A woman works in an office. FILE PHOTO | NMG Earlier this week, “Fortune Magazine” announced that the number of women running America’s largest corporations had hit its highest.
This is a milestone for women in corporate but the number still remains quite small at 7.4 percent. Thirty-seven of this year’s Fortune 500 are led by female CEOs.
Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Economic Forum has 95 years to achieving gender parity.
Kenya, out of 153 nations, ranks 109 on the Global Gender Gap index 2020, representing a drop of 33 positions compared to that reported in 2018.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya sits at position 20, lagging behind fellow East African nations Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Rwanda tops the SSA region, while Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia are 10, 11 and 13 respectively.
Compared to 2006, Kenya in 2020 has performed worse in the various categories of Gender Gap Index including economic participation opportunity and education attainment. There has however been an improvement in health and survival as well as political empowerment.
The report further indicates that of the legislators, senior officials and managers in Kenya, only 24.8 percent are female. This is despite a near equal literacy level between males and females in the country.
In terms of representation in parliament, the Gender Gap Index shows that Kenya has a female representation of only 21.4 percent. In ministerial positions, the number is only marginally higher at 25 percent with no head of state being female as yet.
In the business front, the situation is similar. Only 13.2 percent of firms have a majority female ownership and only 18.1 percent of the firms in Kenya have women in top management. There is a higher number of women employed part time than men with this being 44.25 percent and 28.9 percent of the labour force respectively.
The Mckinsey Report, dubbed “The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in Africa”, indicates that parity in Kenya is extremely high in the workforce with only 18 percent of leadership posts held by women and 45 percent of the workforce engaged in unpaid care work. This is despite a labour workforce participation of 92 percent.
“Only a relatively small number of economies— namely Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa—have made headway, inflating the average score. At the current rate of progress towards parity, it would take 20 years to achieve equality on boards and 118 years on executive committees,” says the McKinsey […]
