The proportion of people who admit to feeling comfortable with a woman in leadership is on a downward trajectory across some of the world’s most advanced economies, according to a major annual report published on Monday.
This year’s Reykjavík Index, which measures perceptions of women and men as leaders across 23 economic sectors, has fallen to its lowest level since measuring began in 2018, for the G7 countries of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Each year, the index produces an overall score out of 100, which measures how gender-equal perceptions of leaders are. A score of 100 would mean that women and men are viewed by society as perfectly equally suitable for leadership.
This year, the G7 score was 68—which is the lowest since the index was launched in 2018, and down from a high of 73 in the period from 2019 to 2021. Last year’s score for the group of seven economies was 70.
Michelle Harrison, the CEO of Verian, the public policy consultancy that produces The Reykjavik Index, said that beyond the top line figure, different trends have been unfolding across G7 countries.
“On the one hand, perceptions of women’s suitability for leadership have increased in some sectors,” she notes, citing banking and finance and natural sciences. On the other hand, though, she points out that there’s also been an increase in the perceived suitability of women in leadership positions across sectors traditionally seen as “female”, like education, healthcare and childcare.
Harrison also notes a “further masculinization” of sectors that have traditionally been male dominated, such as defense and police, automotive manufacturing and engineering.
“The result is that equality for how women are perceived as leaders has stalled,” she adds. “This is an era of, at best, stasis, and at worst, increasingly regressive attitudes towards women leaders”.
The U.S.’s overall score was in-line with the G7 index score, but has now fallen by eight points since 2018. Overall, only 47% of those questioned in the U.S. this year said that they were “very comfortable” with a female political leader, and only 53% said that they were “very comfortable” with a woman being the CEO of a major company.
The Reykjavik Index also found that generally, younger people in the U.S.—or those aged between 18 and 34—are more prejudiced than older people when it comes to perceptions of gender equality in leadership.