India lags behind China in board gender diversity

MUMBAI: India lags behind Asian markets like China and Hong Kong on certain board gender diversity parameters, despite the best of efforts to bring more women on boards of companies. An Egon Zehnder (EZ) report for 2016 -exclusive to TOI -reveals that India's numbers are lower when it comes to new women board member appointments, women executive directors and women CFOs.

In 2016, new women board member appointments in India stood at 11% of total hires in 2016, as against 14.5% for new male directors. This is lower than the global overall average of 17% women. In other Asian markets like Hong Kong and Malaysia, the same was 16.4% and 27.3%, respectively .

While the compulsion of maintaining one woman director on every listed company board could have helped more women get board positions, the EZ report shows that not many women directors in India have management responsibilities.

Pallavi Kathuria, co-leader of diversity and inclusion practice at EZ, said, “Despite social and economic progress in other areas of the business world, diversity at the leaders hip level, particularly in the boardroom, has not kept pace. Data from the global board diversity analysis and EZ's experiences have shown that, as women start making their voice heard and encourage the de velopment of other women leaders, it is likely that companies will continue increasing female presence on boards.“

Falguni Nayar, founder & CEO, Nykaa, who is on the boards of a few companies in India, said, “To get to where they want to be, women need to lean in. We need to develop abilities to be able to take on the dual responsibilities of career and home. In most cases, this involves increasing risk appetite and pushing oneself forward.“

Nayar said men are comfortable with being on several boards, while women were more conservative in making themselves available for such positions. “However, while the average age of a board would be 55-plus, we are seeing several younger women coming on boards. The attitude is certainly changing,“ said Nayar.

According to the EZ report, India was better than China and Hong Kong on the number of women CEOs. Among CFOs, however, India is far behind at 5.1% of women as CFOs.