Driving Forward: A Significant (re)Search for Gender Equality & Empowerment in the Automotive Industry

The automotive industry is a dinosaur. Existing for over 100 years and failing to adapt fast enough to society as it evolves.

New research from global mobility brand Lynk & Co and global market & consumer data analysts, Statista, compared gender ratios from some of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers and found that the industry has large equality gaps. On average, automotive brands are 15% female, with numbers ranging from 30% at the top and 2% at the very low end.

In response to the seriousness of the problem, Lynk & Co is pledging to achieve an equal 50/50 gender split across the company by the end of 2021 and an equal 50/50 split in management positions by the end of 2023.

While Lynk & Co tends to define itself as a mobility brand, it is still, in many ways, part of the automotive industry. Lynk & Co was founded as an alternative to traditional car brands, and the company is dedicated to creating a more fair, progressive, and sustainable society. Sure, diverse teams are linked to increased profitability. But (much) more importantly: it’s also simply the right thing to do. Huge numbers of talented people are still being excluded and discriminated against based on factors like gender.

In general, Lynk & Co is doing well compared to others in the industry...but it’s a pretty low bar. Lynk & Co currently has a 3X better ratio than the industry average (15%), with 45% of the team identifying as female. The industry numbers are bleak when it comes to women in management as well, with an average of 11% women in management teams and 18% female board directors. At Lynk & Co, 33% of management teams are made up of women and there is an even 50/50 split at board director level.

What’s more, recent studies have shown that companies with a larger representation of females offer a higher financial return[1] and a more collaborative and innovative workforce,2 proving equality is a powerful strength to drive a company forward when encouraged and utilized.

Lynk & Co has taken immediate action in developing a long-term strategy to further improve gender equality and diversity across the brand in the future.

Note: This research looked at employees’ legal genders at the time of hiring. That means it doesn’t account for teammates who identify differently from their legal gender, or who identified outside of the gender binary. The research also doesn’t look at how factors like race and sexuality widen the gaps of inequality. These are all important areas that Lynk & Co would like to explore in further research.

The research has been conducted by Statista. Statista collected the information from official yearly reports from 43 of the world’s leading OEMs and automotive industry suppliers from 2019 right up to the present day. The average statistics from the research have been compiled using all of the most recent data, where available.

1 https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/gender-diversity-profitable-evidence-global-survey

2 https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/human-capital/deloitte-au-hc-diversity-inclusion-soup-0513.pdf