Women on boards in India double: Credit Suisse

However, India is the second lowest in the region in terms of female representation at a senior management level

The number of women on boards in India doubled over the past six years, from 5.5 per cent in 2010 to 11.2 per cent in 2015, closing the gap with global average of 14.7 per cent, said a report.
 

The report by Credit Suisse research institute, the Credit Suisse Gender 3000 (CSG 3000), a bi-annual feature, reaffirmed its prior findings that companies with a higher participation of women in decision-making roles continue to generate higher market returns and superior profits.

However, India saw a slight decline in management diversity, from 7.8 per cent in 2014 to 7.2 per cent. India is the second lowest in the region in terms of female representation at a senior management level, behind Japan and South Korea, said the report.

In addition, the report debunks the "Queen Bee" syndrome, challenges the notion of the "Glass Cliff" and gains new insights into gender diversity in venture capital and microfinance.

The report, first launched in 2014, analyses the Credit Suisse Gender 3000 (CSG 3000), which encompasses 27,000 senior managers at over 3,000 companies Credit Suisse analysts cover globally.

With the data provided by the CSG 3000, the report examines whether the evidence continues to link gender diversity to better performance and looks specifically at firms with more than 50 per cent female representation in senior management, microfinance institutions and venture capital firms.

The data from CSG 3000 disputes the idea of "Queen Bee", a syndrome which argues that women who have made it to senior positions actively seek to exclude other women from promotions into top management. The findings show that female CEOs globally are significantly more likely to surround themselves with other women in senior roles.

Female CEOs are 50 per cent more likely than male CEOs to have a female CFO and 55 per cent more likely to have women running business units, said the report.

These findings also firmly reject the notion of a "Queen Bee" syndrome in the microfinance and venture capital sectors. In fact, 25-30 per cent of microfinance CEOs are women and around 50 per cent of the lending officers are women. Female led microfinance institutions are more focused on female clients (59 per cent openly target women versus 43 per cent for male CEOs), have a greater share of female board members (44 per cent versus 23 per cent), are more likely to have a female chair of the board (43 per cent vs 16 per cent), and have more female clients (76 per cent versus 60 per cent). It is clear that female-led microfinance institutions attract more females in management and more female clients.

While female representation in partner positions in venture capital remains very low, VCs founded by women have a much higher percentage of female partners than the industry average (43 per cent vs. 7-8 per cent). Additionally, female founded VCs tend to invest more in women entrepreneurs with 17.4 per cent of funding rounds going to female owned startups vs the industry average of 12 per cent.

Women are clearly supporting and promoting women not only in the corporate sector but also in the microfinance and VC worlds, said the report.