Brewery Survey 2023 - A Closer Look

By Rachel Auty

In early 2023 and due to a lack of readily-available data in this area, we asked breweries to fill in a survey about the makeup of their brewing and leadership teams and overall workforce. We thought you might like to know more about what we found out…

Venues regularly ask us to provide a list of ‘WOT-accredited’ breweries they can refer to when planning tap takeovers for the festival.

So, using a short survey with three defined metrics enables us to pull together a list of breweries that champion women working in beer and are actively reflecting this in the workplace. We call this list our Women On Tap Brewery Showcase. 

We'd use it to find out more about the makeup of brewery teams and we can't wait to celebrate breweries who are breaking the mould in beer.

Breweries are asked to refer to gender identity information from your team if available and include non-binary people in their answers.

The WOTFEST SEVEN Brewery Survey was an effort by Women On Tap CIC to get a sense of female representation within breweries. It was intentionally challenging, underscoring the necessity of our organisation. A scoring system was created and applied, but no scores were published or disclosed to the participants, and the survey isn't in any way designed to shame or exclude anyone. Its purpose was primarily to provide an indication of the current state of gender balance in the industry. 

We had a total of 42 responses, and here’s a summary:

1// What percentage of your brewers are women or non-binary?

• 73.8% of respondents had women or non-binary brewers

• 16.7% had MORE THAN 50% women or non-binary brewers

2// Please tell us the number of brewers in your company who are women or non-binary.

• IT’S WORTH NOTING….40% of those who had women or non-binary brewers said the total number of women or non-binary brewers in their team was 1, indicating that a large proportion of respondents were very small breweries.

3// What percentage of the main business decision makers (MD, CEO, Board of Directors) in your business are women or non-binary?

4// What percentage of your total workforce are women or non-binary?

• 23 breweries scored something across all three areas, with women or non-binary people in brewing, main decision-making, and in the wider workforce.

• Only 6 breweries scored something across all three areas, with women or non-binary people in brewing, main decision-making, and in the wider workforce, AND scored 51% or above in at least ONE of the three areas.

Where were the respondents based?

Some comments on the findings:

• A lot of the responses this year came from very small breweries, and we’d like to see more from larger breweries too going forward.

• When repeating the survey we will add a ‘size classification’ with some defining guidance.

• We had a fairly good split across the UK, geographically.

• We acknowledge those most keen to complete the survey will be those who feel most confident about sharing this info, and so the overall results are likely to be favourably skewed. As we repeat this exercise and build trust this isn’t a way for us to call out or shame individual breweries, we would hope to encourage more responses from a wide range of perspectives in the future.

• We see the survey as an important way for us to:

  • have a data-led overview of equality across the industry

  • be able to see the impact of work we and others are doing in this area

  • act as a way of holding a mirror up to organisations in the hope it will help them be more mindful and proactive on working towards a more balanced beer industry

  • be able to supply venues with a reference list, both for WOTFEST events but also for proactively champion breweries who champion women in beer on their bars in general

• We would like to repeat this survey and benchmark the data each year, ahead of WOTFEST.

• Women On Tap CIC will also look into getting a WOT accreditation for breweries that are approved for the showcase list each year.

Here’s are some anonymised ‘feel-good’ quotes from the survey:

“Our dream is to create spaces for everyone regardless of gender or physical ability or neurological diversity too, as staff and customers.”

“...hopefully we will have the chance to increase that number, and show that beer is a drink and profession for everyone.”

“..we support all women in the industry and try to make craft beer accessible.”

“As a trans woman, our head brewer works hard to be visible in the industry, showing others that beer is for anyone.”

“We are made to feel comfortable, confident to voice opinions and we make an impact across the business. We are provided opportunities to develop our skills and careers. We are also able to bring in initiatives we are passionate about.”

“[We have a] policy to ask for pronouns and preferred names when advertising job vacancies.”

“[We are] founded by a good brewer who happens to be a woman. Now all the brewers are good brewers who happen to be women.”

“There are women in key roles throughout the business which informs the daily operation and what we do - prioritising work life balance and family time, ensuring that it’s a respectful and inclusive place.”

“We think of ourselves as very inclusive, but are very white & male. I’m really interested in how we can make sure our place is as welcoming as possible.”

 “'Openness, accessibility and inclusiveness' are core values, and one of the ways we promote that is in our celebration and promotion of women in beer.”

“Our female members take on a variety of different roles and have various management levels. We're also very excited to have had a new female new brewer and apprentice brewer joining the team this month! We are proud supporters of initiatives including Everyone Welcome, the Brave Noise project as well as local charity, WomenKind, which we fundraise for through events or special release beers.”

“50% of our directors are women as is our head brewer.”

“Our head brewer bosses it every day. She is an inspiration to many in the industry and won't let any actual or perceived barriers get in the way of doing a consistently great job.”

“We work hard to find the best team members, offering opportunities to those we see something different in or that bring something new into the team.”

“I'm a femme non-binary queer person who runs a brewery which specifically aims to be a community space, welcoming in cuckoo brewers who want to try out brewing on a larger scale to see if it can work for them, meaning that we can get more brewers into the world! We also have an explicitly queer-friendly taproom and make an effort to make beer more accessible, and 75% of the bar staff are queer and/or women.”

“I've not been in this industry long (1 year) but it's becoming more obvious to me the work we need to do for women and non-binary in the industry. We are looking at taking on staff so would like the public to know we are 50% female owned so they feel safe to apply for jobs.”

“We are determined to increase these percentages over the next year and recent initiatives we have put in place to do this include, providing more self-development opportunities, for example sending women on a High Potential Leaders course which will lead on to management positions.”

“As a team of passionate individuals, 70% of whom are women, we are dedicated to making good beer, promoting beer education, and creating an inclusive, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone to enjoy.”

“We understand first hand how women can help shape, sharpen and improve our industry.”

Thank you to everyone who shared and completed the Brewery Survey for 2023. We’ll be back next year.