Women on boards: Study finds forced quotas not effective

BOARDROOM gender quotas are not a cure-all. A new global study has found that forcing companies to put more women on boards has not helped to redress the gender imbalance among senior executives. It adds to the growing body of evidence which suggests that mandating change at the top does not have a trickledown effect. Yet that is no reason to dismiss the idea entirely.

The study of 1,071 companies across six continents by the Cambridge Judge Business School found a big disconnect between the number of women in the boardroom and those in other executive positions. Take Norway, which introduced a 40 per cent female quota for boards back in 2003: women made up just 15 per cent of executive teams at companies covered by the report. That is a lower percentage than in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, none of which have minimum requirements for female directors.

Compulsory rules have also been tarnished by tokenism. Last year, Indian tycoons responded to a requirement that they have at least one female board member by appointing wives and even stepmothers as directors. For accomplished professional women, quotas can feed the perception that their promotions are an exercise in box-ticking rather being based on merit.