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Women in the boardroom

A global perspective - 7th edition

The underrepresentation of women on boards remains a key area of focus for organisations globally, but overall progress remains slow and for women in leadership positions, even slower.

The Deloitte Global Boardroom Program’s Seventh Edition of the Women in the boardroom: A global perspective report includes updates from 72 countries on gender diversity in the boardroom, exploring insights on the political, social, and legislative trends behind these numbers. While these private and public sector efforts demonstrate steps toward achieving parity, the pace of collective progress needs to pick up.

Highlights include:

  • The 2022 report reveals a disconnect between gender progress on boards and in the executive suite; only 6.7% of board chairs are women, with even fewer women holding the CEO role, at just 5%.
  • A global average of just 19.7% of board seats are held by women, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since 2018. If this rate of change were to continue, we could expect to reach something near parity around 2045 – 7 years earlier than the findings of our previous report.
  • Companies with women CEOs have significantly more balanced boards than those led by men—33.5% women vs. 19.4%, respectively.

At Deloitte Australia, we are committed to nurturing inclusion and diversity to create a respectful and safe environment where every employee has equal opportunity to succeed and bring their true self to work. This means we can help our clients by offering diverse perspectives, which in turn leads to delivering successful business outcomes.

–Tom Imbesi

This year, Deloitte Global collaborated with The 30% Club, whose mission is to achieve at least 30% representation of women in board seats and executive leadership among all listed companies. The report provides a short summary of the “story on the ground" for each country where the 30% Club maintains a chapter, portraying a world of uneven progress.

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