Gender inequality in boardrooms would not be eliminated until 2038 if the current improvement in female representation is maintained, data provider MSCI Inc said on Wednesday, adding that progress had even stagnated in the US.
Data modeled by MSCI showed that if the average rate of growth for the number of women on boards from 2018 to last year continues, companies in the data provider’s flagship global equity index would not have gender-balanced boards for 15 years.
This means women will not take an average of 50 percent of board seats across the 2,811 companies that make up MSCI’s All Country World Index (ACWI) until 2038, based on the current trajectory.
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However, this is an improvement from data collected in 2021 that suggested the 50 percent threshold would not be met until 2042.
MSCI has also brought forward by one year to 2026 its projection for when women would take 30 percent of seats on all boards of the ACWI.
After a slowdown in the rate of inclusion of women on boards in 2020, the trajectory toward gender equality accelerated last year, with the number of board seats held by women increasing by 1.9 percent from a year earlier, MSCI said.
MSCI attributes the recovery to a steady increase in female representation on boards of companies in developed markets outside the US and said that the US growth rate had stagnated for three consecutive years.
However, there is still a considerable way to go globally.
Last year, women held 24.5 percent of director seats across the global index versus the 22.6 percent held in 2021, MSCI said, adding that women held chief executive positions in only 163 of the 2,811 companies.
In Qatar, none of the 12 constituents of the ACWI had female directors.
In the US, only 1 of 593 companies had no female directors.
In Taiwan, among the 83 companies that are constituents of the ACWI, 26.5 percent have no women on their boards and only 2.4 percent of those companies had boards with more than 30 percent of their members being women last year.
Of the 83 Taiwanese companies, only 8.4 percent had female CEOs, while 30.1 percent had female chief financial officers, the data showed.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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