Club’s efforts yields results for more women directors

KUALA LUMPUR: The 30 per cent Club Malaysia chapter, a group driving a business campaign to have higher representation of women on corporate boards, made good progress in 2017, said its founding Chair, Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar.

Since being launched in Malaysia in May 2015, the 30 per cent Club’s initiatives such as the Business Leaders’ Roundtable, mentoring programme and placement of women directors had yielded positive results, she said in a statement yesterday.

Zarinah said the club was intensifying its efforts at having at least one woman director on allmale boards, particularly in large market capitalisation or the top 100 companies out of the 923 listed on Bursa Malaysia by 2018.

The 30 per cent Club also aims to help Malaysia achieve 30 per cent women’s representation on public listed corporate boards by 2020, as more qualified women make themselves available for board appointments.

“We are seeing more boards acknowledging that gender diversity makes good business sense,” Zarinah said.

The 30 per cent Club is a global movement of international chairs and chief executive officers who advocate gender parity at all levels of their organisations. The Malaysian chapter recently held a Business Leaders’ Roundtable to engage with senior directors of public-listed companies on their specific challenges in meeting the boardroom diversity target.

Foo Lee Mei, chief regulatory officer of the Securities Commission Malaysia, who co-chaired the recent roundtable, said companies should appreciate the business case for diverse boards inclusive of women directors.

She also hailed efforts by the 30 per cent Club towards increasing the number of women on the boards of locally listed companies.

Bursa Malaysia’s data showed that in the third quarter (3Q) of 2017 the percentage of Top 100 companies that had 30 per cent women’s representation had risen to 19.1 per cent from 16.6 per cent at end-2016. The number of Top 100 companies that did not have a single woman on their boards had fallen to 10 in Q4 2017 from 14 in 3Q17.

The 30 per cent Club’s crosssector Board Mentoring Scheme was started in July this year in partnership with PwC Malaysia and another began earlier this month with a new batch of 10 mentors and 10 mentees. The nine-month-long scheme is to help improve the profiling of potential women candidates by connecting potential women directors with current Chairs, Board Directors and senior corporate leaders.

The programme is also designed to provide mentees with a better chance at being appointed to boards and benefiting from the counsel and possible referral of their mentors.

One of the mentors, Tunku Ali Redhauddin ibni Tuanku Muhriz, Chairman of Bumi Armada Bhd, said he became a mentor because he wanted to see board membership to be more representative of the population. — Bernama