Female board appointments triple to 10 per cent

A tripling of female director appointments this year means women make up 10 per cent of the boards of the top 200 listed companies.

Statistics released by the Australian Institute of Company Directors revealed that the percentage of women on ASX 200 boards had reached double figures for the first time, up from 8.3 per cent at the start of the year. So far this year 36 women have been appointed to ASX 200 boards, compared with only 10 for the whole of last year.

The latest appointment was yesterday’s move by Virgin Blue to appoint former Optus executive and Australian Football League Commissioner Sam Mostyn to its board. Other recent appointments include Jayne Hrdlicka to the board of Woolworths, Catherine Brenner to the board at Boral and Rosemary Warnock to the OneSteel board.

“While we still have a long way to go, the initiatives in this area taken by the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the ASX Corporate Governance Council — which recently issued new recommendations relating to diversity — and other organisations are starting to have an effect,” AICD chief executive John Colvin said.

“The fact that almost four times the number of women have been appointed in the first eight months of 2010 than in the whole of 2009, and that more than a quarter of ASX 200 board appointments this year have been women, shows that real change is occurring.”

Last November, AICD announced measures to encourage companies to appoint female directors following calls by federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick for the federal government to set quotas. Labor has said it will set targets of at least 40 per cent if re-elected.