Quantitative Metrics for Joint Characterization of Diversity and Equity

Abstract

Achieving a high level of diversity and equity among different gender/ethnic groups is of critical importance to the success of any organization. There are limited quantitative metrics for their effective evaluation. Gender/ethnic group proportion is commonly used to characterize diversity, whereas the mean/median salary of groups is typically applied to equity analysis. In the report, we propose several new metrics for diversity and equity quantification. In particular, we introduce proportion variance to capture how group proportions within an organization vary from the general population. We also define generalized income factor (GIF) to take into account the proportion of different groups in different salary levels. Finally, we propose income-weighted proportion (IWP) to jointly characterize diversity and equity. To demonstrate the effectiveness of these metrics, we analyze two organizations using publicly available datasets. We show that the new metrics can offer new insight into the diversity/equity performance and serve as a valuable tool to continuously monitor these crucial aspects of an organization.