Corporate boardrooms: Where are the women?
WHEN a woman rises to the top rung of the traditionally all-male corporate ladder in Africa, it’s front-page news because women’s progress in business leadership on the continent continues to be achingly slow.
According to a groundbreaking study by the African Development Bank (AfDB) a few years ago titled Where Are the Women? Inclusive Boardrooms in Africa’s Top-Listed Companies, in the 307 top African companies, women accounted for only 14% of total board membership.
at translates to one woman out of every seven board members. And one-third of the boards have no women at all, adds the report.
Countries with the highest percentage of women board members are Kenya (19,8%), Ghana (17,7%), South Africa (17,4%), Botswana (16,9%) and Zambia (16,9%). Companies that have seated more than a small handful of women include the Kenya-based East African Breweries Limited (EABL) with a board that’s 45,5% women, followed by South Africa’s Impala Platinum Holdings Limited at 38,5% and Woolworths Holdings Limited at 30,8%.
On the downside, the country with the lowest percentage of women on boards is Côte d’Ivoire (5,1%), followed by Morocco (5,9%), Tunisia (7,9%) and Egypt (8,2%). Uganda hangs around the continent’s average of 12,7%, according to the report.
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, AfDB’s special envoy on gender, makes an economic and developmental case for more women on company boards. “Women serving on company boards sharpen the continent’s competitive edge and make inclusive growth a reality.”
Women Matter Africa, a report by McKinsey & Company, a US-based global management consulting firm, further highlights the financial benefits for companies having women on their boards. “ e earnings before interest and taxes margin of those with at least a quarter share of women on their boards was on average 20% higher than the industry average.”
But women are underrepresented on all rungs of the corporate ladder—in non-management as well as middle and senior management positions, notes the McKinsey & Company report, which states that only five percent of professional women make it to top management in companies in Africa.
And even those women who join management may not necessarily wield influence because they usually occupy “staff roles rather than line roles from which promotion to CEOs usually come.”
e AfDB report concurs with McKinsey & Company’s finding that most women in corporate organisations are frozen at the periphery.
Expected to combine work with family duties, women are further limited by patriarchal beliefs that channel them into low-wage careers such as teaching and nursing. e belief among many Africans that a woman’s career should complement—not interfere with—her family responsibilities is a traditional notion of a woman’s role that fails to acknowledge the benefits of gender diversity to society.
African women can take some small solace in the fact that the continent ranks first in female membership of boards among emerging regions. Africa’s 14,4% is far higher than Asia-Pacific’s 9.8%, Latin America’s 5,6% and the Middle East’s 1%. Companies promoting women to top management positions are therefore in sync with the 2030 global goals. Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced Inequalities, specifies that “everyone will have equal opportunities and nobody will be left behind.”
To increase diversity in companies, including on boards, McKinsey & Company recommends four administrative goals: the first is that companies “make gender diversity a top board and CEO priority.”
e second is to “anchor gender diversity strategies in a compelling case,” which means communicating relevant policies to employees. e third is to “confront limiting attitudes toward women in the workplace,” which means focusing on changing perceptions of women’s traditional responsibilities. e fourth is to “implement a fact-based gender diversity strategy,” which involves using metrics and data to understand women’s contributions within a company.
e AfDB agrees with these recommendations, adding that companies should publish genderaggregated data in their annual reports and that corporate governance codes should impose quotas for women’s representation on boards. Many African companies claim to be equal-opportunity employers. ey must now match their words with actions. — Un sites.