Women Battle for Equality in Top Business Jobs

AFP/APP

Paris: More women are taking top management jobs, but inequality persists, with men still dominating business leadership roles, research showed ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8.

Despite some high-profile exceptions and laws helping to boost quotas for women board members and executives, it remains a slow march to the top.

A survey published last week by Equileap, which researches data on diversity, found only seven percent of CEOs and 17 percent of finance directors in big companies in developed countries were women.

“The battle for gender equality remains ongoing,” said Equileap’s CEO, Diana van Maasdijk.

A 2023 report by the World Economic Forum noted that “women’s share of senior and leadership roles has seen a steady global increase over the past five years,” with the proportion of women hired into leadership roles rising from just over 33 percent in 2016 to nearly 37 percent in 2022.

But the overall figures for women’s representation at companies show they are still in a minority at the top level.

“Work structures have been built up over the last 200 years to accommodate men’s needs,” said Tara Cemlyn-Jones, the CEO of 25×25, a non-profit organisation that aims to improve the gender balance in executive leadership roles.

“The only way that you can get around that is by being consciously aware that you have to make sure the structures are equally fair to women,” she told AFP.

A Deloitte survey of 10,500 companies in 51 countries with data from 2021 found that while about one in five board members were women, just one in 20 chief executives were.

In the United States, women represented about a quarter of board members but less than six percent of company directors.

In Britain, women occupied roughly 30 percent of seats on boards, but only six percent were executives.

The country topped Equileap’s ranking for gender equality in companies based on various criteria, including pay, leave, and protection from harassment.