Women CEOs more likely to appoint other women in senior positions: study

FEMALE chief executive officers (CEOs) globally are much more likely to surround themselves with other women in senior roles, a Credit Suisse report on Monday showed.

The finding debunks the myth of a "Queen Bee" syndrome - where women who have made it to senior positions are presumed to actively exclude other women from promotions into top management.

The study showed female CEOs are 50 per cent more likely than male CEOs to have a female chief financial officer and 55 per cent more likely to have women running business units. The report is based on a data from 27,000 senior managers at over 3,000 companies that Credit Suisse analysts cover globally.

Over in the Asia-Pacific, there has been a 60 per cent rise in gender diversity at the boardroom level from 2010 to 2015. But, overall female representation at a boardroom level in Asia remains low at less than 10 per cent as at end-2015.

Thailand overtook Singapore to score top in terms of female participation in senior management, with 27.8 per cent of the senior positions at Thai corporations now held by women.

Singapore's boardroom diversity rose to 9.9 per cent of female representation in 2015, compared with 8.4 per cent in 2014. But in terms of management diversity, female participation in senior management dropped from 26.7 per cent in 2014 to 23.8 per cent in 2016.

In this regard, Singapore ranks the third highest globally, behind Thailand and joint second-ranked countries Norway and the Philippines - with both scoring a 25 per cent female participation in senior management.

Of the 265 Asia-Pacific companies with over US$10 billion market capitalisation, those with at least one female board member delivered 58 per cent outperformance in share prices from 2006 to July 2016.