Beyond Compliance: Expanding Opportunity in the AV Industry
By Kyle Brooks, CEO, Bespoke Audio Visual
A reflection for International Women’s Month
The Numbers We Shouldn’t Ignore
International Women’s Day was honoured earlier this month, but the conversation it represents should not be confined to a single day on the calendar. I’ve been thinking about this more carefully over the past few weeks as our industry continues to evolve.
The audiovisual and live events industry has always had talented women working within it. Women have long been producers, technicians, designers, project managers, and leaders across our field. But it is also true that they have historically been underrepresented relative to men.
That reality is still reflected in the numbers today.
According to the industry association AVIXA, women represent roughly 12 to 13 percent of the global professional AV workforce. Representation in some deeply technical roles can fall below 10 percent.
Put plainly, those numbers are difficult to defend. In an industry built on creativity, engineering, and technical expertise, a workforce where nearly nine out of ten professionals are men should prompt more than quiet acknowledgment. It should prompt serious examination.
When representation remains this limited, the issue is unlikely to be a shortage of talent. More often, it reflects the systems, pathways, and assumptions that shape how people enter an industry in the first place.
Looking Beyond Simple Explanations
It can be tempting to attribute the gender imbalance in live events to the demanding lifestyle of the profession. Long hours, irregular schedules, late nights, and travel are all part of the work.
But many professions with similar demands, including medicine, media production, and law, have seen far greater gender balance over time. The explanation for AV is likely more complex.
Research consistently shows that women still carry a disproportionate share of household and caregiving responsibilities. In Canada, women spend approximately 3.6 hours per day on unpaid domestic and care work compared with about 2.4 hours for men, according to Statistics Canada. Across OECD countries, more broadly, women perform roughly twice as much unpaid household labour as men.
These figures measure domestic responsibilities such as childcare, cooking, and household management. They do not capture biological factors such as pregnancy or childbirth, which can also influence career continuity. When these realities intersect with professions built around unpredictable hours and intensive project cycles, as live production often is, the structural challenges become clearer.
But the lifestyle of the industry is only part of the picture.
When Systems Reproduce Themselves
The AV industry has historically grown through apprenticeship models and informal hiring networks. Many technicians enter the field through referrals, backstage connections, or existing professional circles.
These systems are not inherently exclusionary. However, they do tend to reproduce the demographics of the people already inside them.
When an industry has historically been male dominated, informal recruitment pathways can unintentionally perpetuate that imbalance.
The pattern becomes even more visible at the leadership level.
Within the Event Production Network (EPN – North American), for example, just over 10 percent of member companies are women-owned. Numbers like these suggest that representation challenges are not limited to entry-level roles. They extend to ownership and leadership within the industry as well.
When the workforce pipeline is heavily imbalanced, leadership outcomes often reflect the same pattern. In that context, it should not be surprising that ownership representation remains similarly limited.
None of this necessarily reflects intentional exclusion. However, it does suggest that historical structures can persist unless they are intentionally examined and expanded. Outcomes like these are often symptomatic of broader systemic biases that have shaped access to opportunity across many industries.
Compliance Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling
Recently, as part of our process of becoming Rainbow Registered, we reviewed policies across our supply chain.
One of the questions we asked suppliers was whether they maintain formal anti-discrimination and DEI policies within their organizations.
Every supplier that responded confirmed that they maintain anti-discrimination policies. That is encouraging, but largely expected. Canadian human rights legislation requires employers to operate workplaces free from discrimination and harassment.
What we found far less frequently were formal diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that go beyond compliance and actively address representation and opportunity within organizations.
Compliance with the law is essential. It represents the minimum standard.
If the AV industry wants to meaningfully expand participation and leadership opportunities for women, compliance alone will not be enough. Organizations tend to respond to the standards that are expected of them. Expanding those expectations, from basic anti-discrimination protections to more proactive inclusion policies, may be one way the industry can begin to move the numbers.
Expanding the Pathways Into the Industry
If the talent exists, and there is every reason to believe it does, the challenge is not simply hiring differently. The challenge is expanding the pathways into the profession.
That could mean introducing more young people to careers in audiovisual technology through partnerships with colleges, theatre production programs, film schools, and STEM programs. It could also mean creating more structured apprenticeship and mentorship opportunities that reduce reliance on informal hiring networks.
Visibility matters as well. Many young people simply do not realize that careers in live production combine engineering, storytelling, design, and technology in a uniquely collaborative environment.
Mentorship matters. Representation matters. Leadership visibility matters.
Industries rarely change simply because they intend to. They change when leaders examine the structures that shape who enters the profession, who advances within it, and who eventually leads.
A Role for Industry Leadership
This is not work that any single company can solve alone.
Industry associations have an important role to play in shaping the future of the profession. Organizations such as the Canadian Audiovisual Providers Association (CAVPA) are uniquely positioned to help expand the talent pipeline, connect emerging professionals with mentors, and introduce the next generation of technicians, engineers, and designers to careers in audiovisual technology.
One of the pillars of CAVPA is career advancement. This is an area where coordinated industry effort could make a meaningful difference. Addressing questions of representation requires a willingness to examine the structures of our profession and bring important conversations into the open.
If we want the industry to look different ten years from now, those efforts need to begin now.
Listening and Moving Forward
As a male leader in this industry, my first responsibility is to listen to the experiences of women already working in our field and to the realities they face building careers in live events.
But listening alone will not move the numbers.
Leadership also requires examining the systems we have inherited and asking whether they are expanding opportunity or quietly limiting it. It means listening not only to the women already inside the industry, but also to those outside it who may never have been introduced to the profession.
If the AV industry is going to look different ten years from now, we will need to actively expand the pathways into it through mentorship, recruitment, visibility, and leadership development.
Because building a stronger industry is not something we recognize once a year.
It is something we should work on every day.
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