Why women find it so difficult to access top jobs and why the change takes so long.
Quotas to improve gender balance on corporate boards (and threats to introduce them) have gone some way to pushing Europe in terms of female representation in directorships. But the fact remains: globally women are astonishingly scarce in the higher spheres of corporate management.
In the U.S., gender-based discrimination is illegal, yet the June 2014 issue of Fortune magazine reported that the proportion of women CEOs had reached the historical level of 4.8 percent. This was described as “impressive progress”, as in 1998 only one Fortune 500 company was led by a woman. A more accurate statement is that when one starts at (or near) zero any positive change is (almost) infinite progress.
Even in the gender and socially progressive Scandinavian countries female presence in executive management remains pathological: a recent survey reveals that only 3 percent of the 145 largest Scandinavian market capitalisations have a female leader. The same is true in France. It seems all around the world the question is being asked, why do women meet so many hurdles on the way to the top?
via What’s Keeping Women From the Corporate Heights? | INSEAD Knowledge.
