Women as CEOs
Less than 20 percent of CEOs in limited liability firms in Norway are women, and the proportion has only been slowly increasing over the past two decades.
The proportion of women CEOs in limited liability firms has been steadily increasing, but at a very slow pace, and we are very far from gender parity. Slightly fewer than 14% of CEOs were women in 2000, compared to slightly more than 18% in 2023.
The graph below ranks firms into 10 size deciles (1=smallest, 10=largest) based on their revenues in 2023. Just like the proportion of women on board, the proportion of women CEOs is lowest for the largest 10% of the firms.
Listed firms tend to be larger than private firms, and, consistent with the grpah above, they have a low proportion of women CEOs. The proportion is still smaller than even in large private firms. Moreover, despite doubling over the past 20 years, the proportion is still in single digits. This is in stark contrast with the gender balance achieved on the boards of listed firms.
There has been an increasing trend in the average age of CEOs in both listed and nonlisted firms. The youngest group, and the one with the smallest increase in the average age, is female CEOs in nonlisted firms. That is in line with the increase in the female entrepreneurship documented below.
Female CEOs tend to be younger across the firm size distribution. In the graph below we present the mean age of CEOs for firms grouped in deciles based on their revenues in 2023 (1=smallest, 10=largest).
