IWD: Report pushes for parity as progress on women in senior leadership keeps stalling

A pandemic-prompted change in working practices has brought about only slight progress for women in senior leadership, according to Grant Thornton’s 2023 International Business Report (IBR) research into women in business in the global mid-market.

Unless businesses develop cultures that empower people through flexible ways of working and take additional steps to support women into senior leadership positions, only 34% of senior leadership positions in mid-market businesses globally will be held by women in 2025.

While progress on the overall number of women in senior leadership continues, Grant Thornton’s latest research reveals it has been slow, increasing only half a percentage point to 32.4% in the past year, and only 13% since the research was first undertaken in 2003.

“The 30% threshold was seen as a ‘tipping point’ which would trigger an acceleration toward more gender-balanced workplaces. Given the incremental change since mid-market businesses in our research reached 30%, it is clear we now need to inject greater determination to fully reap the benefits of diversity”.

Managing partner/CEO of Grant Thornton Nigeria opined that mid-market players in the country should make concerted efforts to empower women in their organizations to aspire and be engaged in senior roles in the corporate environment.

She said, “parity is the way to go about achieving equality, equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, let’s consolidate the gains from breaking gender bias and increase the pace to more sustainable businesses”.

Reiterating this, Karitha Ericson, the global leader of Grant Thornton network capability and culture said “the increasing emphasis on corporate responsibility and global standards is putting pressure on firms to form diverse leadership teams, and not doing so will make it more difficult to raise capital and attract investors.”

The research showed that many mid-market businesses have focused on succession planning to get more women into senior leadership positions, including implementing programmes for mentoring, coaching, leadership development, and wellbeing.

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Businesses should now focus their attention on developing more transparent pathways to leadership and more transparency across recruitment, promotions, and performance.

“Clarity and equal opportunity regarding every aspect of leadership roles, from recruitment to performance reviews, is crucial,” says Karitha.

Additionally, a significant boost to the number of women in leadership roles will come from more businesses committing to flexible working and developing the right organisational culture to support it. Grant Thornton’s research has found that flexible, hybrid and home-based models have the highest levels of women in senior leadership roles. In mid-market businesses that have adopted a hybrid way of working, 34% of senior leaders are women, while in businesses that are fully flexible where staff choose how they work, it’s 36%. Just 29% of senior management is female in mid-market businesses with predominantly office-based models.

“With many businesses not embracing hybrid or flexible ways of working, women are being forced to consider part-time work, which could stifle their career progression,” says Karitha, adding, “And businesses that don’t have flexible working practices tend to be less attractive workplaces to senior women.”

Amid a global skills shortage and talent crisis, businesses that adopt flexible working may also reap the benefits of improved cross-border working and access to a larger talent pool, such as people with disabilities, those living in geographically remote locations or those seeking better work/life balance.

However, flexible working is not without its challenges, says Karitha. “Businesses which already embraced this way of working thrived during the pandemic, as they were able to switch to remote working quickly. Crucially, these workplaces had the right culture to empower people to work in this way. Organisations which look to work more flexibly now, post-pandemic, must ensure they have the business culture to support it. This includes building workplace cultures that guard against potential pitfalls of hybrid working, such as women being left out of critical relationship building and decision-making.”

Overall, the research found that men are more likely to say that their business encourages an open-door policy among management, while women say that this isn’t occurring as often.

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