to prove that fair representation is not only a goal to aspire to but one that can be achieved consistently.

To work towards all three, I joined them together in an approach to content production and culture change that has become 50:50. At the heart of the idea is that if we monitor ourselves, we can generate data for our organisations, while simultaneously influencing our own motivation, awareness and performance. The data would be the engine of change.

When I first suggested this, my colleagues quite rightly asked searching questions. Will this increase my workload? Is this a quota? Is the data a fair measure of my work? I made sure I had answers. 50:50’s system is simple, voluntary and designed to measure the elements of their work that teams control. 

I first trialled my system on Outside Source. Within four months we reached 50% women contributors from a starting point of below 40%. That was April 2017.

If data is the engine of 50:50, then proof and peer group dynamics is what drives its expansion. At this point, I began to tell other teams about what we were doing and, by word of mouth, 50:50 began to spread. Each new team agreed to share its data with others taking part at the end of each month. We were working together and took motivation from seeing the endeavours of our colleagues.

By April 2019, when the BBC published its first 50:50 Report, 500 BBC teams were involved as were over 20 other media organisations and we had seen significant increases in the representation of women across BBC content. More and more teams and organisations were showing what it was possible which in turn was inspiring others to take part. 

50:50 is now used across the BBC and has become a global initiative. And while it's far bigger than I'd dared hope it could become when I first talked to my Outside Source colleagues, it is still based on the same ideas of measuring what we control, sharing our data and committing to change.