Only seven of the top 100 Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed companies are led by female chief executive officers (CEOs), indicating minimal progress in balancing gender representation at senior management and executive positions, according to PwC South Africa’s 2022 executive directors report.

The annual report of listed company executive directors released showed that though the representation of women in CEO and chief financial officer (CFO) posts had marginally improved, women still occupied only 19% of top finance posts in June 2022, up from 17% in 2021. 

Female CEOs constituted only 8%, or 22 women, up from 5% a year earlier. CFO representation stood at 22% (56 women) from 17%. Among all the locally listed entities, the female representation at the executive level reached 15%, or 84 women, slightly improving from 13%.

PwC suggested that skills shortage and the bidding war for talent are contributing to the lack of women executives, who tend to stay in their posts for shorter stretches. Female executives spend one to five years in their roles compared with the three to eight years typical of their male counterparts, the survey found.

Only 53 women were among the 208 new executive appointments across the JSE between January 2020 and June 2022.

The gender pay gap is most significant for large-cap companies, with a 32% median pay gap, rising from 28% last year. Improvements in the race pay gap were seen in the upper quartile at 13%, falling from last year’s 22% pay gap. 

( Editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com)