The Belgium's 40 under 40 initiative aims to create a diverse community of 40 societal leaders under 40 who will jointly reflect on the challenges of our society. Those will be selected by a panel of accomplished leaders, ready to pass on and share their experience.This list of accomplished leaders will act as ambassadors, selection panel members, mentors and coaches.

You might think: “This is a great initiative!”. So did we, before realizing that those accomplished leaders are 82.5% male and 17.5% female. Plus, while there’s no data on race, pictures `show 90-100% are white caucasian.

The lack of diversity in the jury is an issue that needs to be addressed

The initiative is applying a diversity criteria to their applicants. It seems fair to expect it for the jury as well. As they act as a coach and mentors, having diverse views is critical. The initiative promises the possibility to publish media content in L’Echo and De Tijd, two newspapers who disappointingly saw no harm in letting a group of homogenous people decide on who will be given this visibility and voice. No responsibility has been taken by those two major media outlets.

This issue has been publicly brought up as soon as the 40 under 40 program went public, and no official solution has been given by the organization yet. To our knowledge, no men revoked participation upon seeing the lack of diversity in the jury, nor after being called out on social media. We also haven’t seen any open calls to find new coaches.

Co-signers pledge to wait until the jury is gender balanced and has more racial diversity before considering enrolling in the program

Due to many factors, there are less women in positions of power. However, this initiative would only need 20 experienced women to reach parity, which is totally reachable. To us, keeping the panel as it is would be discriminatory, unrepresentative and far from a community we want to be part of.

Thus, this open letter is a statement that we find this situation inadmissible, and we will not apply to the 40 under 40 program nor encourage it in any way until this issue is both addressed and resolved. We expect a gender-balanced panel and a truly diverse set of mentors.

In the future, we also encourage anyone involved in this initiative to avoid promoting any type of event with such blatant indifference for diversity.