A recent research report by Mercer, a global leader in human resource consulting, says that unconscious bias leads organisations to discriminate. With International Woman’s Day on 8 March, and the EU committed to improving the number of women on executive boards, Mercer’s report has shown that a key reason why there is a lack of women at the top of corporations is that they are penalised for prioritising childcare duties over work. Besides, their search carried out on 264,000 senior management and executives in 5,321 companies across 41 European countries, revealed that the ratio of senior executives and managers that were female averages 29 per cent compared to 71 per cent of men.

The report, which came exactly a year after a UK government-commissioned report on women executives, called on businesses to urgently put more women in the boardroom. By 2015, Lord Davies, the report’s author, stated that women must account for at least 25 per cent of all positions in FTSE 100 boardrooms. It is currently just under 15 per cent. In a recent interview, Davies accused some men of being “prehistoric monsters” who do not understand equality saying that, “The attitude of chairmen is different if they have daughters in their 20s – they are talking about it to them. Whereas the older chairmen pay lip service to it.”

In response to the findings of Mercer’s study, Sophie Black, principal in Mercer’s Executive Remuneration team, explained: “For a gender comprising over half the global population, women’s representation in senior corporate roles is woeful. The cause is complicated. It’s cultural, social, and in some cases it is intentional discrimination, but it can also be unconscious – the desire to recruit people like you. This unconscious bias is hard to eradicate.”

“A woman’s career receives a ‘maternity penalty’ in the eyes of employers for prioritising childcare duties over work,” warned Black. “Corporate culture plays a huge part in causing women to deselect themselves from corporate life,” adding that “if the culture of a company is such that those holding senior roles are expected to act in a certain way or place work above family commitments, then women will often turn their backs on the corporate ladder”.

Black warned that the end result of all these issues is a creation of a ‘pyramid of invisibility’ for women in corporate life, which suggests that there are many women in low-level jobs at the bottom of the pyramid, but the numbers gradually disappear as you move further up the pyramid.

Moreover, Mercer’s data demonstrates the impact of cultural factors, with the Saudi Arabian sample showing no women at all in any senior positions. Qatar is the second lowest on the list with only seven per cent of these roles held by women, with Egypt following behind at 16 per cent. In Western Europe, Greece and Ireland had the highest proportion of female managers with 33 per cent, followed by Sweden (30 per cent) and Belgium (29 per cent). The lowest were Italy (22 per cent), Austria (21 per cent), Germany (20 per cent), and The Netherlands (21 per cent). The last finding is particularly revealing, argued Black, explaining that the reason for the under-representation of women in the boardroom in Dutch organisations is that the country is still very conservative in its approach to equality in the workplace. She stated: “Actually, the reverse is true. It’s a progressive nation but, like the UK, has very high levels of women working part-time. Part-time work is a major factor determining the low number of women in senior roles and part-time workers tend to be overlooked for promotion. Cultural factors and expectations of childcare responsibilities often mean that part-time work is dominated by women so it has reduced their representation in senior roles.”

On the other side of the coin, several eastern European countries have higher female representation among senior managers – in Lithuania the figure is 44 per cent, and in Russia 40 per cent. However, these countries unfortunately still have a notable gender pay gap.

“Equality is a legacy from Soviet times with cultural and political life encouraging women to perform an equal role in society and the economy, so women were well represented,” Black pointed out.

The big question is how businesses are going to hold onto senior women – as evidence clearly suggests that businesses with female bosses are usually more successful. Despite this however, according to the Women’s Leadership Development Survey conducted by Mercer in conjunction with Talent Management and Diversity Executive magazines in 2010, the majority of companies at 71 per cent still do not have a clear strategy for developing female talent and promoting women to the top positions of the organisation.

The EU is committed to addressing gender inequality and the gender pay gap as part of its EU Gender Action Plan. While there is opposition to the imposition of politics in the workplace, Mercer’s data underscores the role that political intervention can play in balancing the inequalities created by market forces. In order to improve the gender balance in the EU institutions, the committee on Women’s Rights asked all national governments to propose, after the 2014 European elections, both a woman and a man as their candidates for European Commissioner.

Malta still has a great deal of room for improvement when it comes to tackling female under-representation in senior positions. In fact, according to a recent study, “Gender Balance In Business Leadership”, only two per cent of Maltese company boards, whether public or private, have female directors. An EU official believes that Malta’s position seems to reflect “a mentality problem”. Hence changing this mentality is crucial especially in the light of research carried out by the Swedish EU presidency, which came up with the hypothesis that having equality in the labour market could boost Malta’s GDP by 45 per cent.

Finally, Black concluded by saying that, “Anecdotally, during times of recent economic growth, we saw many companies giving specific remits to headhunters for more female executives. This trend has fallen away as the economy has deteriorated, which suggests that many companies view it as a luxury for the good times. This is short-sighted. Companies’ failure to improve female representation on their own will simply result in governments feeling that they have to regulate the issue to effect change.”

Ms Camilleri is a researcher at the Foundation for Human Resources Development (FHRD)