Get more women on boards now: Kohler

The corporate ‘blokocracy’ is under increasing pressure to do something serious about the number of women on boards in Australia.

Two events this week have upped the ante. Firstly, President Sarkozy of France has tabled a bill that would require all French listed companies to ensure that women made up 50% of their boards within five years. Secondly, the ASX Corporate Governance Council has issued a policy that would require boards to set “measurable objectives relating to gender”.

The ASX is not proposing to make that a listing requirement – simply that it needs to be included in the annual report on an ‘if not, why not’ basis. That means from July 1st next year, if the annual report does not include a statement of the achievement of diversity goals set by the board, as well as the number of women in the whole organisation, senior management and the board, the company must explain why not.

The directors’ establishment in Australia is desperately resisting fixed quotas in this country, something Norway has had for a few years (40%) and France now looks like getting, and no doubt with that in mind the Australian Institute of Company Directors issued a press release two weeks ago headed “AICD takes action on board diversity”.

The action included recommendations that companies adopt diversity policies that include “measurable milestones”, that they have greater transparency in board selections and a plan for the AICD to run a mentoring program for women executives led by chairmen such as Don Argus, James Strong, Peter Mason and David Gonski.

Whether this approach of measurable objectives varying from company to company, combined with mentoring, will head off standardised, legislated board quotas for women for all companies, will depend entirely on whether it works.

There has been vigorous nodding and supportive talk on this subject for years but the number of women on boards and in management is actually shrinking.

The 2008 census by the government’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace agency found that 8.3% of the directors of the ASX 200 listed companies were women – down from 8.7% in 2006. The number of women in line management is 5.9%, down from 7.5% two years earlier.

This is despite the fact that according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report this year, Australia ranks equal first in terms of educational attainment by women.

So if any country needs quotas, you would think, it’s the ‘land down under’ – where women glow and men plunder.

However, at this stage the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, has given the blokes five years to get their act together and open up the club.

Broderick issued a supportive press release two weeks ago after the AICD policy statement, and another one yesterday following the ASX Corporate Governance council’s ‘if not, why not’ directive.

“Hopefully we will look back on this day and say it was a major turning point for women’s leadership in Australian business,” she declared.

What, exactly, she would like to see happen within five years is not clear, but something considerably more than 8.3 per cent is needed to avoid a serious push for the France-type legislation.

So this is definitely a good time to be an aspiring female company director.

The 8.3% figure in 2008 was 125 women out of 1,504 directors of all the ASX 200 companies. To raise that to 20% would mean finding another 175 female directors; getting it to Norway’s 40% would mean finding another 477. To build the number of female line managers to 20% of the total (of 1,215) would mean finding another 171 female executives.

The problem is not that there aren’t enough women – of course there are. The idea that there is a shortage of women capable of being company directors is insulting and sexist.

The real problem is that the board chairmen (of which 196 out of 200 are men) simply don’t know any, apart from their wives. Perhaps they should get out more.

This article first appeared on Business Spectator.