FinanceAsia’s 2015 honour roll of the most influential women across the Asia Pacific region spans investment banking and commercial bankers.
We also bring you leading women in new areas of finance such as fintech where Asian companies are among the fastest-growing in the world.
FinanceAsia also canvassed corporate financiers for exceptional women working in deal advisory including lawyers and accountants.
We wanted to include women from across the region and admit we found this easier in China and Australia than say Korea and Japan. There is also a positive skew in the results towards FinanceAsia’s own area of expertise - corporate finance.
Studies by top consultancies and academics give an inkling of the complexity and range of opinions surrounding the issue of workplace diversity. A McKinsey & Co report from 2013 shows that 70% of executives in Asia did not count greater gender diversity among their top-10 priorities..
Greater China has had a positive effect in terms of diversity by lifting the regional average female board representation up to 9.4% in 2015 from 8.0% in 2012, executive recruitment firm Korn Ferry International said in a report in March.
Citi, one of the few institutions that was forthcoming with workforce diversity data, said that as of January female representation of senior managers globally rose to 24%, up from 23% in January 2014 and 22% in January 2013.
In terms of pay disparity, the difference between male and female compensation is relatively low at 6% to 9% for most jobs but increases to 21% for managing directors according to Emolument, a provider of real-time crowd-sourced data.
Korea and Japan have lagged behind Greater China in opening boardrooms to women. But that's set to change in Japan if Shinzo Abe gets his way. The Japanese prime minister stated last year that he wanted to see 30% of all senior leadership posts occupied by women by 2020.
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