5% of CEOs in world’s largest firms are women, report shows

Nick Elvin

A new report on global diversity in the boardroom from INAC, an international network of executive search consultancies, has found that while progress on the gender divide is being made, only 5% of CEOs in world’s largest corporations are women.

The research comes in the wake of the latest Women on Boards Davies Review Report for the UK, which says that representation of women on FTSE 100 boards now stands at 23.5%, with 18% women’s representation on FTSE 250 boards. It adds that British business is well on its way to achieving the 25% target – recommended by the Davies Steering Group – by the end of the year.

However, as Paul Hunt, managing director of search firm, Healy Hunt, a member of INAC, points out: “This is, on the face of it, good news. But I think it is disappointing that this is an average figure across executive and non-executive directors, and in fact only 8.6% of executive directors are women – and that’s only up from 6.8% last year – so is this just tokenism?”

In the US, INAC’s research shows that 17% of Fortune 500 board seats are held by women. In the report, Susan Shultz, from SSA Executive Search International, said this is likely due to a combination of factors.

“I don’t believe that there is an overt intent to exclude women – I think it is more subtle than that. We haven’t had women executives for that long and so there are generations of attitudes to overcome.

“Also, we have to recognise that the majority of all executive director positions are acquired by referral – often by word of mouth within a fairly tight network, populated by people of the same social circle and who have previous experience on boards – and so by default you tend to get candidates who are like the other members of the board – we like people who are like us.”

The research also found that in Latin America, 28% of companies have a gender equality policy at executive level. In Peru and Colombia, women held 28% of executive positions, outperforming both Brazil and Argentina (26% and 23% respectively). However, they come in considerably below Ecuador, with 33% and Mexico, the regional leader at 37%.

In Australia, while there are no formal targets, almost a quarter of directors the top 50 ASX listed companies are female and every single one has female directors on the board.

Meanwhile, although Turkey is among the top 15 countries in the world for female board members, it still fell behind its European counterparts when it came to the percentage of women participating in the workforce overall. This was due mainly to the high number of female entrepreneurs running micro businesses.

And the report adds that while Norway is often seen as one of the most progressive countries, having implemented boardroom quotas in 2003, the number of female CEOs in the region is still very small.