International Women’s Day: Mainland Chinese firms have more female CEOs and CFOs but still lag in board representation
- About 6.4 per cent of mainland China-listed firms had female CEOs last year, and 26.3 per cent had female CFOs, above the global average, MSCI index shows
- In Hong Kong, women accounted for 13.5 per cent of board directors, ahead of a new rule that gives firms three years to put at least one woman on their boards
Mainland China-listed companies have stood out for having a higher proportion of female chief executives and chief financial officers compared with the global average, but women in the country still have low representation on corporate boards, according to MSCI.
Some 6.4 per cent of the 636 mainland-listed companies included in the MSCI All Country World equity index – out of 2,887 total constituents – had female CEOs as of October of last year, up from 6 per cent in 2020.
“For the first time between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of women CEOs in emerging markets slightly surpassed the percentage of women CEOs in developed markets,” the report said.
Mainland China and India, where 5 per cent of companies had female CEOs, made up 22 per cent of the global index’s constituents and were the main drivers of emerging markets’ outperformance on that metric.
Meanwhile, 26.3 per cent of the Chinese firms had female CFOs last year, above the global average of 15.8 per cent.
Among board directors, however, women accounted for 13.8 per cent in China – up from 13 per cent in 2020, but still below the 14.5 per cent in other emerging markets and 22.6 per cent globally.
Some 27.4 per cent of mainland-listed firms had all-male boards, in line with the emerging market average of 26.4 per cent and well above the global average of 14.2 per cent.
