Australian official calls for action on female executive decline
28/10/2008 16:21
Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said in
Canberra today that urgent action was needed to reverse the decline of women in
executive roles.
A government agency report released today found the number
of female executives employed by companies listed on the ASX200 has fallen by
more than 2 percent over the past two years.
Broderick said in a statement to
the press that the results raised "troubling" questions for women trying to
climb the corporate ladder, and called for an investigation to determine whether
sexual discrimination was taking place at the executive level.
"We need to
find out if there is active discrimination taking place at the top of our most
successful companies," Broderick said.
According to the report "the 2008
census on women in leadership ", out of 1,700 executive positions, only 182 (7.4
percent) are women. There were only 33 companies in which women made up at least
25 percent of executive ranks after a fall of 2 percent.
That means Australia
is lagging well behind other countries such as the United States, United
Kingdom, Canada and South Africa. Only half of the companies listed on the
ASX200 have at least one woman in an executive management position, compared to
85 percent in the US.
Xinhua
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