Surge in the number of women on boards

Female director appointments to ASX200 company boards have jumped 20 per cent in 2010 ahead of changes to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations.

Women on Boards executive director Claire Braund welcomed the statistics and said they contrasted sharply with 2009, when only 5 per cent of appointments were women.

She said further improvements are expected by January 2011, when companies are required to report on gender at board and senior management levels, in line with changes to the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations.

“It is quite clear that the top end of town has made a grab for female directors ahead of these amended guidelines coming into force,” Braund said. “This clearly demonstrates that it is really not that difficult to find high performing women to sit on ASX boards.”

She added that the jump in statistics also supports the view that regulation is necessary to encourage companies to take action.

“Collecting gender data, setting targets and publicly reporting outcomes will become a whole new way of doing business for many ASX companies from 2011,” Braund said.

She said there were still 101 companies in the ASX200 group that have no women on their board, and it worsens in the ASX201-300 group, where there are only 24 women of 553 directors.