Women in Corporate Ghana

Last week, the European Commission introduced a resolution that delighted gender activists and promoters of equality at the workplace. The resolution is seeking member-states to have at least 40% women as Non-Executive Directors of publicly-listed companies (that is, companies listed on the stock exchange) by 2020. 

This is because the commission sees women as under-represented in the European corporate world. Currently, 85% of corporate board seats in Europe are occupied by men.

Although this resolution is yet to be accepted by all member-states, it is a bold initiative that has set my mind thinking about the women’s representation situation in Ghana.

In Ghana we do not have facts as to the percentage of women occupying top corporate seats in the country. There are many successful women entrepreneurs running their own companies.

There also very accomplished women occupying public positions who were appointed by the executive arm of government. This article will not cover women entrepreneurs and other political appointees. It will be limited to career women in Ghana’s corporate governance area only.

I have tried searching around and was surprised to find how few women head successful business entities in the country. Of the 26 universal banks in the country, none is led by a woman. All the Managing Directors (MDs) are men. With the 6 mobile telephone companies, men are at the helm of all. Of the many mining, Oil and Gas and other sectors, few women are Chief Executive Officers (CEOs).

Not that we have not had women MDs of banks in the times past. The immediate past-MD of Barclays, Margaret Mwanakatwe, is female (although she was from Uganda). Stephanie Baeta-Ansah was once the MD of HFC bank. Ghana Commercial Bank also had a female head a few years ago.

There are some noteworthy CEOs currently: Estelle Akofio-Sowah is the head of technology giant Google Ghana’s office after years serving as the manager of Accra’s Busy Internet. In the competitive financial sector, Mrs. Frances Adu-Mante heads EB-Accion, the savings and loans company of Ecobank Ghana Limited.

Mrs. Felicity Acquah is the Chief Executive of Exim Guaranty Ghana Limited, a company that offers credit guarantees to small- and medium-scale companies seeking loans from banks. 

Alcoholic beverage manufacturer Gihoc Distilleries has Madam Kay Kwao Simmonds as its managing director. In the energy sector, Mrs. Eunice Britwum runs CENIT Energy Limited, the Tema-based company that built and provides 126 megawatts into Ghana’s energy grid.

Gender activists have given several reasons why very few women are able to break the glass-ceiling to occupy that all important CEO job.

The first issue is cultural. The African in general and Ghanaian way in particular of raising children does affect their achievements in adult life. Right from an early age, parents teach boys to be leaders or decision-makers. Girls are taught to be ‘supporters’ in the home or to stay in the background and offer support. 

After meals, boys pack the dishes down for the girl sibling to wash. The girl-child is conditioned to wash, cook and take care of her younger siblings.

During educational pursuit, whereas boys are encouraged to study hard to become ‘head of the home’, girls are burdened with house chores leaving them tired and with little time to study. As they climb up the education ladder, boys thus end up performing better than girls. Those girls who make it into adult life and get married have to juggle their corporate careers with raising their children at the same time.  

These attitudes also send a message to boys and men that women’s role is to be ‘home-makers’ instead of pursuing careers together with them. Women who find themselves in the corporate sector must thus work much harder to be accepted or to prove that they are capable of occupying top positions.

Some parents do not encourage their girl-child to stay in school and pursue their academic dreams. They believe girls will eventually get married and leave the family to join their husbands.
All these factors combined contribute to limit large numbers of women in the corporate world, from which many could rise to the top.

In the last few years, though, the situation has been changing.  Education and awareness creation is wearing away some of these stereotypes.  Many more girls are staying in school to see through their dreams.

In a 2012 Business Effectiveness Survey of some Ghanaian companies conducted by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers, they found that women have a 32% representation in companies across different sectors.  The global median average is 45%. 

The largest concentration of women was found to be in the financial sector. In March this year, the board chairman of UBA Bank, Kwame Pianim, revealed that women make up 53% of the entire workforce of UBA Ghana. Much as this is encouraging, I find the case of UBA to be the exception rather than the norm.

In the United Kingdom (UK), figures from the education sector show that girls outperform boys -- right from primary school through to the university level. In other words, girls score better and excel more than boys from the primary school to the tertiary level.

However, one interesting fact I also found is that of all the employees in technology, only 17% are women. In fact, of the FTSE 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, only 2 of them have women CEOs.

This may presuppose that, apart from educational achievement, perhaps there are other factors that help women to excel in public life and in the corporate world. To solve this, deliberate policy must be enacted to increase women’s participation in all sectors of the economy. Ghana’s Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs needs to see this as a priority.

Similar affirmative action must be enacted to encourage the door to be held wide open as long as possible to allow as many women as possible to walk through.

Parents must be educated to change their attitudes about their girl-child, and encourage them to see themselves as equal to boys.  The days of buying dolls and teddy bears for girls and super action-hero toys for boys must end.

At the World Economic Forum this year in Davos, Sheryl Sandberg the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook said “girls have to be ambitious at work and boys have to be ambitious at home”.

Funny, but true!