Management consulting group Bain & Company’s report on gender disparity released on Thursday comes at a poignant moment in SA. Several gruesome murders have once again highlighted gender-based violence, one of SA’s many persistent challenges.
The Bain report, however, concerns women in the workplace which likewise constitutes a continuing problem. Yet the report is granular enough to provide some findings that would probably surprise many.
The overall picture is easy to predict: women remain under-represented in business and the picture has changed very little in the recent past. The report cites the latest Businesswomen’s Association of SA census, which found only 10% of South African CEOs are women and only 2.2% of listed companies have CEOs that are women.