The feminine touch on executive boards

Ridout is CEO of Australian Industry Group as well as a handful of government bodies; Proust is chair of Nestle Australia and a director of Perpetual, as well as a former senior executive of ANZ. Each of them now says she is disappointed with Australia's progress towards getting more women o­n boards and thinks that it needs to be forced.

Two weeks ago the Australian Institute of Company Directors issued a press release saying the opposite.

The AICD was indulging in a little self-congratulation because it had been a year since it had called for more diversity and proposed a number of "concrete measures" which, it said, had contributed to "a year of real progress". 

Said the AICD: "So far in 2010, 51 women have been appointed to ASX 200 boards, compared to o­nly 10 in 2009. A total of 27 per cent of appointees this year have been female compared with 5 per cent in 2009. The proportion of female board members is now 10.3 per cent, compared to just 8.3 per cent at the beginning of this year."

It seems Ridout, Proust and many other women calling for quotas are just ingrates: far from satisfying them, the progress over the past year has sparked another push for quotas because it's too slow.

There are three companies in the Australian ASX top 200 with three or more women o­n their boards: Pacific Brands (five), QBE (three) and Westpac (three). Pacific Brands and Westpac are two of the seven companies with female CEOs, and QBE is o­ne of the six companies with a female chair. There are another 34 with two women o­n their boards. The rest have none or o­ne.

This debate has also started up again in the UK, where the percentage of directors who are women is now 13.6 per cent, according to a recent study by the European Professional Women's Network. Across Europe it's 11.7 per cent, up from 8.5 per cent in 2008.

A couple of months ago, the former British trade minister and Standard Chartered bank chief, Lord Davies, completed a government review of the lack of women in boardrooms and launched a scathing attack o­n the lack of progress, saying that it was "a bit like the banking crisis, where the government had to step in because there was a problem and no other solution."

Back in Australia, I've been a watching, and participating in, a debate in a LinkedIn group called "Next Director" which more or less divides along gender lines: the women in favour of quotas, the men mostly (but not entirely) against, asserting that the more important issues is quality.

Many of those who oppose quotas argue that forcing the recruitment of women to boards would lower their quality, as if men are inherently better. In fact gender is completely irrelevant o­ne way or another; if anything more women improves the "quality" of board, in my view.

There are two practical reasons, apart from basic fairness, for pushing the pace of change and forcing companies to recruit more women to their boards:

1. The number and quality of female graduates coming into companies and moving into management is now at or approaching 50 per cent. The proportion at the top needs to catch up;

2. Women are different to men. They bring a valuable perspective to boards that can o­nly be described as female (better at collaboration and risk assessment for a start) and o­ne or two women is simply not enough to achieve the best result.

Forcing the pace and aiming at 40 per cent women o­n boards over time would improve their quality, not weaken it. That's why the Government needs to look at a quota.

ABC News