I sincerely support the initiative presented last week by the Croatian Employers’ Association regarding equality in leadership positions, aimed at increasing the representation of women in key positions within companies. This is especially relevant considering that in the most powerful Croatian entrepreneurial community, only two women have held its two key positions in its more than three-decade history: Gordana Deranja as the former president of the Executive Board (in two terms) and Irena Weber as the current CEO.
This initiative, it was explained, is part of a broader effort to achieve gender equality in the business world and ensure equal opportunities for all employees, and it is important (also) for improving corporate culture and strengthening competitiveness. And it is precisely the corporate culture that ensures equal opportunities for all that the ten most powerful women in Croatian business in this year’s Lider selection highlight as the key moment that led them to their positions in some of the most successful companies. In other words, it is often less important how much better a female manager is than her male colleagues; what matters more is the company she is in.
In collaboration with Dun&Bradstreet, Lider has compiled, for the nineteenth consecutive year, a ranking of the three hundred most powerful female presidents and members of management boards and supervisory boards based on their managerial power, or the amount of revenue their companies generated in the past year. It includes fifty female CEOs, one hundred female and member supervisory board members, and one hundred and fifty management board members.
These three hundred women come from 166 companies, and their total managerial power is 54.35 billion euros. Compared to last year’s ranking of the three hundred most powerful women in Croatian business, the number of companies they come from has remained the same, but their total managerial power is lower by about 13.5 billion euros, or about twenty percent. This decline mainly occurred due to falling revenues in the energy sector due to declining energy prices.
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