Russian women lead the pack at a senior management level

According to Grant Thornton International Business Report “Women in business 2016: Turning promise into practice”, Russia tops the list of individual countries for the second year in a row with 45% of senior roles held by women (a YoY increase of 5 per cent).

Among peers catching up with Russia on women in business leadership are Philippines, Lithuania and Thailand with slightly over a third of senior roles occupied by women (37-39%). Countries with even lower proportions are Germany and India, 15% and 16%, respectively, while the poorest performing individual country is Japan, with just 7% senior roles held by women.

The survey findings suggest that 33 per cent of companies on average all over the world have no women in leadership positions. Even the G7 economies where gender equality is an imperative can do without top managers women, with 39 per cent of companies polled, as the survey suggests, which is 6 percentage points lower than the world’s average figure. Women from Turkey and South Africa have to content with the poorest prospects for advancement: 43 and 39 per cent of Turkish and South African companies polled, respectively, have no women in leadership positions. Whereas in Russia women are present at a senior management level in all companies polled.

The insight into what areas are led by women demonstrates that 53 per cent of CFO positions in Russia are occupied by women and 28 per cent of female top managers equally are allocated on human resources and internal control and audit units. At the same time, you can hardly see a woman as the head of IT department (as low as 2 per cent) or as COOs (only 4 per cent).

Companies across the world have on average a different occupational management structure with 23 per cent of women performing as leaders of human resources departments, 21 per cent occupying CFO positions, 11 per cent leading marketing departments, 10 per cent leading internal audit function, whereas among the rarest functions performed by women are СЕО function with only 9 per cent, СОО function with only 8 per cent and IT department leader with as low as 4 per cent.

When asked what attributes are most important in good leaders, Russian top managers named “Intuition” and “Vision” (47 per cent), “Ability to deal with complexity” (43 per cent) and “Communication” (35 per cent). Russian managers’ opinion coincides with that of their foreign peers in only one attribute, that is “Communication”, which is globally assessed as important also by 35 per cent of the respondents. Other two critical attributes are “Ability to inspire” (31 per cent) and “Positive attitude” (25 per cent).

The full survey is available here.

The data for the survey “Women in business 2016” are drawn from interviews with over 5,500 top managers from 36 countries which come from various industries and services sectors.

Recommend