If you look around you might find a few, but not a whole lot. The “few” are women in management. Grant Thornton, a U.K. based international accounting and consulting firm, published an interesting study on March 5, 2007, to coincide with International Women’s Day. The survey solicited the opinion of some 7000 privately held businesses in 32 countries. To give you a sense for the size of these enterprises, they represent 81% of global GDP. The findings may or may not cause you to think.

• 38% of businesses do not have any women in senior management roles, a figure which has remained unchanged since 2004.

• 97% of businesses in the Philippines have women in senior management positions, the highest in the survey

• 25% of Japanese businesses have women in senior management, the lowest in the survey

• 18% of United States businesses have women in senior management, about in the middle of all developed countries

• The EU’s proportion of women in senior management has remained static at 17%, while NAFTA’s figure has increased from 20% to 23%.

April Mackenzie, Grant Thornton’s Executive Director of Public Policy had this comment on the survey. It’s a wonderful summary:

It is disappointing that the participation of women in senior business management has not increased more dramatically over the last three years. It is however encouraging to see some of the Asian economies leading the way. North American and European businesses in particular continue to disappoint. Hopefully we will see this change in coming years as more women play increasingly prominent roles in business and public life such as Indra Nooyi, the new chief executive officer of PepsiCo, Angela Merkel, German chancellor, Margaret Whitman, chief executive and president of eBay and Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of France’s state-owned nuclear group Areva.

You can read a brief on this fascinating survey at Grant Thornton’s website by visiting their site at this link HERE.

The Economist magazine posted a splendid chart form of the results. Well worth a quick visit by skimming to The Economist via this link HERE.

Finally, some thoughts on why this happens might be found in my post, “Pelosi media coverage covered by gender“. It’s an article on media coverage and women, but the why of it might apply here too.

(A hat tip to rebecca blood, author of rebecca’s pocket for the lead for this post)