A 2015 Credit Suisse report found that companies with women in a higher proportion of decision-making roles generated higher return on equity. And those where there were more women than men did even better. Yet in 2017, women still only made up 15 percent of board seats in 64 countries surveyed by Deloitte.
Sue Unerman, chief strategic officer at agency MediaCom, says unconscious bias needs to be tackled to help women get promoted to the highest levels. “We all have a tendency to want to employ and promote people that are like us,” she told CNBC.
“If I say to you ‘I’ve got a promotion in store for you but I need you to find someone who can do your job,’ you are naturally inclined to think, I’m very good at my job, if I can find someone who is as much like me as possible then I can really impress them, so you get this constant perpetuation. It may be that men and women do that. Men are in the positions of power, so it perpetuates itself.”
