Gender inequality in Pakistan: Only 11% of listed firms have female director

Survey considered 547 listed companies, of which 50 did not have any record

LAHORE: Pakistani companies are yet to induct greater number of female executives on senior positions to ensure gender equality because currently 50% of listed companies lack women directors on their boards.

Almost 30% of the KSE-100 companies have no female director. In general, only 11% of the companies listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange have a female representative on their board of directors, stated a survey released by the Women on Board Pakistan.

Women on Board is a self-funded initiative of professionals working voluntarily and aiming to ensure diversity as an important component of corporate performance. The survey, conducted for the year 2019 while setting 2016 as the base year, considered a total of 547 listed companies, of which 50 did not have any record.

The survey revealed that 29% companies within the Pakistan Business Council and 41% at the PSX did not have any female director.

The total number of directors in 2019 shrank marginally to 3,852, a drop of 0.44% compared to 2016. However, the number of women directors registered a growth of 22.5%, rising from 351 in 2016 to 430 in 2019.

This translates into 11% companies having women directors whereas directorship in the remaining 89% companies still rests with males.

“There were 185 companies having women directors in 2016 and the number increased to 289 in 2019,” stated the survey. “Similarly, 208 companies still exist in 2019 without female representation on their boards of directors. The number of such companies in 2016 stood at 320.”

Currently, only one company in Pakistan has six female directors, the survey added. There was no company with five female directors, however, 13 companies had four women directors and 26 had three female directors.

The survey highlighted that 45 companies, which took part in the research, had two female directors while 204 companies had at least one female director on their boards.

The survey also probed whether women were enjoying these key posts due to the companies being a family business or not. It revealed that the number of women directors related to each other decreased 11.9% to 281 in 2019 whereas the percentage of women directors unrelated to each other soared 365.6%, from 32 in 2016 to 149 in 2019.

“The index shall set and evaluate the performance of companies on gender development benchmarks such as hiring practices, ratio of female workforce and the number of women professionals on senior management and board positions,” said Women on Board founder Aftab Ahmad.

He said the Women on Board and PSX would launch a PSX-WoB index for the listed companies.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2020.

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