Women not quite on top in GCC firms: survey

Despite all the talk about a reducing gender gap in corporate board rooms, women still continue to be in minority across the world.

According to a new study Women On Board 2012 by recruitment platform MyHiringClub.com & NriJobPortal.com, the GCC scores low when it comes to women filling the top slots.

The online study based on inputs provided by 36,542 listed companies worldwide, shows that countries within the GCC are at the bottom of the list.

Of the 44 participating counties, Kuwait is on 35th position, Oman on 38th, followed by Bahrain on 40th, UAE on 42nd and Saudi Arabia at 44th position.

The study shows that in the UAE only 0.99 per cent of top employees in a company are women.

Scandinavian countries have the highest aggregate percentage of top women employees in the world.

Norway leads the table with higher percentage women on board (37.01 per cent), followed by Sweden (26.32 per cent) and Finland (23.56 per cent).

These top three countries are followed by the United States at 16.34 per cent and South Africa at 16.19 per cent.

The study shows that the highest percentage (24 per cent) of women executives, are in industries such as BPO/KPO. Information technology has 21 per cent of its top executives as women and banking and finance has 19 per cent of women in board of directors.

The number of women at the top of S&P 500 companies has inched up over the past decade, from five in 2001 to 18 at the end of 2010, according to data from executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

But this roster dropped to 17, a little more than 3 percent of the total, after the exit of Executive Carol Bartz of Yahoo.

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