The racial profile of top management in South African companies remains overwhelmingly white and male, though the percentage of whites at this level of the corporate structure did decline last year. These were among the findings of the Commission for Employment Equity, which released its annual report for 2015 yesterday.Commission chairman Tabea Kabinde said at a media briefing that the slow pace of change was "disconcerting".Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant said the regression in some areas was "regrettable".Objectives of the Employment Equity Act and the "legitimate expectations" of the people were far from being achieved, she said.The report showed that whites represented 70% of top management in 2014, falling to 68.9% last year. African representation rose from 13.6% to 14.3% in 2015.Male dominance remained largely unchanged, inching down from 79.1% in 2014 to 78.6%.Foreign nationals in top management remained almost unchanged at 3.5%.Whites at senior management declined slightly over the year from 59.3% to 58.1% and Africans rose from 20.5% to 21.2%.Gains were made by Africans in the professionally qualified category, where their share rose from 36.7% to 41.2% with whites declining from 41.9% to 38%.Frans Cronje, CEO of the SA Institute of Race Relations said that the pace of transformation had to do with the slow labour force absorption rate.Also, low levels of education among blacks had an effect. Between a third and a quarter of whites had degrees, compared to less than 10% among blacks.Cronje said a lot of young black professionals were not taken seriously in the workplace."We have companies that are just ticking the box when it comes to quotas. They are not thinking creatively," he said.In the skilled technical category, the share of Africans remained stable at about 58%.The shares of coloureds and Indians remained largely unchanged in all categories.Kabinde said in her concluding remarks that the rate of termination and recruitment of whites "almost nullifies any attempt to shift the demographics in favour of the designated groups"...