India ranks 28th in women representation on companies' boards

This, despite accounting for nearly 40% of the total workforce of India Inc

Women account for nearly 40% of the total workforce of India Inc, but their presence is less than 7% when it comes to board-level positions, a survey has found.

India is ranked at 28th in terms of the presence of women directors in, a slight improvement from last year's 30th position, according to Women On Board 2013. The ranking is better than that of a few major countries like Japan

The survey was conducted on more than 1,400 companies in India and it found that the women constituted just 6.81% of the total number of board members in 2013.

However, this marks an improvement from last year when women accounted for 6.69% of the total board seats.

The female presence on company boards is highest in Norway (37.23%), followed by Sweden (27%), Finland (24%), South Africa (17.31%) and the US (16.67%).

The countries having lower women representation on company boards include Italy (4.23%) and Japan (1.26%), the report said.

The number of companies surveyed were different in different countries.

"India is still need to promote more women for senior management level. Presence of Women members on board are very low, even it's below from average percentage of developing countries," MyHiringClub.Com CEO Rajesh Kumar said.

"While around 38% of employee strength in India is female, among these only 16% are able to reach on senior management level," he added.

According to the survey, the scenario is not much better in some developed countries as well, with Canada reporting only 11.41% women directors, Ireland (11.16%), Spain (10.79%) New Zealand (9.89%) and Switzerland (8.56%).

The countries with extremely low percentage of women on board include Saudi Arabia (0.43%), Qatar (0.89%) and UAE (1.08%).

In India, three% of the boards have three female directors, while 44% having only one woman director each, the survey said.

The study observed that the average board life of male directors is three years more than female directors, while globally the difference is only about two year.

The gap between the maximum board tenure of male and female directors is very large.

About 3% more female directors have been at this position for less than one year, which clearly indicates that boards are just beginning to include female directors, the study noted.

"Also tenure of women members on board compared to male members is a major area where India Inc needs to rethink and positive attitude required. Globally the average tenure is two years for women members on board, but in India it's only one year," he added.

Interestingly, women directors are on an average five years younger than their male counterparts.