Societies' trust in women’s leadership has drastically declined over the past years, according to the Reykjavík Index for Leadership report.
The report looked at G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) and found that only 47 per cent reported being very comfortable with having a woman as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a major company.
The previous year, the figure was 54 per cent, demonstrating that trust in women’s leadership has fallen.
Men were also found to be less trusting of female leaders, with one in 10 expressing that they would not be comfortable with a female CEO.
Babson College Organisational Behaviour Professor Danna Greenberg explained that the Covid-19 pandemic has hardened old traditional assumptions as women were forced to pick up the burden of added childcare and domestic chores which has caused a making bias against women more socially acceptable.
“We may be entering a period of economic recession and that means a period of fear. Fear ignites us to move towards what we have traditionally been taught is safe and secure. And when it comes to leadership that unfortunately still means men being in charge,” she added.
The report also looked at G20 countries and included Iceland for the first time.
Iceland has emerged as a leader in equality, ranking highly in many other surveys, including World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2021.
In 2018, they also became the first country to enforce equal pay for companies with 25 employees or more.
The Reykjavík Index for Leadership measures how equally men and women in leadership roles are viewed and trusted. Scores run from 0 to 100, with 100 meaning both genders are equally suited to leadership in all sectors.
The index aims to see a score of 100 as the norm, meaning men and women would have an equal opportunity to lead in the workplace.
