men and women in a meeting
Photo: Scandinav Bildbyrå

New factsheet: Gender balance and the 25 largest Nordic media companies

New publication
 | 20 November 2023
Research shows the significance of gender balance in company boards and top management on companies’ strategies and values, in addition to the fact that that it fosters gender balance further down the hierarchy. A new factsheet from Nordicom of the 25 largest Nordic media companies confirms that gender balance begins at the top and spreads downwards.

The factsheet examines the share of women and men on company boards, in CEO positions, and in the top management teams of the 25 biggest Nordic media companies – that is, media and telecom companies that have ownership and a head office in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden.

Go to the factsheet
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Five conclusions 

  1. Counting all board members, the Nordic region's 25 largest media companies have gender balance (39/61). Eleven of the companies had a woman CEO.
  2. Counted at company level, seventeen companies have a gender balanced board, and eight do not. 
  3. Boards with balanced gender representation appointed a woman as CEO to a significantly greater extent than unbalanced boards, while they also appointed men as CEO. 
  4. Companies with a majority of men as board members appointed a woman as CEO to a much lower degree, appointing mostly men.
  5. If the CEO was a woman, the probability was much higher that the company's management team was gender balanced. If the CEO was a man, the management team was not balanced in eight out of eleven cases.