Top Female Chief Executives Lacking in Developed Nations
Oct. 26, 2009
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NEW YORK (dpa) -- More than 46 percent of big corporations in the 30 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have no women at the top decision-making levels, a UN survey said Monday.
The OECD, which answered to the survey, also said only 23 percent of large firms have one or more women on their boards of directors, according to the survey presented at UN headquarters in New York.
The report stressed the serious lack of women's control over the economy and access to financial resources.
Several examples demonstrated the lack of representation by women in the corporate world.
In the US finance industry, for example, women made up 75 percent of all employees. But when it came to the executive positions currently occupied in the top 50 US commercial banks, women held only 12.6 percent of those jobs.
One US bank has a female chief executive officer and seven banks have female chief financial officers.
The survey said only eight women are among the chief executive officers of the 100 largest credit unions in the United States, and women make up only 8.6 percent of venture capital decision-makers.
In Canada, women held 11 percent of the board seats of large firms.
In the European Union, where men head all the central banks, women hold only 17 percent of the board seats of all the major banks.
The situation is even worse for women in developed countries. In Uganda, only 9 percent of women have access to credit in big cities and 1 percent in rural areas.
In Bangladesh, women were responsible for 27 percent of bank deposits, but their share in formal credit was 1.8 percent.
"A substantial re-ordering of women's place in the economic world is long overdue and is made more urgent in the context of the current financial and economic crisis," the survey said.
Source: Copyright 2009 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
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