Who works in international development – and does it matter?

It’s a challenging time for international development NGOs.

With shrinking funding and growing global challenges, a new report about how NGOs monitor diversity and inclusion might not seem like priority reading. 

But in reality, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are not peripheral to the crises in international development; they are central to both the problems we face and the solution. 

In the UK, Europe and the US, the development sector is losing funding, partly because it does not have political support across society. Polling, summarised in A Profession for the Privileged?, shows public support for international development to be weakest among non-graduate, lower socio-economic groups in more deprived geographical regions. 

This should concern us all because, if international development is about anything, it’s about equity. A profession dominated by ‘elites’ will find it difficult to maintain empathy with those it seeks to work with and among those whose political support it needs to be sustainable.

The gap between EDI commitments and NGO realities 

A survey for Bond, in collaboration with the charity Diversity in Development, found that many NGOs have mechanisms in place to promote diversity but significant gaps remain. 

While 83% of respondents said their organisation included a commitment to EDI in job advertisements, only 57% could confirm that their organisation collected data on the composition of its workforce. Of those that did, there were startling differences in the categories of data collected.  Virtually all collected information on gender, 84% on ethnicity, 80% on age, 77% on disability, 61% on sexual orientation and 58% on religion. On socio-economic background, however, the figure was just 26%  – fewer than 15% of all respondents. 

The last figure is especially worrying. There is a common perception that international development is a ‘middle class’ profession, while public support for the sector is weakest among lower socio-economic groups. If our recruitment and employment practices reinforce this perception (even inadvertently), they risk deepening the disconnect. This makes our work not only less inclusive but also harder to defend and sustain. 

Socio-economic background: The Missing Element? 

The most common reason cited by organisations for not collecting data on the socio-economic background of employees is that this is not a protected characteristic as defined by the 2010 Equality Act. Some also argued that it was too difficult to measure, or even that it was too intrusive to ask, while others suggested there was no point in collecting information if it was not going to be used. 

Smaller organisations may rarely advertise vacancies and feel that their employment practices have little impact on the wider sector. Yet these very organisations frequently provide a  gateway to a career in international development. Many smaller organisations struggling for resources depend on unpaid volunteering and internships because they feel that no alternative exists. This makes some volunteering roles and internships potentially out of reach for people from  less privileged backgrounds, which can reinforce systemic bias.. 

How to change international development’s EDI problem

However strong the barriers to EDI, there are steps we can all take to overcome them, many of which need to happen at a sector-wide level. We can agree on common methods of measuring socio-economic background and other EDI  identity data. We can collect data that can be shared and compared. We can build EDI practitioner networks to exchange learning, and develop a collective strategy to challenge the perception that international development is an exclusive space. We can think more critically about where we hold events, where we advertise vacancies and who we welcome into our organisations, as well as the culture we bring them into. 

The government should recognise low socio-economic background as a protected characteristic, as it is a significant and often overlooked driver of inequality in the workforce. But this will not make a real difference without the active commitment of individual NGOs.

If this all seems a million miles away from our objective to support the people who are most marginalised in the world, it shouldn’t. Our future as a sector depends on the support of society as a whole. This means making sure all parts of that society are reflected in, and part of, our work. 

To learn more, read Diversity in Development’s A Profession for the Privileged?  Further details of the survey can be found in Diversity in Development’s Briefing Number One: Diversity Monitoring in International Development Organisations.