Five years of annual research undertaken by Business Engage suggests that improvements are being made in seating women at the boards of JSE-listed companies. Its recently released report, Status of Gender on JSE Listed Boards 2022, shows that almost one-third of non-executive directors currently are female.

The research by Business Engage is sponsored by Nedbank, management consulting company Kearney, the Institute of Directors SA and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. It monitors adherence to the JSE listing requirement that all JSE-listed companies have a policy on gender at board level with a requirement to report to their stakeholders on such policy.

Colleen Larsen, CE of Business Engage, notes: “We emphasised in our inaugural report five years ago that we were looking for a ‘quevolution’ not a revolution. A ‘quevolution’ is our term for a quick evolution and I am of the opinion based on our research that we have that.” The figures reflect that in a majority of board positions women are making substantial progress in being appointed.

Preferring to study trends rather than actual numbers, Larsen suggests that the data from the companies surveyed showing one third of non-executive directors being female is encouraging. Some listed companies are excluded for various reasons, such as currently being suspended from the JSE or having no information available.

“Encouragingly, women are increasingly being appointed either Chair of the board or the Lead Independent Director. Furthermore, the net is being cast increasingly wide, reflected by the fact few female directors have more than three JSE-listed company directorships. The fear of the Golden Skirt Syndrome where a few well-connected women garner multiple appointments has proven unfounded,” she says.

The research report further notes that women are on average between four and seven years younger than their male counterparts, with proportionally fewer women having reached what would be considered normal career retirement age.

“Most people are well aware of the dearth of female CEOs. It augers well for the future that the research shows that about one in five of the female CEOs are chartered accountants and women are progressing well in the Chief Financial Officer / Financial Director and Audit Committee membership roles, together with age being on their side,” Larsen argues.

While there remain a number of all-male boards, these numbers have shrunk dramatically over the past five years. Larsen points out that this trend of the reduction of all-male boards follows that of the FTSE in London.

In producing the reports over the past five years, Business Engage has kept a close eye on how the UK market is performing regarding gender at board level. Larsen notes there are now no all-male boards on the FTSE 100 and extremely few on the FTSE 350.  This is a trend that Business Engage expects JSE-listed companies to emulate.

“As a brand anchored in purpose, Nedbank continues to place transformation at the core of its strategic priorities, while demonstrating its ongoing commitment to reflecting the country’s demographics in its leadership composition. A reflective view on the status of gender representation is an essential to enable organisations to benchmark progress against previous years and address shortcomings. This is why this research is so important,” says Kershini Govender, Executive Head of Transformation & Strategy at Nedbank.

“We are encouraged that the representation of women at board level is increasing. It demonstrates a collective buy-in from listed companies to bring more women to the table so to speak. However, we also appreciate that there is still work to be done to achieve satisfactory levels of gender equality in the workplace. Nedbank remains committed to achieving this.”

According to the GM Forum of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Bank remains committed to driving gender mainstreaming as a strategic focus area in our business operations and externally in our client investing strategies.

Jo Pöhl, Senior Advisor at Kearney Africa, says that “Although trending in the right direction, the commitment to gender-balanced balanced boards needs to be reaffirmed. The intention to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion that has a positive business impact requires deliberate action and should be evident in the board composition as succession planning and rotation are considered”.

The research report may be found at https://www.businessengage.africa/24-november-2022-state-of-gender-on-jse-listed-boards/