Women continue to make steady inroads into Australian boardrooms, claiming nearly one in five board seats at the top 100 companies last year, according to a recent report in recent report in The Australian newspaper. Personally, I don’t see this as anything for corporate Australia to be particularly proud of. Firstly, a rate of less than 20% is hardly something to write home about.
Secondly, the linkage between the recent increase in the number of women offered board seats within the top 100 and the Australian Securities Exchange’s imposition of new gender-based reporting requirements is obvious. And thirdly, with four out of five board seats continuing to be offered to men, and 96 of the top 100 companies having a male chairperson, it’s obvious there are ingrained barriers within most of the top 100 to the acceptance of women as true leaders and decision-makers at the highest level.
Looking at the top 200 companies, an analysis of statistics published by the Australian Institute of Company Directors shows that while the percentage of board seats offered to women in this group has increased from 8.3% to 15.2% since 2010, the annual rate of growth in these offers has dropped by over 50% since 2010, from 29.4% to 15%. And within companies ranked 101 to 200 on the share market the situation is even worse, with women taking just 9% of available board seats, and only one having a female chair.
I’m not an advocate for quotas or tokenism, but I do believe strongly in equity and a non-discriminatory workplace. One of the traditional pathways to a directorship is through working in a senior executive feeder position in the organisation and in my opinion this is where the rot lies. While trumpeting their commitment to equality, it appears from the statistics that many of Australia’s largest corporates are either ignorant of, or quietly retaining their structural impediments to recruiting women into C-suite or executive level roles; thereby restricting their entry into the board candidate pool. The ASX’s new reporting requirements include organisational efforts to increase the number of women in senior positions.
Hopefully, that will make a long-term difference, even if it does involve dragging a highly resistant top end of town kicking and screaming into the forced acceptance of a truly non-discriminatory organisational culture. There is a lot of work still to be done to overcome the many barriers that prevent high-achieving corporate women being recognised and rewarded as they should be in the workplace, so one of my wishes for 2013 is that it brings real and positive change in this area. Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy and successful New Year! This is Susan Wareham McGrath signing off for 2012.
