WUNRN
Woman Run 30% of All Businesses, but Only 5% of the Biggest Enterprises – ILO Study
By RICK GLADSTONE
– January 12, 2015
Women own or manage more than 30 percent of all businesses but 5 percent or
less of the biggest enterprises, the United
Nations said in a report published Monday.
The report, by the International Labor Organization, a United
Nations agency based in Geneva, also estimated that without new actions to
promote women’s equality in management, it would take 100 to 200 years to
achieve gender parity in business leadership positions.
ILO Report: http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_333678/lang--en/index.htm
Posted on the I.L.O.’s website, the report
was done by the organization’s Bureau for Employers’ Activities. It was based
on information from 108 countries where I.L.O. data is available, as well as
the findings of the organization’s survey of more than 1,200 companies in
Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Eastern and Central Europe and the Latin
America-Caribbean regions.
Deborah France-Massin, the bureau’s director, said in the report that
although the participation of women in the labor force had been an engine for
global growth, “there is a long way to go before we achieve true gender
equality in the workplace, especially when it comes to top management
positions.”
The report acknowledged significant gaps in the information used to derive
its conclusions. It noted, for example that the data had combined private and
public sectors, “making it difficult to track trends in the private sector.” It
also said information from developing regions on women in business and
management was hard to quantify, and in the private sector “was practically
inexistent.”
Nonetheless, the report concluded, the vast disparity between the total
number of businesses owned or managed by women, and the near-total male
domination in the largest businesses, shows that “the larger the company, the
less likely the head will be a woman.”
According to the report, Jamaica has the highest proportion of women who
are managers, at 59.3 percent, while Yemen has the least, at 2.1 percent. The
United States is ranked 15th, at 42.7 percent, well behind some countries in
less developed areas.
In Asia, the highest-ranking country is the Philippines, at 47.6 percent,
making it ranked fourth globally. In Latin America, Colombia is the highest, at
53.1 percent, making it ranked second globally.