Swiss corporate gender balance: progress stalls

Of the 100 largest employers in Switzerland, almost one in four companies still has no women on its management board. KEYSTONE

In a few years, Swiss companies will be subject to guidelines regarding the number of women in management. After years of strong growth in the representation of women on management boards, the trend has now stalled somewhat.

Of the 100 largest employers in Switzerland, almost one in four companies still has no women on its management board, even though a minimum quota of 20% will apply to listed companies as of 2031. Specifically, 23 companies currently have no women in top management, according to a report published on Friday by executive recruitment agency Guido Schilling.

The majority of companies have a single woman on the management board. And in 20 companies, the proportion of women on the executive boards is even over 30%.

However, Guido Schilling expected better figures, as he explained at a video conference with journalists. This is because more and more women have been joining management boards in recent years. In 2019, more than half of companies still had no women on their management boards. And just four of the hundred largest employers had a female quota of over 30% in the top operational management body. Now, however, the trend is stagnating. In other words, the number of companies with no women has risen slightly over the course of the last year, while those with a high quota of women has fallen slightly.

Faster departure after a shorter time

Study author Guido Schilling sees the main reason for the stagnation in the high fluctuation of women on management boards. Last year, significantly more women resigned from their positions on management boards than in previous years. According to Schilling, it is striking that female executive board members who left office had been on the board for three years, a significantly shorter period of time than their male colleagues who had been on the board for seven years.

“Such a short period of membership can hardly be sustainable,” said Schilling at the presentation of the report. He believes that one explanation for the higher fluctuation is that women on management boards are more likely than men to have joined the company from outside rather than having been appointed internally. As a result, they first have to familiarise themselves not only with their new role, but also with the company and its culture. Those appointed internally, on the other hand, are already familiar with the company’s specific DNA and are already networked, which helps them to establish themselves in a position.

For Schilling, it is therefore clear that in order to ensure gender diversity in management in the long term, companies are well advised to keep women in their own ranks, especially in middle management. The executive recruiter also believes that companies could make a name for themselves with working conditions that make it easier to combine career and family. With women, but also with men. He has noticed that the compatibility of career with family and social life is also increasingly becoming an issue for young men. In his opinion, the labour market will therefore be the driving force behind a more balanced gender representation in management in the coming years. “Companies where gender diversity is not an issue will be at a disadvantage,” Schilling is convinced.

Translated from German by DeepL/amva

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