Singapore companies have more women directors, but still lags global average: Report

According to the annual report by MSCI, the provider of a stock market index found that Singapore-listed companies have more female directors but are still behind the global average.

Women account for 18.4 percent of board members, up from 13.7 percent last year, in the 26 Singapore-listed companies of the MSCI’ world index in 2019. However, it’s still short of the 20 percent average for all the companies on the index.

MSCI analyzed the board and executive management structure of 2,765 companies that constitute the MSCI ACWI Index for its "Women on Boards" research report.  

The study found 23.1 percent of Singapore companies on its MSCI ACWI index had three or more women on their boards, below the average of 36.2 percent.

Also, when it comes to top management positions, 7.7 percent of the Singapore companies had a woman Chief Executive Officer, more than the average of 4.3 percent. 30.8 percent of them had a female Chief Financial Officer as against the index average of 12.5 percent.

Overall, the report showed an increase in the percentage of women on boards globally - from 17.9 percent in 2018 to 20 percent in 2019, according to the MSCI report.

However, due to the small pool of female board directors, more women (22 percent) than men (12 percent) were "overboarded", meaning they served on three or more boards globally.

The lack of qualified women to fill director positions has been one of the most common misconceptions used to explain the lack of gender diversity among executives and directors.