Corporate Australia going backwards when it comes to women in ASX leadership, advocacy group warns

A top workplace gender equality group has condemned a “regression” sweeping the upper ranks of Australia’s largest companies that won’t change unless women are included in the running for internal promotions.

Chief Executive Women’s senior executive census for 2024 found the already small club of women running ASX300 companies had dwindled from 26 in 2023 to 25 in 2024, but more worryingly, that the number of companies with no women in ‘CEO pipeline roles’ had gone up.

According to CEW’s research, 28 per cent of ASX100 companies and 46 per cent of ASX300 had no women in roles such as group executive, chief financial officer, and chief operating officer. These roles typically put the employee in prime position for a promotion to the top job because of their link to commercial outcomes, and responsibility for a company’s bottom line.

This is true for both men and women, according to CEW, with every single one of the ASX300 CEOs appointed in 2024 previously in a pipeline role.

But there is a large disparity between who is at the front of the queue.

The group found that 82 per cent of these CEO pipeline roles were held by men in 2024 and that 70 per cent of women in ASX300 executive leadership teams were working in non-pipeline roles.

On the back of the report, CEW is calling for “urgent action” amid what it has decried as a “stagnation” in diversity growth in CEO leadership.

“When it comes to leadership in corporate Australia, we are leaving some of our best talent on the bench,” CEW president Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz said.

“The sector has talked the talk on gender equality for years, but the numbers tell a different story – one of regression, not progression.”

Having the right backing — of men specifically — has been called out as a crucial part in navigating one’s way up to the top, according to CEW’s report.

“High-potential women who are sponsored, specifically by senior male leaders, are 20 per cent more likely to be promoted,” CEW said.

But research cited in the report from Harvard Business Review suggests women are half as likely to have this crucial “sponsor” as their male peers.

Another report from US consulting firm Seramount claimed men were three times more likely to be encouraged to consider a “profit & loss” role than women, and eight in 10 men reported having a strategic support network, including sponsors, who backed them in for these promotions compared with less than half of women.

Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz said sponsorship by male leaders could be a critical lever for change.

“High-potential women who are sponsored, specifically by senior male leaders, are 20 per cent more likely to be promoted, yet they remain half as likely as men to have such sponsors. There is a huge opportunity for men to take real action to foster women in leadership.”

CEW has also advocated for re-evaluating the “traditional pathways” to CEO roles and broadening the definition to include more than just “managing a P&L”.

There were eight WA companies found to have no women in their executive leadership team.

Meanwhile the materials sector — which covers miner and manufacturers — was also revealed to have the third lowest representation of women leaders at 2 per cent out of 64 companies.

Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz, who is also a non-executive director at Rio Tinto and was CEO of property group Mirvac, said it was possible with the right effort and focus to improve equity even in the most male-dominated sectors.

“I know that the mining sector is working very hard on conditions for women in the front line of mining, and on-site in terms of respect at work and conditions for women in some fairly basic things that make it more attractive to work in that sector,” she told The West Australian.

“We call it gender equity, but it is actually about creating better outcomes. We know from research that companies with diverse teams, and I mean truly diverse teams, not just superficially diverse teams, lower risk. They improve safety outcomes. They create better financial performance.”

The group is also a big advocate for setting gender targets, arguing that companies with them were more likely to achieve gender balance in leadership.