KUALA LUMPUR: A typical Malaysian firm has 13.8 per cent women board members, above the Asia Pacific average of 12.5 per cent and just below the global average of 15 per cent, according to a World Bank report on ‘Women on Boards in Malaysia’.
A global executive search consultancy, Alexander Hughes Malaysia managing partner Narinder Kaur said Malaysia edging above Asia Pacific’s average comes as no surprise as the country has achieved multiple milestones in the corporate scene.
“There is no doubt we are seeing more balance emerging and this is a positive outlook for Malaysia. Gender diversity at the leadership level, while it is widely and continuously talked about, is still the one key criterion that will give companies the edge to compete,” she said.
For example, Narinder said there is an existing national initiative pushing for 30 per cent women representation on public listed boards by 2020 and in 2018.
“Three out of 11 homegrown investment banks had women chiefs. As reported by Bloomberg, this makes Malaysia a big outlier in a global space where 96 per cent of investment banking elites are men,” she said.
Narinder said the improvements can continue at a slightly faster pace.
“According to Labour Statistics for the third quarter of 2017, our country’s women labour force participation rate sits at just over 54 per cent.
“It is evident that women talent is not lacking, perhaps what may be lacking are opportunities for women to rise in the upper echelons of an organization.
“One barrier is that as men make most of the decisions, they tend to hire people who think like them. They look for similarity and compatibility not diversity or difference”, said Narinder.
Meanwhile, a survey on corporate governance by global executive search firm Alexander Hughes interviewing 13,000 leaders across 30 countries in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Middle East shows positive change in board leadership gender diversity in most regions and industries.
From 2016 to 2018, the trend increased from 20 per cent to 21.7 per cent (1.7 per cent) in North America, 12 per cent to 15.5 per cent (3.5 per cent) in Europe and from five per cent to 7.2 per cent (2.2 per cent) in Latin America.
In Asia Pacific, it remained constant at 12.5 per cent.