Male-dominated landscape prevalent at multilateral organisations, reveals study

A comprehensive gender mapping has revealed that it is a male-dominated landscape at some of the biggest multilateral organizations across the world and women in leadership positions are being sidelined.

The report was prepared by GWL Voices for Change and Inclusion. It is an advocacy group with 62 current and former senior women leaders at the helm of it.

The mapping of the number of women leaders in 33 of the world’s largest multilateral organizations reveals that since 1945, these organizations have collectively had a total of 382 leaders.

Out of 382 leaders, 335 were men and only 47 were women, which means, that in all, women have been in charge for only 12% of the time since 1945.

The study pointed out that despite recent progress, only one-third of these organizations are currently headed by a woman.

Out of these 33 organisations, 13 including all four of the world’s largest development banks have never elected a woman as their leader. Moreover, 5 of these organisations have elected a female president only once in their entire history.

The data shows that women’s representation is slightly better at the organizations in charge of areas such as children, food, population and health.

However, the report clarifies that looking at the institutions that have only been run by men, one should not think the world lacks female professionals with outstanding careers in fields such as politics, finance, and international development amoung others.

In fact, the report said that those fields are full of female professionals more than qualified to fill leadership positions. The data for this report was gathered during January and February of 2023.

GWL Voices will publish a more extensive version of this report in the second half of 2023. It will include data on the gender composition of the senior management teams and the governing bodies of each of the 33 organizations.

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