Female leadership enhances bank stability

Female executives are needed in the financial industry

Women are still severely underrepresented in the upper echelons of companies. Career paths take female managers more towards support functions rather than executive positions with more business responsibility. There are, though, important changes on the horizon.

A decade ago the situation was startling – there wasn’t a single female CEO in Finnish publicly-listed companies and only about 15 percent of board members were women.

This has changed over the last few years. Now more and more listed companies have female CEOs and female representation on corporate boards has risen to 30 percent. In the near-term future, the share of female directors will rise even more in Finland, as the European Parliament approved a new directive in November 2022. This directive enforces a 40 percent gender quota on the boards of listed companies in the European Union by 2026.

– Increasing the number of females in leadership positions is a good thing. Firms led by female executives are often more financially stable and less risky than firms run by males or firms with no female board members, says Vähämaa.