While women make up 52,1% of the adult population and 41,3% of the working South African population, they make up only 19,8% of all executive managers, 10,7% of all directors and 6,2% of chief executive officers and board chairs in the country.
This figure, however, is up from the 14,7% women executive managers as found in the 2004 census. At that time, women made up 7,1% of all directors, which indicates that there has been a 5,1% and 3,6% increase respectively in the 2005 results.
These figures are the findings of the South African Women in Corporate Leadership Census 2005.
The census was commissioned by the Businesswomen’s Association and sponsored by Nedbank. The South African census was conducted locally by BWA and EmpowerDEX.
At the date of the census, there was a total of 278 women directors holding 306 directorships from a total of 2 851 directorships. The majority of women hold only one directorship and only two women hold five or more directorships.
The number of women directors has increased since 2004, yet the spread over the number of directorships held by individual women remains relatively consistent.
The 2005 census has shown that of the 306 directorships held by women, 48,4% are held by black women, 43,8% by white women, 4,9% by coloured women and 3,2% by Indian women.
In top corporate leadership positions, women are also significantly under-represented. However, it appears to be easier for women to become chairs on boards than it is for them to become CEOs, the census finds.
Altogether, 15 chairs of boards in South Africa are women, while there are only eight (2,2%) women CEOs in South Africa. Both statistics have increased since the 2004 census, where only 11 chairs of boards were women and seven CEOs were women.
The census highlighted that seventeen South African companies have performed well (25% or more of director positions and 25% or more of executive manager positions are held by women).
The companies are: Adonis Knitware Holdings Limited, Auila Growth Limited, Buildmax Limited, DataPro Group Limited, Development Bank of Southern Africa, ER.com Holdings Limited, Infowave Holdings Limited, Insurance Outsourcing Managers Holdings Ltd, Nictus Beper, Paracon Holdings Limited, Petra Mining Limited, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the South African Post Office, TransCaledon Tunnel Authority, Terexo Limited and Tisec Limited. – I-Net Bridge