Wanted: Women In Boardrooms
November 17, 2011 No Comments
Despite occasionally smoking cigars, I’m not a board member. Is that because I don’t want to be, or because the boys won’t let me have my own leather chair?
According to the Canadian Board Diversity Council (CBDC) report released yesterday, women account for only 6.6 to 20 percent of board members in Canada. The CBDC has recommended that companies increase women and minority presence on boards, replacing a third of vacant seats with a person from an under-represented group.
In a CBDC survey of charitable and corporate companies, 22 percent of board members replied that their companies had no written policy on actively adding diversity to the board. Only a small majority replied that there should be a policy. Most company directors (73 percent), however, felt their boards were already diverse.
Is the lack of women board members choice or discrimination? The lower numbers of women in senior and executive roles could be down to industry: the lowest percentage of female board members, according to the CBDC report, is in oil and gas, mining and quarrying.
It could also be linked with the choice, still taken more often by women than by men, to devote more time to family than career. Though for many women, this remains not a choice but a necessity.
Having worked in a field where women are highly represented in senior and executive positions, I think the under-representation of women in board rooms is more to do with a lack of opportunity than a lack of ambition.
Although there are plenty of people who would give up PowerPoint presentations for baby powder, they aren’t all women. Not by a long shot.
Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com
