‘Why is corporate Australia still dropping the ball?’ Brands need to do better as female CEO appointments halve in 2024
A sobering new census of the publicly listed companies that make up the ASX300 has found that gender equality in the c-suite has dropped in the past year.
Chief Executive Women’s (CEW) senior executive census is now in its eighth year, and tracks the annual progress of women’s representation in the senior leadership teams in Australia’s top companies.
As the report notes, “incremental change has come to a halt, and in some cases gender equality is beginning to slide backwards
for the first time since the pandemic”.
Maybe they are just hiring the best people available for the job? Rather than focusing on DEI quotas.
Totally agree, after spending decades in corporate Australia the job should be given to someone who can do the job, not because of their gender.
Is this relevant for media? I feel like every business in media is lead by a woman.
So old, white, (usually straight) men are simply “the best people”, right?
Chart 3 is quite interesting. It is for CEO appointments for 2021-2024 (well part of 2024). CEOs generally are appointed internally and not externally (some TV companies not like that this year).
What is interesting is that the appointments were 22 in 2021, 32 in 2022, 52 in 2023 , and back to 32 in 2024. The female proportions 2021-2022) were 4.5%, 12.5%, 19.2% and back to 12.5%.
I just wonder what the compositions over that period of time are. What would be interesting is what proportion of the females appointed over those four years are still at the helm. My guess is that those 19 females over the 4 years remain, but I bet that a proportion of the 119 males have moved-on or moved-themselves-on.
That Nine bucks the trend and hires a progressive, external and female CEO.
There are plenty of companies that need a change of perspective and leadership. Not saying male or female is better, but a change in view can definitely help. Nine could certainly benefit.