Gender equality: Strong call to end Colombo’s old boys’ clubs syndrome
A 2012 report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute says that stocks of large cap companies with at least one woman board director outperformed those with all-male boards by 26 per cent over a period of six years. This is a four year old statistic and despite increased efforts by companies and governments around the world to lift the number of women in senior corporate roles, their presence remains stubbornly low to date.
In this backdrop, the Colombo Stock Exchange’s (CSE) market’s ‘Opening Bell’ was rung for ‘Gender Equality’ on March 4 in celebration of International Women’s Day which fell on March 8. It was rung for the second year in a row at the Colombo bourse. Also bells at stock exchanges around the world were rung on the same day to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Speaking at the event, Ramani Muttettuwegama Senior Partner at Tiruchelvam Associates said that if women were to come back to the boardrooms, it’s time for ‘us’ to really recognise that the ‘old boys’ network has to end.
Some corporate leaders agreed, saying that such an old boys’ club forms an environment in which directors were obliged to the CEO or the owners for their seat—something that undoubtedly weakened board independence. They said that the board put together on a handful of relationships has the natural risk of insularity. One said that this gender gap in corporate leadership isn’t merely a women’s issue. “It’s an issue of competitiveness. Simply put, diversity in leadership adds to corporate performance.”
Ms. Muttettuwegama said that for her, it’s a matter of shock and great concern given that Sri Lanka is such a highly women-driven economy, women after all form the bulk of the workforce that earn foreign exchange, they are the bulk of the plantation sector, the government sector and migrant worker sector.
“The lack of translation of this participation into the higher structures of the corporate sector is honestly quite shocking for me. I’m not sure if many of you are aware of this, but the corporate sector lags even behind the political governance process in terms of leadership among women. In a country where over the last few years women have begun to be appointed to our Supreme Court, our public service is being dominated by women and the academia is almost all-over Sri Lanka completely dominated by women, it should be a matter of great concern that the corporate sector lags so far behind.”
She pointed out that women contribute to the economy in a way that men don’t seem to do. “And on top of that we are better educated, we are more competitive in universities, we graduate at a higher level every year – for the last 15 years. Our age of marriage is much higher than our counterpart countries in the region, and in fact than some countries in Europe, so there is nothing holding us back from moving into the leadership of the corporate sector too.”
“I come from a small law firm, 75- 80 per cent of our income earners in this law firm are women. Many of them are mothers, some of them are daughters, some of them are grandmothers and they have multiple responsibilities and they work very hard and my firm is very successful. So I don’t understand where the block actually lies.”
Commending the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors programme on boardroom training, she asserted that it would be of great value, not because women are actually not capable of being good members of their boards already, but perhaps this little title of ‘I completed this programme’ might help them in getting onto those boards’.