BlackRock categorized as "Late Bloomer" on The Women's Power and Influence Index

Three weeks ago The Difference Engine released the ranking for Union Pacific, a large freight-hauling railroad franchise, on The Women’s Power and Influence Index. Today we are excited to share where a large American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation, BlackRock, is placed on the Index.

The Women’s Power and Influence Index is a product of The Difference Engine that ranks the power of women at the workplace.

The Index is a publicly available ranking metric with the eventual goal of quantifying equity. Developed by a multi-disciplinary team of Arizona State University students, staff and faculty, the Index analyzes Equal Employment Opportunity data as well as publicly available information from large companies and organizations in order to build a quantitive measure of workplace inequality as well as encourage these institutions to adopt more equitable policies.

Notably, the team behind the Index develops measurement criteria through wide-ranging surveys of women at the workplace. By indexing companies based on what truly matters to women, ASU’s Difference Engine hopes to help both women in existing career paths as well as women seeking a new career or position in companies.

BlackRock is categorized as a “Late Bloomer” based on the Index’s comprehensive measurement criteria. Organizations categorized as Late Bloomers on the Index have some policies and procedures that focus on developing a inclusive workplace for all people, including women, but are lacking many of the essential components that make up a truly progressive and equity focused organization. BlackRock has some decent equity efforts but the organization also has many shortcomings, resulting in their low rating on the Index’s measurement metrics.

Some of the reasons for BlackRocks’s low position on the Index include:

• Only 19.8% of its executives are women and just under 41% of the workforce is female - there is a clear disparity and lack of #equity of women both working in and leading the company.
• We could not find information regarding any gender equality programs, mentorship programs for women, or professional development programs for women.
• There is no information on BlackRock’s US pay gap policy.

These, and other trend lines are the result of our team's months-long data collection and analysis process that includes analyzing data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to searching publicly available information and documents related to BlackRock.

In addition to shining a light on the status of women at the workplace, the Index’s secondary goal is to encourage organizations to begin adopting more equitable practices. One way we do this is to make Index data publicly accessible so that anyone, from employees, candidates, company investors, shareholders, journalists or civil society advocates - all can have insight into the ways our country's biggest companies are treating women at the workplace.

Learn more about why BlackRock is ranked as a Late Bloomer on the WPI by reading BlackRocks’s company profile.

To learn more about The Difference Engine, sign up to become a Difference Engineer and follow our social media channels to stay up to date with the center and its work!