Gender equality: Swiss companies make up ground

The proportion of female board members worldwide and in Switzerland in particular is growing steadily - but slowly. This is shown by the latest edition of the Global Diversity Study, which the consulting firm Egon Zehner has been collecting every two years since 2004.

Gender equality on boards of directors: Companies make up ground

According to the study, at the end of April 2020, 97.6 percent of the leading Swiss companies covered by the study had at least one woman on their board of directors, compared with 94.6 percent in 2018. Switzerland is thus catching up with the Western European standard, which now stands at almost one hundred percent. Internationally, nine out of ten boards of directors (89 percent) already have at least one female representative, up from 85 percent in 2018.

Of the 400 board seats held by the Swiss companies surveyed, around a quarter - 99 - are currently held by a woman. This means that the proportion of women on Swiss boards has increased by 15.8 percent since 2004. The boards of Western European companies showed even stronger growth, namely 24 percent - 32 percent of the more than 5,000 board seats there are now held by women, with France again showing the greatest diversity with a 43.8 percent share of female board members.

Diversity as a competitive factor

The number of Swiss companies with already two female representatives on the board of directors has increased by 5.1 percent to 78.0 percent in the last two years, while the number with already three female board members has risen by 8.5 percent to 46.3 percent. The reason for this increase may be that some female board members have expanded their activities and accepted additional mandates. For example, the number of female board members with multiple mandates rose from 2.5 percent in 2018 to 6.5 percent at the cut-off date of the 2020 study.

The consulting firm Egon Zehner expects the situation for Switzerland in this area to develop further over the next few years, not least as a result of the new gender benchmarks introduced as of January 1, 2021 in accordance with the revision of stock corporation law. In 2020, for example, 35.4 percent of new board memberships in Switzerland were already held by women. In the case of new appointments, globally less than a third of the positions to be filled go to women (29.7 percent), while the average in Western Europe is 36.8 percent and for the USA together with Canada 37.2 percent.

"When considering companies, diversity in practice is playing an increasingly important role for investors. This also has an impact on the attractiveness of a company as an employer. Diverse teams with an inclusive culture achieve more innovative results. They understand the expectations of changing target groups. The distribution of management tasks among people of different genders and backgrounds is therefore a sociopolitical as well as an economic imperative. Diversity and inclusivity have thus become an important competitive factor for corporate success," says Simone Stebler, responsible for diversity and inclusion activities at Egon Zehnder, commenting on the results of the study.

Still (too) few female CEOs

When it comes to executive functions or positions held by women within a board of directors, gender equality is not yet so good. Female CEOs or CFOs are also a rare species. In 2020, for example, only 2.4 percent of the Swiss companies analyzed were headed by female CEOs. Their share is thus below the average for Western Europe (5.7 percent) or the USA (5.3 percent). Switzerland also ranks behind in terms of female CFOs, with a share of 2.5 percent compared with 14.0 percent in Western Europe and 14.7 percent in the USA.

"The identification and development of high-potential female employees must be given priority in all companies," clarifies Simone Stebler. She is convinced that "there is no shortage of highly qualified female candidates. But it is not enough to look at their potential and develop them - without a focus on creating an inclusive corporate culture in which both male and female leadership qualities are equally valued, we will continue to make progress only at a snail's pace."

Source: Egon Zehnder