‘Long way adrift’: Female chairs still thin on the ground despite diversity push

Gender diversity on the boards of Australia’s largest companies is improving slowly, but progress remains sluggish when it comes to the number of women appointed to chair ASX-listed firms.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) quarterly gender diversity report, released on Wednesday, showed that women now account for 35.7 per cent of directors on ASX 200 boards (up from to 34.2 per cent this time last year) and 34.9 per cent of ASX 300 boards (up from 32.6 per cent).

However, only 10.5 per cent of ASX 200 companies and 11 per cent of ASX 300 companies are chaired by women, statistics that have barely changed since 2019.

AICD chief executive Mark Rigotti said while there was continued progress when it came to gender diversity among board directors, there was a distinct lack of growth when it came to chairs.

“There hasn’t been the same level of progress,” he said. “It’s a long way adrift. The chair of the board does have a particularly important role, they are effectively first among equals, they’re the leader, they set a lot of the tone, they kind of manage the CEO. It’s a really important role.”

He said that the report also questioned why there were so few female chairs at a time when there was a rise in the number of female board directors.

“There are more women on boards, you would have thought there should be more female chairs. The insight was, when you look at the pathways to being a chair on one of those listed companies, they tend to have had a CEO role, often at an ASX company,” he said.