Board Diversity: Time to Pick up the Pace

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Financial Times – Board Diversity: Time to Pick up the Pace

The number of women in top management roles is rising, but the pace of change remains painfully slow, reports Andrew Hill in the Financial Times. “The world remains far from the tipping point where true board diversity is the established norm,” writes Rajeev Vasudeva, Egon Zehnder’s chief executive, in the foreword to the executive search group’s recent 2014 Board Diversity Analysis. Interestingly, the study reveals that the percentage of women in executive roles in fast growing economies like Indonesia (13.6 percent) and South Africa (8.5 percent) far exceeds that in advanced economies like Germany (5.7 percent), France (3 percent) and Spain (1.9 percent). On a brighter note, multinationals generally accept that encouragement for women in business needs to come from the very top. “If you have got a chief executive who is taking ownership, giving training on unconscious bias, developing high-level women, it makes such a difference,” notes Jill Ader, a consultant at Egon Zehnder, London.

Full story: Andrew Hill: Business cannot afford to obstruct women in the Financial Times (1 December 2014).