Editorial | Women show worth on company boards

More than 80 Hong Kong-listed companies still do not have at least one woman on their boards of directors, according to the city’s bourse operator. In the 50th anniversary year of the first UN world conference on the status of women, that sounds a lot. But it does not do justice to recent progress on the road to greater female representation that had been uphill and slow.

That was until Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) announced a new rule three years ago requiring companies to have at least one woman on their boards by this year. At the same time, the exchange has required all new listing candidates to have at least one woman on their boards at the time of going public

What a difference a deadline has made! Three years ago, about 800 firms or 40 per cent of listed companies had all-male boards. Six months ago, they still numbered 400, or 17 per cent. Now they are down to about 3 per cent of 2,650 listed companies, according to HKEX data. Only 12 had no women on their boards during the three-year transition; the rest had women who later stepped down.

Until recently the representation of women on listed company boards did not reflect their rise through corporate executive ranks, exemplified by HKEX’s first female chief executive officer, Bonnie Chan Yiting, and its head of listing, Katherine Ng.

Chan has said previously that mandating it makes sense. “Diversity, whether it’s gender diversity or any other type of diversity, brings more ideas, more perspectives into boardroom discussions.”

She believes gender diversity and other corporate governance improvements are vital to maintain the local stock market’s appeal to international investors. In a world where competitiveness and talent are key to Hong Kong’s economic prosperity and international standing, the city can ill-afford to neglect the potential of half the population. It is good also that the quest for diversity in boardrooms is not confined to gender.