Women on Boards: What should Boards and Governments do?

The Maureen Bickley Centre for Women in Leadership is hosting a roundtable with senior managers and board members on this issue in the first week of May. What advice should be given to Boards and to the Government if we are serious about increasing the number of women on corporate, not for profit and government boards?

There has been considerable press in Australia over the past few months regarding the lack of women on the country’s top listed boards. The 2008 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) Census (the full report is available at the EOWA website) showed that the very modest gains that had been made were disappearing. Perhaps even more disturbing is the data from Western Australia where women comprise 2% of board positions!!!

Maybe it’s not surprising given the action by other countries such as Norway, Spain, France, the UK and the US that we are starting to focus on women’s underrepresentation at senior and board level. The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) announced in a media release last December that it intended to expand its corporate governance principles so that organisations listed on the ASX would be required to report on the diversity composition of their board in their annual reports and any action they are taken to improve women’s representation.

A further media release (available here) on 18 April this year detailed the establishment of a leadership group of male CEOs and Chairmen who have committed to using their collective influence and personal commitment to progress gender equality in the Australian corporate sector. The CEOs and Chairmen are drawn from a wide range of Australian companies and are working with the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick. The group was formed in response to the ASX Corporate Governance Council recommendations on diversity and comprises:

* Glen Boreham, Managing Director, IBM Australia and New Zealand

* Gordon Cairns, Non-Executive Director, Westpac and Origin Energy Ltd

* Robert Elstone, Managing Director and CEO, Australian Securities Exchange

* Stephen Fitzgerald, Co-CEO and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs JBWere

* Michael Luscombe, Managing Director and CEO, Woolworths Ltd

* Kevin McCann, Chair, non-Executive Director of various Boards including Origin Energy Ltd, Macquarie Bank Ltd and Australian Institute of Company Directors

* Stephen Roberts, CEO of the Citi Institutional Clients Group, Australia and New Zealand

* Giam Swiegers, CEO, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Australia

* David Thodey, Managing Director and CEO, Telstra Ltd.

Coinciding with the ASX focus on women on boards is the newly launched Australian Institute of Company Directors mentoring program for women aspiring to board appointments. The initial twelve month program will involve 56 chairmen and senior directors who have agreed to mentor 63 women with an aim of helping the women connect with key business leaders and to learn more about how boards operate and how new board members are selected. More information including the list of mentors is available at the AICD website.

These initiatives are great to see but we do wonder whether is it is a case of women needing further support to ensure that they are board ready or is it that we have plenty of women who would relish the opportunity to become a board member and they are in fact ‘bored – and ready’ for this next challenge? What do you think?

For reports and thought-provoking research on women on boards see:

* Cranfield University’s Centre for International Leaders for reports on the UK, including 100 Women to Watch. Available on-line at the Cranfield University website.

* Catalyst for reports on the US and Canada.

* European Professional Women’s Network

Some interesting books on women on boards:

Doug Branson who is a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington and also teaches Corporate Governance at the University of Melbourne has written two books on this issue:

No Seat at the Table – How Governance and Law Keep Women Off Boards of Directors (NYU Press)

The Last Male Bastion - Gender and the CEO Suite at America's Public Companies (Routledge).


Another book is Women On Corporate Boards Of Directors: International Research and Practice
edited by Susan Vinicome and Val Singh at the International Centre for Women Leaders, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK; Ronald J. Burke at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada; Diana Bilimoria at Case Western Reserve University, US and Morten Huse at the Norwegian School of Management, Norway.

(Image sources: playtable.jp and e-elgar.co.uk)