A tool created to measure a company’s progress towards gender equality, Bloomberg Ltd Partnership’s 2023 Gender-Equality Index (GEI) reveals that overall, Malaysian GEI members displayed a higher percentage of women on boards, at 38%, compared with the global average of 32% in the index.
PETALING JAYA: Malaysian companies were found to have an average of more than 50% of women occupying revenue-producing roles, surpassing the global average of 41%.
The findings were derived from four local firms; Bursa Malaysia Bhd
, Digi.Com Bhd, Malayan Banking Bhd, and Top Glove Corp Bhd, which took part in Bloomberg Ltd Partnership’s 2023 Gender-Equality Index (GEI).
A tool created to measure a company’s progress towards gender equality, the index reveals that overall, Malaysian GEI members displayed a higher percentage of women on boards, at 38%, compared with the global average of 32% in the index.
These companies were found to have a chief diversity officer or a related role, and a gender diverse slate of employees in managerial positions. This was higher than the global average of 77% of participants with regards to having a chief diversity officer, and 62% has gender diverse slate hiring policies for managerial jobs. While all public companies are welcome to disclose supplemental gender data for their company’s profile on the Bloomberg Terminal, only those with a market capitalisation of US$1bil (RM4.3bil) are eligible to be included in the GEI. Moreover, a company’s average daily value traded for the past three months must exceed US$50,000 (RM213,290), and its average trading volume for the past three months must be more than US$5,000 (RM21,329).
Designed to expand the universe of environmental, social and governance data from public companies available to investors, the GEI is not for use as a financial benchmark and is not ranked.
This time around, over 600 companies submitted their gender-related data for consideration to be included in the GEI, representing a 11% increase year-on-year. From this, 484 companies were selected after meeting the scoring levels stipulated in the GEI.
“The overarching drive towards equality is evident with the continual increase of global participation from companies. The Bloomberg GEI remains an important resource for companies to identify any gaps and provides actionable steps to further reshape the future of work,” said, chairman of Bloomberg, Peter T. Grauer in a statement.
GEI participants are evaluated against five pillars; leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies, and pro-women brand.
Exploratory questions which cover topics like race and sexual orientation, gender identity and ethnicity were also added in the framework. These questions are for research purposes and are not scored.
Malaysian GEI members were given an overall average GEI score of 75% with the level of disclosure of gender-related data averaging at 99.6%, while data excellence (based on the five pillars) came to 65%.
This beats the global GEI average score of 73%, with average disclosure and data excellence reaching 97% and 63% respectively.
On average, half of the Malaysian GEI members had publicly shared a time-bound action plan with targets to increase the representation of women in leadership positions. The same number also conducts global gender-based compensation reviews.
