Women barred by glass ceilings

By Gabriella Hold

Formidable glass ceilings still exist in Australia's corporate corridors of power, with less than half of Australia's top 300 companies having women in top management positions according to a new report.  The Washington-based report by Corporate Women Directors International (CWDI) shows that private companies in Australia lag behind government organizations in the gender gap with many companies reluctant to give women more than token representation.  The report says more than half of Australia's top companies have no females in their board rooms with only 252 board seats held by women out of a total 2,345.  But the actual number of individual women directors on these boards was only 152, as 19.6 percent of those female directors held multiple directorships, the company says.  Co-chair of CWDI Irene Natividad says the main reason women are still left out of Director positions comes from a lack of female managers in companies.  "Since board directorships usually come from the ranks of senior management where women are absent in large numbers, the glass ceiling in senior management has resulted in a glass ceiling for corporate board appointments, " she said.  Despite this problem, Australia still ranks second out of five in terms of women's representation on boards in industrialized countries.  The report found that US corporations have around 11.1 percent of females on boards, Australia 10.7 percent, Canada 9 percent and the United Kingdom and Japan 5.5 percent and 0.2 percent respectively.  It also says, however, that Australia's rank is over inflated because of the large number of government organizations included in the survey, which have more equal opportunity employment policies.  Without government, the report says Australia's rank would fall to fourth at only 6.8 percent.  The report also noted local public companies such as NRMA Insurance Ltd. and retailer Woolworths Ltd. have high percentages of women on their boards, although only 2.3 percent of private companies having female representation.  NRMA was the number one corporation for female representation, with seven out of a total 10 directed on their board, while Woorlworths was the number one publicly-listed company with two out of seven directors being women.  The top ten companies, News Corporation Ltd., Rio Tinto Ltd., and Tattershall Sweep Consultation had no women directors, the report said.  Among those companies that did not have women on their boards, around 63.1 percent only had single board seats for women.  "Overall most Australian companies are not yet ready to have more than one woman on their board", the report said.