1 in 8 bosses of top Irish firms is female

Men occupy 87% of chief executive jobs in country

ONLY one in eight of the bosses of Ireland’s leading companies is a woman, official figures released yesterday show.

It has also emerged less than one in three senior executives in large enterprises in this country are female.

The figures from the Central Statistics Office show that of senior executives in their positions for less than a year, 36% were female.

Of the chairpersons who have been on the board for less than a year, 21% were female and 79% male.

Of those on the board for five years or more, 11% were female and 89% male.

The statistics revealed men occupied 87% of chief executive officer positions, down slightly from 89% in 2019.

When it comes to the chief financial officer positions, women held 28% of the posts while 72% were occupied by men.

Female representation on company boards increased from 20% in 2019 to 22% in 2021, the CSO’S Gender Balance in Business Survey showed.

Almost three in 10 enterprises had at least 40% female representation at senior executive level while 18% had female representation of at least 40% on boards of directors.

Commenting on the results, CSO statistician Colin Hanley said: “The results show that on January 1, 2021, 30% of senior executives in large enterprises in Ireland were female; a slight increase from the 28% reported in 2019. Of the senior executive appointments in the last year, 36% went to women.

“In the past two years, 43% of external appointments were female compared to 33% of internal appointments.”

This is the second iteration of the survey which asks large businesses [250 or more employees] to provide information on the members of both their Senior Executive team and Board of Directors as of January 1.

Administrative and support services had the highest proportion of female board membership at 33%, while construction had the highest male board membership at 94%.

JUST one in eight bosses in leading Irish companies is female because sadly there are still major issues with equality in workplaces.

For some reason, being a woman means you are somehow less talented than your male counterparts when it comes to certain positions.

This behaviour is archaic and needs to change but the change needs to come from within.

Women rising to the top of their career should be normalised, not viewed as some sort of miraculous occurrence.