Gender parity still a long haul for business, will take 10-25 years to achieve: Survey

It will take 10-25 years for businesses globally to achieve gender parity on their boards, almost a third of 350 CXOs surveyed by EY have said. The fi ndings of the survey, compiled in a report titled Navigating Disruption without Gender Diversity?? Think Again, reveal that business leaders overwhelmingly recognise the challenges ahead and acknowledge that diversity in senior management is important for navigating change. But despite valuing diversity, many businesses are not addressing the gender gap in a way that will deliver the change that is needed.

"The reality and perception disconnect is holding businesses back from achieving gender diversity on their boards,” says Sonu Iyer, national leader-people advisory services at EY India. “Organisations should make it mandatory for the leadership to pass the test on unconscious bias."

The top disconnects

Reality disconnect: 32% of the respondents said it will take 10-25 years to have 30-40% women on company boards

But only 13% anticipate significant increase in the number of women in leadership roles

Perception and perspective disconnect: Men and women don’t see the issue the same way

61% of women believe their organisations do not have suffi cient diversity of thought and experience on the leadership team; only 44% of men agreed

Men believe the main barriers preventing women from reaching leadership positions are confl icts with raising a family (44%) and shortage of women candidates (43%)

Women feel the top barriers are unsupportive culture (28%) and organisational bias (28%)

Only 7% women attributed shortage of female candidates to fewer women in leadership

Pipeline disconnect: 72% of respondents say they are effective both in attracting women to their organisation and retaining them

Only 56% say they are effective in identifying, retaining and promoting female leaders

55% said they need to do more to attract, retain and promote women to leadership positions

But only 18% of respondents have structured formal programmes to identify and develop women for leadership roles