By Maya Palit
Although there have been a number of efforts to try to increase the number of women corporate directors, recent reports reveal that there hasn’t been much of an improvement. A KPMG survey has declared a 180 percent increase in the proportion of women directors, but apparently, this only reflects an increase in the representation of women from 4.9 percent in 2013 to a still-dismal 13.9 percent in 2016.
The Companies Act of 2013, which made provisions mandating that every listed company should have at least one women director (executive or non-executive), made some headway, although recently the government had to call out over 1000 private listed firms for not appointing any women directors.
A report in the Economic Times points out a problem that’s cropped up as a result of an inadequate response to the Act: a majority of the respondents (over 50 percent) in the survey voiced the feeling that many of the appointments ‘are made to comply, rather than on meritocracy’.
Meanwhile, data from a survey conducted by the Department of Public Enterprises, which was released this month, has revealed that the percentage of women employees in central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) has remained stagnant for almost a decade, and is currently at the figure of 9.36 percent. (It has actually decreased, although by a small margin, over the last three years.) One reason, according to the chief executive of a recruitment company, is that these enterprises have a large proportion of engineering employees, which is a field skewed towards men anyway.
The only redeeming bit is that the number of women in managerial positions in CPSEs has increased slightly over the last few years. But between public sector undertakings with their low proportion of women employees and the number private firms disregarding the mandate to hire women corporate directors, the participation of women in the country’s workforce needs some serious rehauling.