The diversity agenda in companies is more discursive than real. Of the total of 6,248 members that make up the boards of directors of the thousand companies with the most turnover in Argentina, 5,248 are men and only one thousand are women. Furthermore, the presidencies are occupied by men in 93.5% of the cases surveyed by the KPMG company.
The study warns that, although year after year there is a greater participation of women in management positions, Argentina is far from an ideal reality and the changes are increasingly noticeable in the discourse, but they advance slowly within companies. In the five years of the survey, the participation of women on boards of directors went from 8.4% to 16%.
“In addition to the very low participation of women on boards of directors, their almost non-existent presence in roles of maximum responsibility is added. While 93.5% of the boards of directors of the thousand firms with the most turnover in Argentina are led by men, only 6.5% have women in this role,” they noted in the report.
The document also warned that the lower the rank within the decision-making scale, the greater the participation of women: “In the vice presidencies the percentage is somewhat higher, with 11% participation, and in management positions ( incumbents), women occupy almost 18% of the available positions. In substitute roles, the presence of women is greater, although it barely exceeds 20%.”
With the aim of accelerating the incorporation of women in decision-making processes, Women Corporate Directors-Argentina Chapter (WCD), the University of CEMA (Ucema), the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange (BCBA) and KPMG launched the fourth edition of the training program “Next Board: your next step to join a board” in which mostly women participate. “Precisely one of the objectives of the program is to train women who want to occupy the chair on a board of directors, and really know what management is like, what the complex situations are, the current ones, those of innovation, among others,” they stated from the institutions within the framework of the delivery of diplomas, after the end of the third edition. The fourth call is now open. “We hope that in our country the representation of women on Boards of Directors, which today is 10.6% in listed companies, will increase year after year,” said Gabriela Terminielli, director of Argentine Stock Exchanges and Markets (ByMA).
Tamara Vinitzky, in charge of clients and markets, marketing and communications, and diversity and inclusion at KPMG Argentina, warned in the report that, although the fact that “in recent years, the issue of gender equality is established and political decisions have been made to improve”, since “many companies implemented actions that help women in the stage of motherhood, others demand that there always be women in the shortlists, and that the resumes are blind ”; In practice “this is not yet reflected in a significant and more accelerated increase towards equity on boards of directors.”
Vinitzky added that the problem of women’s representation in management positions is not related to training or capabilities. “The low representation of women in business leadership is not due to lack of supply. On the contrary, at the university their presence is equal or even greater in many careers, especially in traditional ones, and, therefore, this prominence is also manifested in the job offer.” For her, “the basic question is simpler than one thinks, because ‘to occupy a chair, someone has to leave it’”.
In the report they also highlighted that although over the years the debate on this issue remained on the table and on the agenda of companies, “like any cultural process, change is extremely slow and the underrepresentation of women in hierarchical roles – whether in the public or private sphere – continues to be astonishing.”
In practice, “the overrepresentation of men in positions of maximum responsibility within institutions is the norm and the women who occupy them are exceptions, with all that this means.”
Thus, they concluded, “boards are still a man’s thing.”