Businesses in Ireland have made significant progress in achieving gender balance at board level over the past year, but are missing their targets for the numbers of women in senior leadership roles.
Balance for Better Business has published its assessment of developments since the independent business-led review group was set up by the government in 2018.
Women on boards
Publicly listed and other listed companies have exceeded the targets set, but private companies are moving more slowly.
For the second consecutive year, Ireland features in the top 10 countries in the EU 27 for female board representation on listed companies, and 79% of ISEQ 20 boards now have at least three women on their board.
However, businesses have been less successful in increasing the proportion of women at senior executive levels.
Leadership teams
This year has seen a stall or decline in representation of women in key decision-making roles.
At the same time, the proportion of all-male leadership teams has decreased from 32% to 29% among publicly listed companies, while over half (56%) of the same cohort of companies have two or more women on their senior leadership team.
All-male leadership teams are less common in the private companies, where only one in five have no female leaders, with a similar picture evident in multinational organisations.
Women CFOs
The number of women holding CFO roles has increased in listed and private companies and held steady across multinationals.
