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Chanticleer
C-suite remains female-free zone
Chanticleer is Australias pre-eminent business column.
A comprehensive global study of gender diversity in business has Australia doing well relative to most countries in the Asia Pacific and showing the strongest momentum in its change in proportion of women in top management between 2016 and 2019.
The CS Gender 3000 report published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute explores all the issues surrounding the global effort to make the senior ranks of business reflect the gender diversity in schools, universities and broader society.
The report draws on the knowledge base of Credit Suisse’s extensive network of equity analysts. The database of 3000 companies in 56 countries comprising 30,000 executive positions has allowed CS to assess the roles of women in C-suite positions and how it has changed over time.
While gender diversity has doubled in the boardroom over the past three years, the change in the number of women in senior executive positions is stuck in a rut. Barely 5 per cent of the 3000 companies have female CEOs and less than 15 per cent have female CFOs.
Investors will be keen to read the section of the report on the correlation between gender diversity and superior share price performance. The report concludes that more gender diverse companies do appear to yield superior returns.
The report uses the term “management power line” to work out how successful companies have been at promoting women. The power line pecking order is CEO, CFO, other finance/strategy, business/product management, IT, human resources and shared services. The majority of women are down the end of the power line.
In analysing the women in these roles the report confirms what Chief Executive Women and other organisations in Australia have been saying for some time – there is a distinct horizontal occupational segregation.
For example, 55 per cent of the companies have a female head of human resources and a mere 14 per cent have a female head of information technology.
Policymakers and employers have a role to play in challenging the status quo
The gender segregation is particularly acute in Australia and New Zealand. About 80 per cent of human resources heads are female and 86 per cent of IT heads are male.
The study tries to explain this by reference to work done by the World Bank which found horizontal occupational segregation persists because of societal norms and expectations, including educational choice and the unequal distribution of domestic and care responsibilities among genders.
The study will help bolster the argument that more women on boards will influence the culture within companies and lead to more women in management.
The report said that as the proportion of women on boards increases, so too does the proportion of women in senior management roles.
At the 50 per cent level of female board representation the study finds 30 per cent of women in management.
It is noteworthy that countries where quotas exist for boards do not necessarily have higher female representation flowing through into senior management ranks.
Countries with a lower female representation in senior management and on boards were found to have a wider gender pay gap. The report said policymakers and employers have a role to play in challenging the status quo and enhancing the socioeconomic framework, which can help close the gender pay gap.
- Lauren Sams
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