The representation of women in board seats across India Inc. has steadily increased over the past five years, reaching 18.3 per cent in 2023, according to a report by Deloitte released on Friday. However, this figure remains below the global average of 23.3 per cent, as highlighted in the ‘Women in the boardroom: A global perspective’ report.
“Boardroom diversity requires a paradigm shift. Since many companies prefer to recruit board members with CEO or CFO experience, these numbers do not paint an optimistic outlook for pipeline development. India Inc. must break from historical patterns and prioritise capabilities over past roles,” Deloitte South Asia Chairperson Shefali Goradia said.
The report, released on International Women’s Day, highlights a gradual rise in the proportion of board seats held by women across India Inc. In 2023, women held 18.3 per cent of board seats, compared to 13.8 per cent in 2018 and 17.1 per cent in 2021.
India’s representation remains lower than the global average of 23.3 per cent. However, the global average has increased by 3.6 per cent since 2022, accelerating the timeline for achieving gender parity by seven years from 2045 to 2038.
“This indicates that even if India were to match the global pace, achieving gender parity on boards would still remain a distant goal until a robust pipeline of women leaders is developed,” the report states.
Goradia emphasised the importance of fostering governance expertise and regularly evaluating progress to cultivate a robust pipeline of talented women leaders for a brighter future in corporate governance.
Deloitte Global has introduced the “stretch factor,” a research tool that measures the average number of board seats held by an individual in a specific market. A higher stretch factor indicates that a single director holds more seats in a given market.
The stretch factor among women in India increased to 1.32 in 2023, up from 1.30 in 2021, while the average remained constant for men at 1.20. This highlights the insufficient pipeline of women leaders and underscores the necessity of creating a larger pool of women leaders with diverse skill sets.
Although India witnessed a decrease in the percentage of women chairing boards in 2023, with only 4.1 per cent compared to 4.5 per cent in 2018, there was an increase in the number of women taking up CEO roles, 5.1 per cent female CEOs compared to 3.4 per cent in 2018.
In India, sectoral trends reveal an optimistic outlook for women’s representation across boardrooms. All sectors examined in the survey exhibited an increase in the number of women on boards in 2023 compared to 2018.
The life sciences & healthcare sector leads the way with 21.3 per cent women on company boards, followed by technology, media, and telecommunications (20.5 per cent), consumer business (19.7 per cent), manufacturing (17.4 per cent), and financial services (16.9 per cent), according to the report.
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