The year 2020 saw many disruptions that shook up not only individual businesses but also our entire economies and societies. ThE Gender Diversity Report 2020 analyses women’s participation in corporate governance in the largest European companies that are listed in the STOXX 600 Europe index or, in some countries, national stock exchange indexes. The report suggests that companies from Norway, France, Britain, Finland and Sweden led the rankings, with Switzerland and newly represented Poland at the bottom of the table “The number of major European companies with high participation of women in leadership positions has doubled over the past year, but there was less progress on top jobs, a study by a EU-sponsored non-profit organization showed on Thursday,” Reuters reports.
The number of those with high scores on its Gender Diversity Index rose to 62 from 32 in 2019. It is defined as high score index readings of 0.8 and above where zero means no women on company boards and in other senior management positions and 1 is the ideal value with a 50% representation. According to the report, “Women made up just over a third of the analysed companies' boards, but held only 14% of "C-suite" jobs, such as chief executive, chief operating or finance officer. Only 6% of companies had female CEOs, the association said, though that marked an improvement from 4.7% in 2019.” The study said women were hit harder by the coronavirus pandemic, suffering higher unemployment and greater stress juggling work and family, but did not discuss its impact on the gender diversity scores. Six of the tracked companies had no women on their boards, executive boards or committees, including two from Germany - Nemetschek and Rational - the study showed.
