Women, leadership, and the priority paradox
While women may be in fewer leadership positions worldwide, those organizations with more females at the top outperform their peers.
Oxford Economics worked with IBM’s Institute for Business Value IBV to survey 2,300 executives and professionals – an equal number of women and men – from organizations worldwide across multiple industries to better understand why the gender gap in leadership persists and what can be done to ignite real change.
Respondents included individual C-suite officers (CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, CMOs, COOs, CHROs, and others) as well as senior VPs, VPs, directors, middle managers, and nonmanagerial professionals to capture current leaders’ assessments and assessments from those who could be potential future leaders.
The 10 industries represented included banking, consumer products, education, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, retail, technology, and telecommunications. They each comprise 10% of the total sample. The countries/regions in the survey represent a mix of areas where the gender gap ranges from small to large, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report (2017). Each country (or region) comprises 11% of the total
sample.
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