Reports: Georgian women more present in business than in government

Proportion of senior management roles held by women (Grant Thornton)

Tbilisi, DFWatch – Georgia scores high in international rankings of women’s participation in business management, although few Georgian women hold political office.

A new report released by Grant Thornton, one of the world’s largest professonal service networks for accounting and consulting firms, points out the high proportion of women holding business readership in postsocialist countries, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

According to the report called Women in Business: the path to leadership, Russia tops the list of countries with the highest percentage of senior management roles held by women with 40 percent. Georgia came second with 38 percent, followed by Poland and the three Baltic states. Armenia and Turkey scored 29 and 26 percent respectively. Azerbaijan wasn’t included in the report.

‘The domination of Eastern European nations is explained by a complex blend of factors including history, culture and demographics. A thriving culture of female entrepreneurship is a legacy of the Communist ideal of equality of opportunity and this extends into the broad range of subjects women study in the region. Consequently we find women well represented in services industries too; and not just those traditionally with high numbers of women like healthcare and hospitality, but emerging industries such as financial services and technology’, Francesca Lagerberg, global leader for tax services at Grant Thornton, said.

Similar findings were reported by report Women in Business and Management: Gaining momentum published in 2015 by the International Labour Organisation.

According to the report, the percentage of women managers is high in Belarus (46.2 percent), Latvia (45.7 percent), and Russia (39.1 percent). Azerbaijan and Georgia both scored relatively high results of 34.2 and 34 percent. Turkey came with one of the lowest scores of 12.2 percent, while Armenia wasn’t included in the report.

However, the number of female managers doesn’t translate to government leadership, with all countries of the region scoring very low in comparison to their Western neighbours. Only 11.3 percent of Georgian MPs are women. The score is 16.9 percent for Azerbaijan, 14.9 percent for Turkey, 13.6 percent for Russia, and 10.7 percent for Armenia.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty contributed to this reporting.