The presence of women in listed companies of the continuous market has increased by 15% during 2017, adding to a total of 258 female directors, which represent 19.15% of the total 1,347 existing members of Boards of Directors. Though, significant, this increase still leaves women far from positions with executive functions and places the whole continuum very far from complying with the recommendation included in the Code of Good Governance of the CNMV, of having a 30% of female executives by 2020.
This is how it is expressed in the report ‘Women on the boards of listed companies’, prepared by ATREVIA and IESE and presented this morning at the Financial Club Genova by the president of ATREVIA, Núria Vilanova, and IESE professor Nuria Chinchilla, owner of Chair Carmina Roca and Rafael Pich-Aguilera of Women and Leadership. The report, which includes an X-RAY of the continuous market in its entirety and the VI Women’s Report on the IBEX covers 133 companies; it concludes that it would take 415 more female executives for the continuum to reach parity: 118 on the IBEX and 297 of listed companies.
The study also reveals that there are 15 companies in the continuous market without any female executive (all of the IBEX have at least one) and another 47 that have only one woman on their Board. This means that in 2017, 46.6% of companies in the continuous market had less than two women in their top decision-making bodies.
Another conclusive fact is that the progress of women in absolute numbers and relative weight in the boards of the listed companies does not translate into an increase in executive functions. In fact, only 4.76% belong to the type of top executives.
Average by Sector and Company
By sectors, consumer goods companies are the most inclined to incorporate female directors (they occupy 4.01% of positions) followed by industrial companies (3.49%). Construction is the worst sector in terms of female representation, with only 1.34% of women in positions at executive boards.
But if the analysis is based on the average number of women per company in each sector, which is more illustrative, it is the financial sector that fosters the most female presence (3 women per company), together with the technological and telecommunications (2.22 women per company) and those in the energy / oil sector (2.22 women). The least progressive would be the real estate services companies, which on average only have 1.19 women per company.
Moreover, Núria Vilanova, president of ATREVIA commented that, “The rate of progression of women in the Boards of Directors continues, but it does not seem to be fast enough to reach 30% of female presence by 2020, much less to reach parity”, for whom, “it is essential to advance in aspects such as parity, diversity and the responsibility advocated by the Unified Code of Good Governance, demanded by society, which is increasingly more plural and committed”.
The X-RAY of this situation is different if we analyze separately the members of the IBEX-35 and the remaining 98 societies of the continuum. In the selection process, there are 106 women executives (23.66%) of a total of 448 members. In the remaining companies of the continuum there are 152 women (16.91%) of a total of 899 members. In terms of the average number of female directors per company, the IBEX has 3.03, while the rest of the continuum has only 1.55 female executives. It is clear that the IBEX companies are the ones that push parity the most in the whole continuum.
There are very significant positive exceptions: two companies, Realia and Ezentis, have more women than men in their Boards: 57.14% in both cases.
Additionally, Professor Nuria Chinchilla explained, “Companies are making an important effort to incorporate female talent into their management bodies. It is commendable the momentum that the IBEX-35 companies and the whole continuum are carrying out and the advances that are registered year after year. However, the data reveals that we must continue to insist on the benefits of incorporating women in the boards of directors because this momentum is insufficient in the rest of the companies in the continuous market. Including women on boards of directors provides a more complete and real vision of the market and it benefits the entire organization”, she pointed out.
