Over the last few years, the role of women in the corporate world has been growing, especially if we are referring to managerial positions. Although much remains to be done, female leadership advances more and more and begins to equate itself to the male presencewithin organisations.
We are wonderingAre there more and more women CEOs? The Chief Executive Officer is the one who takes care of the company’s efficiency, the one who takes care of its ability to compete and the most responsible person in creating the necessary conditions for it to develop harmoniously. Such a responsibility could not remain exclusively in the hands of men and in the last 10 years the trend has started to narrow the gap. There is no reason a woman should stay out of the leadership and governance of a company.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), companies where gender diversity is encouraged at the management level perform better. There is more than one evidence of this change in the number of female CEOs since 2015 and their role is fundamental because setting an example allows any woman to visualize herself in that role, understand that it is already a reality and that it is highly likely to occupy that position in the future. When it comes to the position itself, women have a lot to offer companies.
In Argentina Isela Costantini was one of the pioneers, it broke the glass ceiling and paved the way for resonating figures like Unilever’s Laura Barnator, IAE’s Carolina Dams and Schneider’s Paula Altavilla. All of them today hold the role of CEO and face a more than challenging context not only due to the post-covid international crisis, the war in Russia and Ukraine and international inflation, but also due to the new topics on the agenda such as sustainability, society as a whole and how business decisions affect it (corporate governance).
For years CEOs have been mostly men and the only goals were financial. Today companies have to deal not only with the return of profits to their shareholders but also with the set of stakeholders made up of customers, collaborators, suppliers, unions and the community in general, including competitors.
The trend is clear: more and more women become leaders in companies in Argentina, many of them, taking on the role of CEO. This is confirmed by the Total Remuneration Survey 2020 by Mercer, a global HR consultancy firm. In Argentina, the participation of women at all levels of the organization grew in 2020 compared to 2012. In the CEO position, 9% are women, while in 2012 this figure was 3%. Although it seems small in absolute terms, the amount has tripled and we expect it to be exponential year over year and the trend takes us to 25% by 2025 (1 in 6).
We are turning out to be more and more companies telling us that the The exclusive requirement for those who hold the position of chief executive officer is that she is a womanwhich probably brings the proportions into a better balance, although it’s still a long way off that it will definitely be 50% and 50%.
The vision must be much broader and more inclusive, the aim can only be legitimate and the advantage must be for everyone and no company will be able to sustain itself over time if it does not adapt. In this context, women CEOs now occupy a leading role and must answer for the creation of value in companies, with the imprint of their leadership in a world that has changed and requires continuous transformations, innovations and adaptations.
By Federico Carrera, co-founder and COO of High Flow
NS
Source: Clarin
