Women find top jobs on mainland hard to find
Despite higher number of female CEOs and CFOs, representation on boards is still low
Mainland-listed companies have stood out for having a higher proportion of female chief executives and chief financial officers compared with the global average, but women in the country still have low representation on corporate boards, according to MSCI.
Some 6.4 per cent of the 636 mainland-listed firms included in the MSCI All Country World equity index – out of 2,887 total constituents – had female chief executives as of October last year, up from 6 per cent in 2020.
This is above the 5.4 per cent average for emerging markets and 5.2 per cent for developed markets in 2021, according to data from the latest Women On Boards Progress Report published on Friday, before tomorrow’s International Women’s Day.
“For the first time between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of women CEOs in emerging markets slightly surpassed the percentage of women CEOs in developed markets,” the report said.
Mainland China and India made up 22 per cent of the global index’s constituents and were the main drivers of emerging markets’ outperformance.
Meanwhile, 26.3 per cent of the Chinese firms had female chief financial officers last year, above the global average of 15.8 per cent.
Among board directors, women accounted for 13.8 per cent in China – up from 13 per cent in 2020, but below the 14.5 per cent in other emerging markets and 22.6 per cent globally. Some 27.4 per cent of mainland-listed firms had all-male boards, in line with the emerging market average of 26.4 per cent and well above the global average of 14.2 per cent.
In Hong Kong, 23 out of 81 companies in the index had allmale boards. Some 4.9 per cent had female CEOs and 13.6 per cent had female CFOs. Women accounted for an average of 13.5 per cent of board directors.
Under a new Hong Kong exchange rule, firms on the bourse with single-gender boards have three years to introduce at least one female member. They must set targets and timelines this year for greater board gender diversity and disclose gender ratios and diversity plans in the workforce.
There are no such requirements for mainland-listed firms.