EDITORIAL: Business still ignores women
Women remain under-represented and the picture has changed very little
Management consulting group Bain & Company’s report on gender disparity released on Thursday comes at a poignant moment in SA. Several gruesome murders have once again highlighted gender-based violence, one of SA’s many persistent challenges. The Bain report, however, concerns women in the workplace which likewise constitutes a continuing problem. Yet the report is granular enough to provide some findings that would probably surprise many. The overall picture is easy to predict: women remain under-represented in business and the picture has changed very little in the recent past. The report cites the latest Businesswomen’s Association of SA census, which found only 10% of South African CEOs are women and only 2.2% of listed companies have CEOs that are women. Overall, the percentage of women in senior leadership roles has seen only miniscule change over the past decade, with representation increasing slightly from 26% in 2004 to 28% in 2017. As shocking as this may be, it’s not out ...
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