Background to Women on Boards

The Women on Boards network was started in 2001 by a group of businesswomen who were inspired by the success of female athletes at the Sydney Olympic Games. Their objective was to help women get selected for board positions in Australia. Women on Boards became a project of the National Foundation for Australian Women and directors from private, public, government and sports boards supported the initiative, as did the following professional women's organisations:

  • National Foundation of Australian Women
  • Women in Finance
  • Women in IT
  • Women Lawyers
  • Zonta International
  • Women Sport and Recreation
  • Foundation for Australian Agricultural Women.

The first networking event was held in Sydney in March 2001 and was a great success. More than 80 senior professional women gathered to meet with experienced board members who shared their knowledge, contacts and experiences.

In 2002, five women were placed on sporting boards and a number of enquiries started to come in from boards interested in appointing women on to their boards.

With support from the Australian Government through its Office for Women and the corporate sector, Women on Boards expanded nationally between 2003-2005, funding research, hosting high profile networking and mentoring events around Australia, including rural women in the program, targeting government and for-profit boards and improving its training and other services to women seeking directorships.

The key enabler of this significant shift in capacity was the establishment of the website www.womenonboards.org.au as an interactive self-help tool for aspirant female directors. This gave the program an instant national audience and the ability to expand rapidly beyond the geographic and economic barriers imposed by the limited number of volunteers and funding for the program. It provided a vehicle to leverage the substantial human investment already made in building the Women on Boards program and exponentially increased the power of the network.

Taking Women on Board in Australia

While the Women on Boards program addresses equity issues by highlighting the under representation of women in positions of leadership, the primary objective of the program is to ensure that aspiring female directors be judged on their corporate governance skills and experience not their gender. It seeks to put politics aside and let the CVs speak for themselves. By failing to access all available boardroom talent there is on offer, Australian organisations will not be capable of reaching their full potential.

Even though women make up over 50% of the total Australian population, women currently hold only 8.3% of the positions on the boards of our publicly listed companies. The situation is much more positive when we look at sporting organisations where the percentage of females who are either directors or committee members is between 25-35% nationally and 34% in NSW. While this is a positive result there is still work to be done if we are to accurately reflect the participation rates of males and females in sport.

The more recent 2006 Senate Report About Time! Women in sport and recreation in Australia notes that: "Women continue to be under-represented in the decision making structures of sports organisations. Statistics indicate that the number of women on national sporting organisations (NSO) boards is at a low level, with a national average of one woman to seven men on boards in 2005.

With the recent advent of unrealistically high premiums for public liability and directors' and officers' insurance, sporting and not-for profit organisations have been forced to look closely at how they manage their business interests in order to reduce potential risks and financial liabilities. Corporate collapses have forced private and public sector boards to become more accountable. Women on Boards aims to not only help women get selected for board positions but also to equip themselves for the responsibilities of being a board member.

All organisations from the grass roots to the national level need to acknowledge that there is a need for far wider skills on our boards than just the traditional ones we used to see ten years ago. They are also starting to realise that women often bring a different approach and skill set which can add real value to the boardroom team.The positive outcome for women since this insurance shake-up is that we will hopefully be judged on what we know, not just whom we know. Our corporate governance, risk management, legal, finance, marketing, event management, mediation, public relations and human resource skills have never been more valuable to the continuing success of business, community groups and the sporting industry in Australia.