Do women need more help getting into the boardroom?
Introducing quotas to increase the number of women on boards is an idea that has gathered momentum over recent years, particularly in Europe. In November 2013, the European parliament voted by a clear majority in favour of a proposed law on mandatory quotas on the number of women on boards.
And a number of countries, including France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany, have brought in their own guidance for businesses around gender diversity.
The paucity of women on boards around the world suggests that quotas may need to be introduced to produce the “step change” required to get women on equal footing with men in terms of access to the most senior positions in companies.
Indeed, the proportion of international business leaders who support the idea of quotas has risen from 37 per cent in 2013 to 45 per cent in 2014, with support building in China, Europe and Latin America.
Quotas can be controversial, and some women themselves have been hesitant to be seen in a tokenistic light rather than for their individual talent. However, attitudes are slowly shifting.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously resisted moves to introduce quotas, but her Social Democratic coalition partners have insisted on a target of 30 per cent of non-executive board seats being filled by women from 2016.
However, the data suggests that Germany and others have quite some way to go to achieve the European Union (EU) aims. Across the EU, data from the European Commission suggests that 16 per cent of board roles are held by women, ranging from around 11 per cent in Italy to 18 per cent in German, 25 per cent in France and 29 per cent in Finland. In the UK, the proportion of women on FTSE 100 boards topped 20 per cent for women for the first time in 2013, although still below the government target of 25 per cent by 2015, while just four of these companies have a female chief executive officer.
And the pattern is repeated across the developed world: just 16 per cent of Australian ASX members are women, rising slightly to 17 per cent of those in the Fortune 500.
The data also shows that less than a quarter of senior management roles are held by women (24 per cent).
This is unchanged from 2013, and even from 2007, and suggests that the proportion of women in senior management has returned to its “natural level” following the financial crisis during which women were disproportionately hit.
Economies in eastern Europe (37 per cent) and southeast Asia (35 per cent) lead the way on women in leadership. Globally, Russia (43 per cent) has the highest proportion of women in senior management, a figure that has held fairly stable since 2004, helped by a gender ratio that favours women by 6:5.
In Latin America, 20 per cent of businesses have no women in senior management, but women in two of the continent’s fastest growing economies – Peru (35 per cent) and Chile (30 per cent) – hold relatively high proportions of top jobs. Brazil (22 per cent) and Argentina (25 per cent), despite both having female presidents, continue to lag behind.