Women sit on 1 of every 5 boards of India Inc, lower than global average of 1 in 4

The number of board seats held by women across India Inc has increased gradually over the past five years with them holding 18.3 per cent board seats in 2023, a Deloitte report said on Friday.

The ‘Women in the boardroom: A global perspective’ report, however, said that it is lower than the global average of 23.3 per cent.

The report by Deloitte Global Boardroom Program analysed more than 18,000 companies in 50 countries exploring representation of women in the boardroom. This includes analysis of 400 companies from India.

“Boardroom diversity requires a paradigm shift. Since many companies prefer to recruit board members with CEO or CFO experience, these numbers do not paint an optimistic outlook for pipeline development. India Inc. must break from historical patterns and prioritise capabilities over past roles,” Deloitte South Asia Chairperson Shefali Goradia said.

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The report shows a gradual increase in the number of board seats held by women across India Inc, with women holding 18.3 per cent board seats in 2023, up from 13.8 per cent in 2018, and 17.1 per cent in 2021, said the report released on the International Women’s Day.

India’s number is lower than the global average of 23.3 per cent, which has seen an increase of 3.6 per cent since 2022, reducing the timeline towards achieving parity by seven years – from 2045 to 2038.

“This indicates that even if India were to match the global pace, achieving gender parity on boards would still remain a distant goal until a robust pipeline of women leaders is developed,” the report said.

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Goradia said by nurturing governance expertise creatively and regularly evaluating the progress, a robust pipeline of talented women leaders can be cultivated for a brighter future in corporate governance.

Deloitte Global has developed the “stretch factor,” a research tool that measures the average number of board seats an individual holds in a particular market. The higher the stretch factor, the more seats are held by any single director in a given market.

The stretch factor among women in India increased to 1.32 in 2023 as compared to 1.30 in 2021.

While the average stayed the same for men at 1.20. This further indicates a low pipeline of women leaders and stresses on the need to create a larger pool of women leaders with varied skillsets.

Although India saw a decline in board chairs held by women in 2023, with only 4.1 per cent of women chairing boards as compared to 4.5 per cent in 2018, it witnessed an increase in the number of women taking up CEO roles – 5.1 per cent female CEOs against 3.4 per cent in 2018.

In India, sectoral trends paint an optimistic picture for women representation across boardrooms. All of the sectors examined in the survey showed an increase in the number of women on boards in 2023 as against 2018.

Life sciences & healthcare sector is topping the chart with 21.3 per cent women on company boards, followed by technology, media and telecommunications (20.5 per cent), consumer business (19.7 per cent), manufacturing (17.4 per cent), and financial services (16.9 per cent), the report said.