Listed companies of the Chinese mainland have stood out for having a higher proportion of female chief executives (CEO) and chief financial officers (CFO) than the global average, an article by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said on March 6.

Some 6.4 percent of the 636 Chinese mainland-listed companies included in the MSCI All Country World equity index -- out of 2,887 total constituents -- had female CEOs as of October 2021, above the 5.4 percent average for emerging markets and 5.2 percent for developed markets in the same year, according to data from the latest Women On Boards Progress Report published earlier by MSCI, the global index provider.

"For the first time between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of women CEOs in emerging markets slightly surpassed the percentage of women CEOs in developed markets," the report said.

Higher female representation among Chinese CEOs was found in the healthcare, real estate and consumer discretionary sectors, said Miranda Carr, head of applied environmental, social and governance research at MSCI.

The Chinese mainland and India, where 5 percent of companies had female CEOs, made up 22 percent of the global index's constituents and were the main drivers of emerging markets' outperformance on that metric, the article said.

Meanwhile, 26.3 percent of the Chinese firms had female CFOs last year, above the global average of 15.8 percent, it added.