#BeBoldForChange - Celebrating International Women's Day 2017

Happy International Women's Day (IWD)!

IWD gives us the opportunity to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. To encourage awareness, dialogue and action that will lead to greater gender diversity on boards, Community Business has released the latest study of its annual research, Women on Boards Hong Kong 2017 Report, sponsored by Heidrick& Struggles. The report examines the representation of women on the boards of Hong Kong’s top 50 companies as listed on the Hang Seng Index (HSI).

Globally, the call for more diverse corporate boards continues to gain momentum. Board diversity is increasingly being recognised as essential to sound decision-making, more informed risk management, and stronger corporate governance. This has been reinforced by a growing body of international research linking women on boards and in senior management to better corporate performance. Gender diversity on boards should be not seen as a women’s issue or an ethical commitment, but rather as good business practice.

Over the last eight years, there has been a nominal improvement in the progression of women at board level in Hong Kong’s top public companies. The representation of women has made painstakingly slow improvement from the initial finding of 8.9% in 2009 to 12.4% in 2017, a difference of only 3.5% in 8 years. Frustratingly, change continues to be driven by only a few enlightened companies and the majority of companies are doing little, if anything, to focus on this issue. However, there have been some small successes – this year, more HSI companies have achieved 20% or higher female representation on their boards, and there has been a further decline in all-male boards. These are positive steps in the right direction.

We urge all companies in Hong Kong to develop a strategy for increasing gender diversity on their boards, including setting a voluntary targets, measuring progress, ensuring that women are being considered for every board vacancy, and committing to appointing an additional female director in the next year. Companies should consider leveraging the international network and expertise of executive search firms to identify diverse board candidates.

We hope that in a year’s time, we will have better news to report, in celebration of International Women's Day!