About Women on Boards

Women on Boards is a national program to improve the gender balance on Australian company boards. It has 5,000 subscribers to its website from all sectors and industries, including rural, mining and the public service. The network has many qualified, female executives from legal, financial, IT, sales and marketing, human resources, business development and project management backgrounds who are looking for a board career.

Women on Boards partners with many professional women’s organisations as well as the corporate, government, not-for-profit and sports sectors to hold events, create opportunities for women, mentor women into directorships and ensure a high level of dynamic interaction across its large and influential network.

It carries out many of its activities through the website, which brings the broad physical Women on Boards network together in a virtual space to share information and experiences about how to get onto boards. It creates a community of practice in which women who subscribe to the website can draw support, encouragement, advice and services from an established network with a common purpose. The cohesive environment gives an otherwise loose network a strong identity. Being active in the online network is a quick conduit to establishing contact with other women seeking directorships, building associations to support and mentor women and grow the ‘new girls club’.

What the Women on Boards program does:

  • Raises awareness and support for women on boards
  • Lobbies for skills-based selection to boards
  • Holds high level networking and mentoring events
  • Gives WOB members unique opportunities to access company boardrooms and directors
  • Provides access via its website to a board resume builder, vacant board positions and more than 1200 target boards in all sectors
  • Actively promotes women onto boards in a variety of ways.