Still not enough women leaders in big companies 

Women remain significantly underrepresented at the board level and in executive management, and overall there has been very little progress over the last year in this key dimension of gender equality.  

Just Share’s new briefing analyses gender representation in the JSE Top 40, and finds that women hold only 36% of board positions and 23% of executive management positions, despite comprising 46% of the economically active population.  

In Just Share’s 2023 briefing on women in the Top 40, we found that women held 35% of board positions and 25% of executive roles within the Top 40, as disclosed in their integrated reports. Even the small apparent improvement in the share of women on boards in 2024 is not due to more women being appointed, but to slightly fewer men sitting on boards.   

Key findings: 

  • Only 5 of the Top 40 company boards are chaired by women: Impala Platinum, Shoprite Holdings, Sasol, Standard Bank Group and Capitec.
  • Only 4 have female chief executive officers: FirstRand, Bidvest Group, Clicks Group, and Exxaro Resources.   
  • Only 8 companies within the Top 40 have achieved gender parity at board level or have board compositions that reflect the economically active population figure for women: Bidvest Group, British American Tobacco, Discovery, Exxaro, Impala Platinum, Investec PLC, Investec Ltd, and Northam Platinum.  At the executive management level, only 2 companies have achieved gender parity: Bidvest Group and BHP Group. 
  • Only 3 companies have set ambitious goals of achieving 50% gender equality on their boards: AngloGold Ashanti, Impala Platinum, and Woolworths.  
  • As in 2023, Bidvest Group remains the only company in the Top 40 to achieve gender parity or better at both the board and executive levels. Women occupy 64% of the company’s board positions and 58% of its executive management roles.   
  • There is a noticeable dearth of women in executive roles in the consumer discretionary and staples sector, with only 18% representation, a 2% decline since 2023. 

Globally, these numbers put South Africa slightly ahead in terms of board representation, with the G20 average for women’s board representation being 22%. However, we lag in terms of senior leadership positions held by women, with an estimated global average of 32.2% to our 23%. 

JSE Listings Requirements mandate that companies must have policies for promoting gender diversity at the board level. However, compliance remains inconsistent. Only 80% of the Top 40 companies have public diversity policies and targets. These targets generally range from 20% to a “stretch” target of 40%, which is still well below gender parity. These targets are rarely updated even after being met, and some companies set targets lower than their existing levels of women’s representation.   

Kwanele Ngogela, senior inequality analyst at Just Share, said “there remains a substantial opportunity for stakeholders in the capital markets ecosystem, especially the JSE, to influence progress. Asset owners, asset managers and institutional investors must hold directors accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities, ensuring that gender diversity policies and targets are adopted, and actively promoting gender equality in the boardroom. The JSE can drive equity by either imposing mandatory gender representation rules or strengthening existing requirements that mandate the adoption of gender diversity policies and targets.”

Read the full report.

Image: Getty Images. Graphics by The Outlier.

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