SEA ecommerce companies not immune to gender gap

While one might expect young, online-native companies to exhibit better gender equality than older companies, a report from iPrice shows ecommerce companies in Southeast Asia are not terribly close to achieving parity in leadership roles. The report has found a 60:40 male-female gender disparity in leadership positions, and a 69:31 split in C-level roles.

The gap is somewhat smaller in SVP roles, where 44% of roles are held by women. In department head roles, women hold 41% of the roles.

The report also breaks down the results by market:

The report also looked at job satisfaction, concluding with the faint praise that "overall, employees don’t seem to loathe working in the e-commerce industry of Southeast Asia".

In all seven countries, the ratings came in as average or above-average. Half or more of employees would recommend their ecommerce companies as workplaces to their friends.

Yet ecommerce CEOs in these markets have strong approval ratings, ranging from 66% to 97%.

Indonesians are the most satisfied. Employees there give their companies a 4.3-star rating (out of five), 90% say they would recommend their company to a friend and 97% approve of their CEO.

Filipinos gave their employers a 3.8-star rating, with 76% saying they would recommend their company and 87% approving of their CEO. In Singapore, only 53% would recommend their company and only 66% approve of the CEO.

iPrice looked at the top three ecommerce companies in each market according to web traffic. It derived the gender and job-position data from LinkedIn and the job satisfaction ratings from Glassdoor. The report does not specify which three companies constituted its top three in each market.