Women on Australian Company Boards in 2001 - Is the Profile Changing?

The following article was written in 2001 following research into the number of females on boards. It makes interesting comparison with the situation in 2004 – not much change for women.

A company called Boardroom Partners recently completed a comprehensive study of board composition in Australia, focusing on the Top 500 listed companies. The two year study of board membership in Australia and interviews with almost 50 women who sit on public company boards has identified the women are still a small minority of board directors, and that not all boards are welcoming or receptive to change.

Despite business commentary and speeches to the contrary, the truth is that representation of women on our top company boards in Australia is very low.

Some facts:

  • Women hold only 162 positions of a total of 3,312, that is, around 4.9%.
  • Most (71%) Australian companies still have no woman on the board, and of those that do, the profile is of one woman, working with seven male peers around the board table.
  • Fourteen of our Top 500 companies have two women on the board, and the average board size in these companies increases to nine, so in these boardrooms, while two women sit at the table, they are still flanked by seven male peers.
  • Three companies of the Top 500 have three women on the board, and one company has four! All of these boards are larger than the norm, with eleven directors each, on average.
  • Far from the boardrooms of Australia being swamped by women, the composition remains remarkably similar to that of ten years ago, when about the same percentage of non-executive directors was female. It seems that this is unlikely to change in the immediate short term.

The Situation on Government Boards

Governments across Australia have managed to find capable and qualified women to sit on all of their boards, to the tune of around 30% of all directors. These include commercialised and specialist boards across the country.

This level of representation has not occurred by chance; rather by a concerted effort by the various administrations to ‘lift their game’, and a fair injection of healthy competition about who can out do the other!

To find out more details of this research please contact Jane Bridge, Managing Director, Boardroom Partners 02 9241 6311 or visit their web site at www.boardroompartners.com.au