Hard work, thoughtfulness and increased opportunities are reasons China has more women CEOs than most major economies
- About 6.4 per cent of China’s CEOs are female, compared to 5.4 per cent in emerging markets and just 5.2 per cent in developed markets
- China also has more than 26 per cent of CFO positions held by women to a global average of 15.8 per cent
As Chinese women participate more in the labour force than their peers in most major economies, they also appear to have found bigger success in the business world.
In the meantime, more than 26 per cent of CFOs at those Chinese firms were women last year, above the global average of 15.8 per cent, the company said in its Women On Boards Progress Report published early this month.
This is in line with a trend in the list of the world’s richest people. For over a decade, Chinese women have dominated the global self-made female billionaires ranking, according to Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report who started compiling rich lists in the 1990s.
Last year’s Hurun Global Rich List indicated that 66 per cent of the self-made women billionaires in the world came from China, and this trend is set to continue in this year’s list, which is to be released next week, Hoogewerf said.
The top reason why Chinese women have been more successful in the business world is that they have more opportunities, Hoogewerf noted. “The Chinese economy has grown so much in the past 20 years.”
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Eileen Gu, the US-born freestyle ski star representing China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games
“Also in China, it’s common for grandparents to look after children, so wives can focus more on work. Therefore, the career break resulting from childcare is generally shorter,” he said.