Social Sustainability
Underrepresented Group
A group whose presence in an institution falls short of its share of the relevant population — the category equity programmes serve.
Definition
An underrepresented group is a demographic group whose representation in an organisation, profession, leadership structure or decision process is substantially lower than its share of the relevant population — women in engineering and boards, ethnic minorities in senior management, disabled people in employment, lower-income groups in higher education. Underrepresentation is a diagnostic of barriers (access, bias, pipeline, culture) rather than a property of the group itself, and it is the trigger category for targets, outreach and structural programmes.
Overview
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