The Australian Securities Exchange has become the first board to hit a new gender diversity target of 30% female directors, with the appointment of Yasmin Allen to its board this week.
The target of 30% female representation on boards of all publicly listed companies was set by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors less than a week ago, when it called for all publicly listed companies to aim to hit the 30% target by 2017.
The ACSI set the target because it believes the current female representation on boards – just under 20% on the ASX 200 — is not good enough.
“We strongly believe that well-diversified boards are high performing boards that will do well for their shareholders,they’ll make better returns and they will take less risk in doing so. So that is absolutely the driver of our interest,” the CASI’s Gordon Hagart told ABC News this week.
“It tends to be that the bigger companies have taken stronger action on this over the years, and they’ve been companies and individuals within companies that have been real champions of this change.”
He said companies need to be proactive in promoting and supporting women in order to shift the economy’s entrenched bias toward men.
“The economy has been set up in a way that is not favourable to women and boards, unfortunately, can be a little bit inward looking in the way they think about who would make a good director, who’d make a good successor in a role,” he said.
“So I think it’s about a transition in the whole economy that’s necessary, it’s about having a strong pipeline of great female executives coming up through the ranks.”
According to ACSI, 36 of the top 200 publicly listed companies still have no female directors at all. Women currently hold only 291 of the 1477 board positions in the top 200 companies, and only 188 of the 817 in the top 100.
The ASX’s decision to actively meet this target is among the quickest responses to the ACSI’s call for change. It comes with a series of steps toward overall board renewal for the company, with two other new members being appointed in recent weeks.
Allen said she believes the 30% target is a step in the right direction for board diversity.
“In my experience, progressive companies with a good culture tend to have more women represented on both their boards and senior executive teams,’’ she told The Australian.
Allen will join the ASX board as a non-executive director on top of her board positions at Cochlear, Santos and Insurance Australia Group. She has been a director for ten years, prior to which she was an investment banker with Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ANZ.
“Having served with Yasmin on the Board of Cochlear, I have first hand experience of her qualities as a director, including her business acumen, particularly in financial services, strategic thinking and commitment to the highest standards of corporate governance,” ASX chairman Rick Holliday-Smith said.