Gender gap still wide at top of businesses

MIND THE GAP:The gender gap reflects a tradition of business owners passing control to their sons, with many companies run by men, with women as only the nominal head

Staff writer, with CNA

Although the percentage of women in top-level positions in Taiwanese businesses is at a record high, there is still a big gap in the ratio of male to female chief executive officers, a Ministry of Finance official said yesterday, citing ministry data.

As of the end of 2015, there were about 1.33 million companies in Taiwan, 36.1 percent of which were headed by women, the official said.

However, although the percentage of female chief executive officers was the highest in Taiwan’s history, it still represented a wide gender gap and was only a 0.5 percentage point increase from 2010, the official said.

The gender gap was most likely wider than about 28 percentage points, as in some cases women are only nominal heads of businesses that are actually run by their husbands, the official said.

In a breakdown of the various sectors, the statistics showed that about 45 percent of companies in the catering and restaurant, as well as service, industries were run by female chief executives in 2015.

In other industries in general, 60 percent of the chief executive officers were male and the figure was more than 70 percent in the construction, manufacturing and transport, as well as storage sectors, ministry data showed.

Among businesses with paid-in capital of more than NT$10 million (US$312,560), the gap between male and female chief executive officers was 49 percentage points in favor of males, while among those with paid-in capital of less than NT$100,000, the gap was 18 percentage points, the data showed.

The wide gender gap at the top of bigger companies reflected a tradition of business owners passing control to their sons rather than to their daughters, the official said.

In the case of smaller companies in the catering, restaurant and service sectors they are usually started by female entrepreneurs, the official said.