Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Share of women on boards of the leading Croatian companies is only 17.3%, according to the CROBEX Index which measures the share of women in management positions in the most important companies on the Zagreb Stock Exchange. Representation of women on the boards this year decreased by 3%, while in the previous two years the index was above 20%.
Top 5 companies with the highest share of women in management in 2017 are Ericsson Nikola Tesla (100%), AD Plastik (50%), OT-OPTIMA TELEKOM (50%), Zagreb Stock Exchange (50%), and Hrvatski Telekom (28.6%).
CROBEX Index is measured since 2014 by SELECTIO, the leading Croatian company for executive search and consulting in human resources management. In previous years, the Index of women was calculated on the basis of the composition of boards in 25 companies, while this year only 22 companies were included due to exclusion of companies from the Agrokor group, Belje, Ledo and VUPIK from the CROBEX Index in May 2017.
CROBEX Index allows comparison of Croatia with other countries of the European Union, according to the European Commission Report on gender balance on corporate boards. According to the latest available data from the European Commission in April 2016, women are most numerous on corporate boards in France (37.1%), Sweden (36.1%), Italy (30.0%) and Finland (29.8%). These countries, along with the Netherlands (28.1%), also recorded the largest year-by-year increase in the share of women on boards (an average of five percentage points).
In mid-2016, with 20.7% of women on boards, Croatia was on a par with Spain (20.2%) and Austria (20.1%) and was located only a few percentage points below the EU average, which amounted to 23, 3%.
In the past year, among Croatian companies in the composition of CROBEX, the number of “zero companies”, or companies that don’t have a single woman in their boards, rose by 7%. Thus, more than half (55%) are “zero companies”. For comparison, according to the latest available data of The Female FTSE Board Report from March 2016, all of the 100 most important companies on the London Stock Exchange had at least one woman on their boards. In addition, only two companies within the CROBEX have a woman in the position of Chairman of the Board, Ericsson Nikola Tesla and Zagreb Stock Exchange.
It is interesting to compare the proportion of women on the boards of companies in the composition of CROBEX with their share in the current Croatian Parliament and in the membership of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Croatia (HAZU). In fact, while the 9th session of the Croatian Parliament consists of 17.9% women, there are only 9.9% of them in the regular membership of the Academy. However, Croatian Parliament is recording continuous decline in women representation, so in the past 10 years the proportion of women in the Parliament dropped by almost 8%.
SELECTIO presented the results of this year’s CROBEX Index at the event organized by the Professional Women’s Network (PWN) Zagreb, the association that is committed to achieving a balance in the representation of women and men in management positions. At the event, the experiences and efforts of the United Kingdom in this field were presented by Ambassador Andrew Dalgleish. This is one in a series of events within the program of PWN Zagreb through which they present good practices in order to encourage more companies in Croatia to incorporate such practices in their employment and career development policies.