Gender gaps: Latin America lags behind in equity in management positions

Women hold 10.4% of board positions in Latin America, which shows slow progress on gender parity issues. In 2018, it was 7.9% and in 2016, 7.2%, according to the seventh edition of the Deloitte study, “Women on the Board of Directors: a global perspective.”

The report, which analyzed 320 companies in Latin America, highlights other interesting figures, including that 7.1% are finance directors or CFOs and only 1.6% are CEOs. It also highlights that the average age of women who participate as board members is 62.2 years, compared to 59.9 for men. In addition, the length of stay of women in managerial positions is 5.1 years, as opposed to 8.1 in the case of men.

In Peru, the percentage of female representation in leadership positions is 9.59%. In this case, their residence time is 4.8 years and that of men, 10.8. Regarding the average age, it is 60.9 and 59.1, respectively.

“Peruvian business culture has been positively impacted by the influence of foreign investors and subsidiaries of multinationals that promote gender equality. However, there is still a significant gap to close and it is the responsibility of executives and entrepreneurs to support these practices to accelerate progress”, says Karla Velásquez, Managing Partner of Deloitte Peru.

In 2016, a bill was introduced in Congress, still awaiting legislative debate, which required 30% representation of women on the boards of publicly traded companies.

overall perspective

The publication analyzes data from 10,493 companies in 51 countries and points out that an increase in the number of women on boards of directors is prevalent, although it is a significantly slow progress.

According to the study, the world average of women on boards of directors stands at 19.7%, which represents an increase of only 2.8 percentage points compared to the previous edition of the report, published in 2019.

In this sense, and Assuming that the growth rate of 2.8% remains stable every two years, we could expect to reach a level close to parity by the year 2041. While this is unacceptably slow, it reflects a slight acceleration in pace towards proportionality. The previous report stated that parity would be reached around 2052, which means that the timeline was shortened by a decade.

Another of the report’s findings is that the most diverse boards tend to be found in companies led by women. In this way, companies with female executive directors have, on average, boards of directors that are significantly more balanced in terms of gender than those led by men: 33.5% compared to 19.4%.