Top banks listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) hired three women for every man they recruited in the year ended December 2023, adding momentum to the race for gender equality.
Data on nine listed banks, classified as large, show that the lenders have stepped up the pace of hiring women. They added 1,979 female employees, bringing the total to 20,623 —the first time for the figure to cross the 20,000 mark.
The additional 1,979 female workers came in the period the nine banks added 694 male workers to hit 22,818, meaning that there were three women being hired for every man recruited.
The race to close gender parity in the banks saw Absa Bank Kenya, NCBA Group, KCB Group and Standard Chartered Bank Kenya close the review period with more female workers than male.
The progress has come on the back of these firms implementing policies and practices that promote gender equality, including equal pay for equal work, generous maternity and paternity leave, flexible working hours for new mothers, and offering opportunities for advancement and leadership for women.
Between 2021 and 2023, the nine banks have added 5,364 women in the banking sector compared to 4,605 male employees hired in the same period, showing that the fortunes of job seekers in the banking sector are tilting more toward women.
The trend is partly driven by shareholders and financiers seeking to nudge firms to have a positive impact on people and the society even as they seek to generate returns for their investors. Such progress has put women on course to catching up with men in banks’ labour force participation.
KCB led the pack in adding women, increasing the number of female employees by 1,016 to 6,233. This took the share of female employees to 51 percent from 47 percent the previous year. This was an increase from 2018, when their share was at 43 percent.
Last year’s recruitment at KCB only saw the number of male employees rise by 107, meaning that for every man hired by the lender during the period under review, almost 10 women were employed.
“As a result of our deliberate efforts to entrench diversity and inclusion at the workplace, the proportion of female employees in the organisation rose to 51 percent in 2023,” said Paul Russo, chief executive of KCB Group, in the sustainability report.
The Co-operative Bank of Kenya added 453 women to raise the share of female workers to 48 percent from 46 percent in the period it recruited additional 263 male employees.
NCBA hired 148 additional women to take the share of female workers to 51 percent from 50 percent as DTB Group added 120 women compared to 119 men to maintain the 50:50 ratio.
Equity Group hired an additional 55 women to increase their share of the female workforce from 41 percent to 41.3 percent in a year when the number of male employees decreased by 18. In Equity’s Kenyan unit alone, women now make up 51 percent of the 1,446 employees.
The lenders join other listed corporates, including BAT Kenya and Safaricom, in increasing the number of women in senior positions.
Safaricom, for example, continued to make progress, with 19 new hires and promotions to senior positions in the year ended March 2024. This increased the percentage of women in senior positions to 42.4 percent, up from 40 percent in the previous year. The telco has already achieved a 50:50 gender split in its boardroom while the overall workforce is now 49 percent women.
The Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) Board Diversity and Inclusion report shows the share of women in NSE firms’ boards had risen from 12 percent in 2012 to hit 18 percent in 2015, 21 percent in 2017 and 36 percent in 2021.
At 36 percent, the figure is above the global average of 23.3 percent, according to KIM. The institute is working on a new report to be released later this year.
A 2022 UN report on gender equality in corporate leadership, which analysed 3,246 firms on 35 stock exchanges in seven regions, including Africa, showed Nasdaq (US) was the market with the highest proportion of boards chaired by women (16 percent), followed by the NSE (Kenya) and the NZX (New Zealand) with 13 percent.
This progress has put women on course to catching up with men in terms of labour force participation as more employers embrace gender parity policies, at a time multiple studies show that companies with women in the boardroom perform better.
A study by Catalyst, a global NGO that works to build conducive workplaces for women, found, in a study, that Fortune 500 companies with three or more women on their boards significantly outperformed those with low representation by 84 percent, 60 percent and 46 percent on return on sales, invested capital and equity, respectively.
