Happy International Women’s Day, everyone! It’s a good day to recognise and appreciate the work and effort put in and the incredible spirit the women – as well as female-identifying and non-binary people – in your life have, as well as acknowledge the fact that they cop a rough trot in a range of key issues far more often than anyone should.
And one key area highlighted, thanks to new data released to mark IWD, is fairly stark: In Australia, you’re more likely to be the CEO of a large company if you a male named “John” than if you are a woman.
Yes, that is correct. There are more CEOs named “John” than there are CEOs who are women. What’s more, that’s an observation that’s also true for men named “Peter.” And “David.”
Data compiled by consultant and workplace diversity specialist Conrad Liveris, released in conjunction with IWD, looked at the management structure of Australia’s largest 200 companies. The results? Hoo boy.
Of the CEOs and chairs of ASX 200 companies, 32 are named John. 32 are named Peter. 21 are named David.
19 are women.
Liveris breaks down that staggering statistic even further, throwing this profoundly sobering observation onto the pile:
“To be a captain of Australian business you are 40 per cent more likely to be named Peter or John than to be female.”
“Straight, white, able-bodied men aged 40-69 years, which represents the majority of Australian leadership, are 8.4 per cent of the population.”
Somehow, it gets worse. It turns out the number of women in peak business leadership positions actually fell in the past 12 months. As of now, just 9 women serve as CEOs of ASX 200 companies, while a mere 10 chair company boards.
In the case of CEO positions, this represents a 25% decline from the same time last year.
Further still, in so-called “female dominated” industries (i.e. ones where the bulk of the ground-level workforce are women) senior leadership positions are still dominated by men. Around 75% of the health care and education workforces are women, for example, but around 66% of the senior leadership in those fields are male.
In the public sector where 58% of the workforce are women, 0% are CEOs. None. Nada. Zip.
Liveris’ research into gender diversity in the workforce also uncovered that, in the mining sector, the average woman’s pay rose by just $0.20 in 2016, where the average man’s jumped a whopping $57.50.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that a step down from the top CEO and chair jobs, women are seeing far better representation at senior executive-level. The numbers in that regard all tend to line up far more closely to the overall percentage of women’s representation in their respective fields.
But while that’s a good thing, it’s still not resulting in an increase in overall leadership in the Australian business sector.
And when you’re more likely to lead a company if your name is John than if you happen to be a woman, that’s a problem. A big one.
Photo: Mark Kolbe/Getty.
