The proportion of female chief executives around the world is growing but women’s overall share of senior business roles has stalled, research has found.
Slow progress in increasing diversity on company boards is leading to a groundswell of support for quotas to get more women in senior management roles, according to a study of 6,700 executives in 45 countries by accountants Grant Thornton.
“It suggests we are at a stage when something needs to change to enable us to make the next step forward,” said Francesca Lagerberg, the company’s global head of tax.
The study found women are running 12 per cent of mid-market companies globally, up from 10 per cent in 2013 and just 5 per cent in 2012. High-profile female chief executives appointed recently include Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer.
But the overall proportion of senior business roles filled by women across the world was 24 per cent, the same as in 2013, 2009 and 2007, and only slightly above the 19 per cent recorded by Grant Thornton’s survey in 2004.
The study found close to one in two executives would like to see quotas for the numbers of women on the boards of large listed companies, up from one in three last year.
Mandatory quotas began in Norway in 2003 and Malaysia, the Philippines, Kenya, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates have legislated for them.
Germany’s coalition government plans to force listed companies to fill 30 per cent of non-executive board seats with women candidates from 2016.
The survey found 23 per cent of businesses globally have a female chief financial officer, up from 22 per cent last year and 12 per cent in 2012. In China, the figure was 63 per cent.
Europe and Latin America have the highest proportion of female CEOs at 17 per cent, followed by Asia-Pacific with 14 per cent. In North America, women’s share of CEO posts was just 9 per cent. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)
