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Johannesburg - Only 16% of executive board members at JSE-listed companies are women, according to a new report released on Thursday.
The PwC report titled "Executive directors - practices and remuneration trends" showed as of April 30 this year that among the different sectors, 14% of executives at companies in the basic resources sector were women.
Women made up 17% of executives in the financial services sector; 19% in the industrial sector and 15% in the services sector.
For companies on the Alternative Exchange (AltX), women make up 15% of executives.
PwC partner and tax director Gerald Seegers said the global objective, or in some cases, the regulatory objective was for 25% of board executives to be women.
"Our view is we aren't sure if we are going to get there. It's 50-50 into the work force, but there seems to be this massive leakage as we get up to the board," he said.
The report stated there was not only a disparity in the number of female board directors, but also in the level of guaranteed pay.
"It is also evident females in leadership positions decrease dramatically from the Paterson E [senior management] level and upwards," it stated.
"Not all females are paid less than their male counterparts, but our analysis shows the majority of females are remunerated in the lower quartile when considering total guaranteed pay."
To demonstrate this phenomenon, data extracted from PwC's REMchannel online salary survey showed in the F upper levels (top management levels), there were only 38 women compared to 306 men.
Nearly half (44%) were paid in the lower quartile or range, while only 23% of men were paid at this level.
"What is equally interesting to note is the total guaranteed package spread of males in these high-level positions is more equally distributed from a quartile perspective as compared to the female distribution," the report stated.
Seegers said as millennials became the primary contributors to the overall workforce, pay trends among this age group would also graduate into the wider workplace.
"What about pay? Is there differential on pay? Basically, if we look at pay, we did a study last year among the millennials, if we broke it up among generations, we found the difference in pay among millennials is virtually non-existent. It runs at around 3%."
According to the report, the gender pay gap was the smallest among millennials (also known as Generation Y), with the gap expected to shrink further as 36% of the workforce would be millennials by 2016.
"As more women are becoming educated and more men leave the workforce, the gap will shrink even more. Millennials are all about equality in every aspect of life and want women and men to be treated the same," the report stated.
There were 1 180 executives at JSE-listed companies as of April 30 this year, a 3.1% increase from last year.
The executive median and average age of 54 remained unchanged.
In terms of tenure, the average executive served for five years.
Broken down among the different types of executives, CEOs averaged tenures of 4.5 years, chief financial officers 4.3 years, and executive directors 6.2 years.
