Singapore trails less developed peers in terms of boardroom diversity

Only 7.7% of board members are women.

Poorer countries in Asia are beating the region’s richest economies when it comes to diversity in the boardroom, according to a report by advisory firm Korn Ferry and the National University of Singapore.

The study showed that Singapore is among the bottom three when it comes to gender diversity, with women making up only 7.7% of board members among SGX-listed firms . Japan and South Korea are also at the bottom of the rankings with 2.6% and 3.3%, respectively.

Regionally, women make up 10.2% of all directors in this latest study, up from 9.4% in 2013 and 8.0% in 2012. Only three out of ten countries showed substantial improvement, namely, Australia, India and Malaysia.

Australia continues to be the best performing country in the region. With 21.9 per cent female board members among the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)-listed companies, it is the only economy in this survey with over 20 per cent of women on boards.

Malaysia saw the largest year-on-year increase in female representation, from 8.3 per cent to 12.5 per cent, reflecting the success of its governmental programmes to increase gender diversity.

India has made significant progress in broadening female representation across companies. Companies there reported an increase in female board representation from 7.3 per cent to 8.6 per cent in 2014.

The report showed that firms with at least 10% of female board members delivered a 14.9 per cent return on equity (ROE) in 2014 compared to just 12.6% for those without.