For the third year running, the 20-first Global Gender Balance Scorecard looks at a single measure of progress: the gender
balance of the Executive Committe of the TOP 100 companies in three key regions of the globe to determine who and were the most progress is being made.  The results? Change is happening; and USA is leading the way.

The scorecard tracks gender balance on exec teams and also identifies sleepers (those companies with no women on their exec teams) to tokens (those with just one female) through to critical mass (a male/female ratio of at least 75/25) and balanced (at lest 40% of either gender).

I’ve spoken at length in the past with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-First and I echo her opinion that Executive Committees are a better place to look for gender balance than Boards – in a large part because it’s the executive teams that actually run the business; and the gender mix of boards can belie the scene at executive level where a greater mass of roles are up for grabs. 

The 2011 Global Gender Balance survey shows that while 74% of companies in the US and 68% in
Europe now have at least two women at board level; only 59% of US companies
have at least two women on their Executive Committe while Europe is far
behind with 20% and Asia lags with only 4%.

The survey shows that globally, 90% of Executive Committee positions in the survey sample are filled by men, with only 10% by women.

More information is available on the 20 First website or download the PDF survey results here.