65 — women in manage­ment positions

2019 was all about women. The second natio­nal women’s strike took place in mid-June for the first time since 1991. All in all, seve­ral hundred thousand people took to the streets of cities and villa­ges across the coun­try. Their demands were clear: equal pay and equal oppor­tu­nity for women, and a grea­ter say within compa­nies, orga­ni­sa­ti­ons and poli­tics. It was one of the biggest, most impres­sive demons­tra­ti­ons in Switzerland’s history, and the time is ripe for it. As a result, the people of Switz­er­land put their words into action: the natio­nal re-elec­tions saw the percen­tage of women in the fede­ral parlia­ment jump from 28.5 percent to more than 40 percent. 

And what about the world of work?

Accor­ding to the Schil­lin­g­re­port 2019, the number of women in senior manage­ment posi­ti­ons at Swiss compa­nies is slowly but surely heading upwards. The propor­tion of women on admi­nis­tra­tive boards amoun­ted to 25.6 percent in 2018, twice as high as ten years before. As previously, less than ten percent of execu­tive mana­gers are women.

An inverse relationship 

The Stif­tungs­re­port 2019 shows that the propor­tion of women in chari­ties’ execu­tive bodies reflects other areas of society. Twenty-eight percent of trus­tees are women, and of 12,893 commit­tee members, only 20.4 percent are female. The percen­tage of women on boards of trus­tees is not dissi­mi­lar to the percen­tage in the natio­nal assem­bly prior to the elec­tions. Howe­ver, the situa­tion looks rather diffe­rent in terms of chari­ties’ opera­tio­nal manage­ment. Around 15 percent of chari­ties include their manage­ment posi­ti­ons in the commer­cial regis­ter, with 34.6 percent of them being held by women. 

The current Jahr­buch der Hilfs­werke paints the same picture as the Stif­tungs­re­port. On a stra­te­gic level, 65 percent of chari­ties have a chair­man, not a chair­wo­man, with the size of opera­ting expen­dit­ure not play­ing a role. In terms of opera­tio­nal manage­ment, opera­ting expen­dit­ure certainly does have an impact: the bigger an orga­ni­sa­tion is, the more male execu­ti­ves it has. The propor­tion of female execu­ti­ves at orga­ni­sa­ti­ons with opera­ting expen­dit­ure of less than a million Swiss francs is 65 percent, but for large orga­ni­sa­ti­ons with opera­ting expen­dit­ure of more than ten million Swiss francs, this figure remains at a measly 24 percent. The figu­res are balan­ced across all 405 insti­tu­ti­ons surveyed. 

Aware­ness is growing, and trends in the propor­tion of women are now being exami­ned across all manage­ment bodies. The image depic­ted by these surveys is crys­tal clear: we are heading towards gender equality, but we are still some way off achie­ving it. Women are substan­ti­ally under-repre­sen­ted in pres­ti­gious, well-paid posi­ti­ons – both in the busi­ness world and in the chari­ta­ble sector.