By Calli Gregg A ccording to a J.P. Morgan report on achieving gender balance in business and industry, female participation on corporate boards across the world improved last year. This is a great start, but it still shows that there is still more work to be done. The J.P. Morgan report said that globally, women’s share of board directorships crept up last year, with large American companies leading the way, with female directors on boards in the U.S. increasing to 22 percent in 2018, from just over 20 percent in 2017. “Governments across the world, and now one U.S. state, California, have begun to implement legis- lation mandating gender diversity on corporate boards,” the J.P. Morgan report said.
J.P. Morgan’s report found that 21 percent of companies under global index provider MSCI’s All Country World Index, which tracks both devel- oped and emerging markets, still had all-male boards. The report also showed that women in Norway, France, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand advanced most in board participation in 2018 while across MSCI’s indexes, companies in Pakistan had the most women occupying CEO positions, followed by Finland, Greece, Sweden and Belgium. Although these numbers are encouraging there is still much more work to be done as it is very clear that companies need to do more to instill gender diversity especially because women are still vastly underrepresented across all levels in the work- place.
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MARCH 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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