How it works
A methodology that creates cultural change
50:50 is a voluntary, self-monitoring system designed to fit into existing workflows. It is simple and flexible, with a methodology founded on three core principles.
Collect data to drive change
Editorial and production teams monitor their own content and use that data to set benchmarks and track progress. Data is gathered at the time of production to increase engagement and encourage teams to make 50:50 part of their regular editorial conversations. Teams then share monthly data with the rest of the BBC in a spirit of positive competition and collaboration.
Measure what you control
We only count the contributors that we control. In news content, we do not count people who are integral to the news stories of the day. For example, we do not count the Prime Minister when giving a speech or the only eyewitness to a bomb. We cannot tell the stories without these people, and we have no control over who they are. Everyone else counts – reporters, analysts, academics, experts, case studies and anyone who appears in our original journalism and features. If a contributor appears multiple times in a single programme or piece, they will only count once. Everyone who does count, counts as one.
No compromise on quality
The best contributor is always used, regardless of their impact on a team’s 50:50 numbers. Editorial excellence is always the priority. The 50:50 Project aims to help content-makers discover new voices to better reflect the audiences they serve.
COUNT contributors in content
Teams monitor the numbers of contributors in their content to set benchmarks for their chosen diversity measures. They then count regularly as their content is produced to track their progress against the benchmarks. The data is based on the perception of the person counting as to what the audience would see, read or hear.
SHARE data to inform decisions
Teams continually share and discuss their 50:50 data to inform regular editorial decisions. They aim to reach targets (e.g. 50% women contributors) over a period of time, usually a month.
CHANGE culture to enrich output
The longer teams monitor and share data regularly, the more likely they are to create cultural change. 50:50 has enabled teams to identify topic areas where women or other diversities are under-represented, such as science or sport. It has also given content-makers further encouragement to think differently about the stories they choose to tell, and to continually seek new voices and different perspectives to enrich their output.
What teams count depends on their output. For example, the orchestras monitor their musicians, phone-in shows count their callers, news teams monitor reporters and experts, and in digital content we count photos, videos and quotes on websites. This means that data from different teams is not always directly comparable. As a result, each team aims to improve upon its own performance.
Some teams record multiple aspects of their output and submit separate figures for each measure. Each measure is one dataset.
We ask teams not to change their behaviour in their first month of monitoring. It gives them a true understanding of the existing diversity of their output. This also gives them baseline figures to improve upon.
Content-makers monitor the gender identity of their contributors with the aim of featuring at least 50% women. They do not monitor whether a contributor’s gender differs from their sex registered at birth.
Where possible, teams will also monitor the proportion of contributors who identify as non-binary or genderqueer in order to improve their representation of all genders.
We have tailored these core 50:50 principles to enable teams to monitor and improve their representation of disability and/or ethnicity in their content.
Teams monitoring disability and/or ethnicity representation in their content tailor the implementation of 50:50’s three core principles in several ways.
Some teams collect simplified data on the overall representation of ethnic minority and/or disabled contributors. Others collect more detailed data, breaking the categories down further into groups that are relevant to that output’s target audience demographic. This data is not reported to 50:50 The Equality Project, but is used by the team to better inform their editorial decisions.
The majority of teams are continuing to monitor by perception, relying on any publicly-disclosed information about a contributor. In certain cases where content-makers have direct access to every contributor, they will record how contributors self-identify with the use of diversity forms.
The methods for monitoring and data capture comply with UK Data Protection Law.
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