Gender diversity and quotas

AT the recent SID Directors' Conference, Grace Fu, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, created a stir when she named six publicly listed companies that did not have a single woman on their boards.

Actually, Ms Fu, who is also Second Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, was being kind. She could have provided a much longer list. In fact, according to Gender Diversity on Boards: A Business Imperative - a report by the Diversity Task Force published earlier this year - 57 per cent of 780 companies listed on Singapore Exchange (SGX) have all-male boards.

The minister's frustration at the low level of board participation by women was understandable. Women comprise only 8.3 per cent of directorships of SGX-listed companies. Our neighbours, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong, boast higher numbers. The global average is 11 per cent. The proportion of women on Singapore-listed boards is also well below the proportion of women in senior management positions (21.2 per cent), and in the universities (more than half).