Corporate diversity: the best and worst European countries

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 24/01/2022

Norway, France and the UK, followed closely by Finland and Sweden, are the countries with the closest to diversity in corporate governance, according to an annual survey produced by Kantar Public, on behalf of the association European Women on Boards. The worst country is Greece, followed by Luxembourg, Poland and Switzerland. 

The overall Gender Diversity Index score across the 668 companies in the survey has improved by only 5%, from 0.56 in 2020 to 0.59 in 2021. An average company with a GDI of 0.59 points has the following share of women in leadership roles: 

• 30% of all leadership positions (board, executive level and board committees) are women; 
• 35% of board members are women; 
• 19% of executives are women; and
• 36% of committee members are women. 

This report is based on the data from 668 European companies, which represent the largest entities across the 19 countries covered. The methodology uses an aggregate indicator that they call Gender Diversity Index (GDI) and reflects the share of women in all leadership positions, the share of women on boards, the share of women in executive functions and the share of women in board committees. 

• 38% of companies improved their GDI between 2020 and 2021 by adding at least one more woman to their leadership  
• The representation of women in the C-suite is even lower than at the board or executive level. Women represent only 15% of all C-level executives in the dataset. This again is a tiny change in 2020, where the number was 14%.
• There are only 62 women who chair the board (layer 1) in the companies analysed. This represents about 9% of all companies. This is exactly the same as in 2020, where there were 55 women who chaired the board. No change has been seen over this period
• In 2021 women represented 36% of board committee members, with a higher share on control committees (39%). 
• Thirty percent (30%) of newly appointed staff were women, while they represent 23% of all the people who left corporate governance, 

When looking at the companies that have an average or above-average GDI we find: 

• 15 of the 19 (79%) Norwegian companies; 
• 80% (61) of all French companies;
• 71% (95) of all British companies; 
• 60% (37) of all Swedish companies; 
• 57% (19) of all Italian companies; 
• 56% (9) of all Finnish companies. 

On the other hand, when looking at companies below the GDI average we find: 

• 85% (17) of Polish companies; 
• 77% (41) of Swiss companies; 
• 71% (17) of Spanish companies; 
• 70% (14) of Austrian companies; 
• 67% (48) of German companies

Overall, the differences between sectors are not significant. As in 2019 and 2020, the divergence between countries is much greater than the differences between sectors. This suggests that the issue of gender equality in leadership is more affected by national culture and possibly systemic features than by the nature of a specific economic sector. 

In the technology and media sector, there is a large difference between sub-sectors: companies in the media sub-sector have an average GDI of 0.69, compared with 0.60 in the telecommunications sub-sector and 0.55 in the technology sub-sector. 

In the full report, one can also find the scores for all the companies measured in each country.