The system appears to be tilted heavily against women. The more women rise to the top rungs of the professions, the more they are denied entry into the traditionally all-male corporate ladder in Africa. Women’s progress in business leadership on the continent continues to be painstakingly slow.
According to the 2015 Study by the African Development Bank (AfDB) titled Where Are the Women? Inclusive Boardrooms in Africa’s Top-Listed Companies, in the 307 top African companies, women accounted for only 14% of total board membership. That translates to one woman out of every seven board members. And one-third of the boards have no women at all, notes the report.
Countries with the highest percentage of women board members are Kenya (19.8%), Ghana (17.7%), South Africa (17.4%), Botswana (16.9%) and Zambia (16.9%). Companies that have seated more than a small handful of women include the Kenya-based East African Breweries Limited (EABL) with a board that’s 45.5% women, followed by South Africa’s Impala Platinum Holdings Limited at 38.5% and Woolworths Holdings Limited at 30.8%.
On the downside, the country with the lowest percentage of women on boards is Côte d’Ivoire (5.1%), followed by Morocco (5.9%), Tunisia (7.9%) and Egypt (8.2%). Uganda hangs around the continent’s average of 12.7%, according to the report.
AfDB’s special envoy on gender, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, makes an economic and developmental case for more women on company boards. “Women serving on company boards sharpen the continent’s competitive edge and make inclusive growth a reality.”
Women Matter Africa, a report by McKinsey & Company, a US-based global management consulting firm, further highlights the financial benefits for companies having women on their boards. “The earnings before interest and taxes margin of those with at least a quarter share of women on their boards was on average 20% higher than the industry average.”
But women are underrepresented on all rungs of the corporate ladder–in non-management as well as middle and senior management positions, notes the McKinsey & Company report, which states that only 5% of professional women make it to top management in companies in Africa.
And even those women who join management may not necessarily wield influence because they usually occupy “staff roles rather than line roles from which promotion to CEOs usually come.”
The AfDB report concurs with the finding of McKinsey & Company that most women in corporate organisations are frozen at the periphery. The method used to appoint board members does not favour women, maintains Ms. Fraser-Moleketi. “Board appointments are made through old-boy networks, locking women out,” she says, and the process of choosing a nominee is not always transparent.
Expected to combine work with family duties, women are further limited by patriarchal beliefs that channel them into low-wage careers such as teaching and nursing. The belief among many Africans that a woman’s career should complement–not interfere with–her family responsibilities is a traditional notion of a woman’s role that fails to acknowledge the benefits of gender diversity to society.
