Women directors constitute only 18.4% of the board director positions: CFA report | Jobs News

The report states that women constitute just 20 per cent of the overall workforce, with men accounting for the remaining 80 per cent. This means that women make up less than one-fifth of the overall workforce. Out of the total workforce sampled, 80.1 per cent are men, with women representing less than 19.9 per cent.

The gender gap is broader in the senior positions. This disparity is evident in Board of Directors (BoDs) roles, where men occupy a higher proportion of seats. Women directors constitute only 18.4 per cent of the board director positions. The gap is even wider among Key Managerial Personnel (KMPs), where just over 10 per cent are women and nearly two-thirds of the companies analysed have no female KMPs, and among those that do, 80 per cent have only a single female KMP.

For BoDs, the Real Estate, Information Technology, Consumer Staples, Health Care and Consumer Discretionary sectors show a more equitable gender distribution. Conversely, the Financial Services and Energy sectors exhibit the most pronounced gender imbalance among BoDs.

This might also be because female Board Members and KMPs receive significantly lower compensation compared to their male counterparts, highlighting a gender pay disparity at the top level. Female directors earn only 44 per cent of the median salary of their male counterparts, while female KMPs receive less than 25 per cent of the remuneration paid to male KMPs. Significant pay gap was observed across roles from BODs, KPM, and the general workforce. Male Directors earn 21 times the median remuneration of male employees and 24 time that of male workers while male KMPs earn 35 times the median remuneration of male employees and 40 times that of male workers.

In KMPs, KMPs, no sector has a male-to-female ratio less than 5 to 1. The disparity is most extreme in the Real Estate sector, followed by Utilities and Communication Services sectors.

Interestingly, Information Technology sector employs the highest percentage of women (34 per cent), followed by consumer discretionary and financial sector (25 and 24 per cent respectively) with the lowest women participation in the utilities sector (4 per cent).

“The level of women’s participation in the workforce and in boardrooms across India, continues to be persistently low as highlighted in our latest edition of the report. Corporate India must adopt meaningful initiatives and inclusive strategies to retain female talent, diminish the remuneration gaps, and subsequently pave the way for Indian workplaces to become more diverse and inclusive for women and differently-abled individuals. We hope that our follow-up report, alongside our earlier research on gender diversity, leads to meaningful conversations and brings about a cultural shift within the Indian workforce,” said Rajesh Sehgal, CFA, Chairperson, CFA Society India.