Russia once again topped the international ranking of countries with the highest percentage of women in senior business roles, with 45% of senior management positions held by women.
Russia is followed by the Philippines and Lithuania, according to a report published Tuesday by US-based accounting firm Grant Thornton.
At the bottom of the list is Japan, where only 7% of senior leadership positions are filled by women. Economic powerhouses Germany and India also continue to lag, with 15% and 16% of senior management positions filled by women, respectively.
The US finds itself in the bottom third of nations for women in leadership roles, at a dismal 23% in a year when many pundits expect the country to break the glass ceiling in the race for the presidency.
Erica O’Malley, a managing partner with Grant Thornton, observed that in the US "about a third of businesses have no women in senior-business roles at all, these businesses have no female input into executive decisions."
Interestingly, Grant Thornton attributes the lack of equity not to hiring decisions, but rather to the personality preferences of women.
"This poor performance seems to be at least partly a result of entrenched societal norms," said Grant Thornton LLP in a statement. "In the UK and US in particular, there are still plentiful examples of a ‘command and control’ approach to leadership which is not necessarily attractive to women."
While the report asserts that women have a seeming immune reaction to higher pay and calling the shots in the Western world, it also moves to degrade the progress in advancing equality made by Russia. "Russia and Eastern European countries owed some of their diversity to the legacy of communism," it states.
Although the report shockingly asserts that gender equality is somehow antithetical to Western neoliberal capitalism, there is positive news worldwide for gender equality. In 2015 women only held 22% of senior management positions, worldwide. This year there was a sharp 10% growth in the female management rates such that today women hold 25% of leadership roles.
