There's only one female CEO among the 15 largest delivery companies — here's what it would take to close the gender gap
In Uber Eats, Just Eat, Delivery Hero, and Deliveroo, the founders, CEOs, chief operating officers, and chief financial officers are all men.
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
- There's only one female CEO among the 15 largest delivery companies.
- The CEOs, CFOs, and COOs at Uber Eats, Just Eat, Delivery Hero, and Deliveroo are all men.
- Teresa Alarcos, author of a book on female entrepreneurs, breaks down the industry's gender gap.
The lack of women in senior positions in delivery companies is striking.
The 15 largest companies in the industry were founded by men, and only one of them currently has a female CEO.
Instacart, a US company founded in 2012, appointed Fidji Simo as CEO last summer, with its founder, Apoorva Mehta, becoming executive chairman.
Simo had spent 10 years at Facebook, where she became head of the app. She also sits on the board of the e-commerce giant Shopify.
But she's the exception
According to Deloitte's Women in the Boardroom report, only five percent of CEOs worldwide are women.
In the S&P 500, only 6.2% of the index's CEOs are women, according to Catalyst.
Last year, Fortune's Global 500, which lists the 500 largest companies in the world, achieved a new record for the number of companies run by women – just 23 of the 500 largest companies in the world.
The previous year, the number was 14.
Teresa Alarcos, the founder and president of the W Startup Community and author of the book "Female Entrepreneurs," in which she researches and analyzes the role of women in the field of digital entrepreneurship, said the main problem was that women had not been involved in the founding and early development of many big companies.
"Women need to be involved in designing the platforms. They have to be cofounders and participate in how companies generate value. There are many women in intermediate positions, but not founders who have equity," she said.
Most of the big players in the food delivery sector appeared about a decade ago.
Much has changed in the last 10 years and more and more women are gradually appearing as leaders of technology companies.
But senior positions in the industry are still dominated by men.
The current CEOs in delivery companies
"Logistics is traditionally a very male-dominated industry," Alarcos said.
Many of the current CEOs in the food delivery sector came from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) backgrounds, where women are also underrepresented.
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber and Uber Eats, Niklas Ostberg, CEO and co-founder of Delivery Hero, and Tony Xu, CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, have all studied engineering.
But Alarcos said that the main problem is a lack of funding.
"It's very important that there are women investors, there are still very few. Most of the people who put money in are men," she said.
In Uber Eats, Just Eat, Delivery Hero, and Deliveroo, the founders, CEOs, chief operating officers, and chief financial officers are all men.
Only a few women appear in senior positions in human resources, communications, and marketing.
Nikki Krishnamurthy is chief people officer at Uber, and Jeri Doris held the same role at Delivery Hero until December 2021.
Despite that, Delivery Hero states that it's focused on creating gender parity.
"We aim at ensuring gender parity across the organization and at all levels," it says on its website.
Long road to parity
According to the Deloitte report, women hold an average of 19.7% of board seats worldwide, up just 2.8% from 2019.
Deloitte said that if this rate were kept up every two years, gender parity might be reached in 2045.
This, the company said, is "unacceptably slow."
"Women's and men's talents must go together. Startups with mixed teams are more profitable. It's been proven that companies in which the boards have equality between men and women are more efficient," Alarcos said.
She alluded to a 2019 study by S&P Global that determined that listed companies with women in the position of CEO or CFO were more profitable.
The study also stated that those companies had better stock market performances compared to companies with men in the top positions.
As one Twitter user said to Delivery Hero's CEO, "There seems to be too much testosterone in this business. At least on top management level."