Too few women bosses: EOWA

Australia's top companies are still dragging their collective feet when in comes to developing female leaders.

The 2006 Australian Census of Women in Leadership surveyed the top 200 companies listed on the Stock Exchange looking specifically at the number of women in executive, senior management and board roles.

The Women in Leadership Census is carried out by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) every two years but agency director Anna McPhee noted there had been little change since 2004.

The key findings were:

Women comprise 47 per cent of Australia's employees and 40 per cent of its shareholders.

Only 12 per cent of executive managers in ASX 200 companies are women (compared to 11.4 per cent in 2004).

Of the 200 companies studied, 39.5 per cent had no women executive managers at all (compared to 40.6 per cent in 2004)

A similar Census conducted of top companies overseas found 16.8 per cent of executive managers in South Africa are women, 16.4 per cent in the US and 14.4 per cent in Canada.

The 2006 EOWA Census revealed only six ASX companies are led by women, which translates as 33 male chief executives to every one female chief executive. The companies with female chiefs are GasNet Australia Group, Harvey Norman Holding, Macquarie Airports, Macquarie Countrywide Trust, St George Bank and NZ Telecom.

Only 8.7 per cent of board seats are filled by women. There are 10 male board members to every one female board member. US women reached Australia's current level of board representation in 1994.

Line positions are considered a stepping stone to senior management roles yet within our top ASX companies, women hold only 7.4 per cent of all line positions identified (up from 6.5 per cent in 2004). Indeed 57.2 per cent of women in ASX companies occupy support positions, which mean 26.7 per cent of support positions are filled by men.

Of those women with executive management roles, 42.8 per cent are in line positions. The Census found that of the men in executive management roles,  73.3 per cent are in line management.

The Census found 60.5 per cent of companies have at least one woman executive manager and 30 per cent have two or more women executive managers (compared with 26.4 per cent in 2004) and 18.0 per cent of ASX 200 companies have 25 per cent or more women executive managers compared with 13.7 per cent in 2004.

By Kate Southam, Editor of careerone.com.au.