- The “Chief Executive Women ASX200 Senior Executive Census 2020” found the number of female CEOs in the 200 largest Australian publicly listed companies has decreased from 14 in 2018, to 10 in 2020. Of the 25 new CEO appointments in 2020, just one was a woman.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics employment figures showed more females gained jobs in August than males. Women suffered a greater hit to jobs in the April and May lockdown period, meaning 57% of women, or 67,000 females, have recovered from job losses over 44,000, or 44%, of men.
- An analysis conducted by the Harvard Business Review on 16 September showed women’s jobs have been 1.8 times more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic than men’s jobs. “Women make up 39% of global employment but account for 54% of overall job losses as of May 2020. At the same time, the burden of unpaid care, which has risen in the pandemic, falls disproportionately on women,” wrote the Harvard Business Review.
- Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced it was time “to make decisions full on our own” after deciding to leave the Commonwealth, removing Queen Elizabeth II as the country’s head of state by November 2021. Ms Mottley told the ABC, “it’s important to us we give confidence to our young people…to believe they can aspire to become the head of state of their own country”. Barbados’ Governor General, Sandra Mason, said “our country can be in no doubt about its capacity for self-governance…the time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind”.
- In Denmark, the University of Southern Denmark (USD) is championing women in STEM with new engineering programmes. As demand for STEM jobs increases, females are still underrepresented in the sector with only 30% of the roles. The world-leading university is attempting to address this disparity by making the courses more female-friendly, with female professors, role models & open-door policies for students.
