Women in the boardroom: What more needs to be done?

Tackling tokenism

Law firms across the globe have set targets for women on the board, with some implementing quotas for managerial positions.

“It would be naïve to say that men and women have an equal playing field in the present time. I believe that years of discrimination need an equal amount of years of redress to bring the situation to an equal playing field,” says Mahua Roy Chowdhury, founder and principal partner of India-based Royzz & Co, adding that quotas are the remedy to a problem that has existed for centuries.

“Quotas break the years of traditional thinking and force the system to change. I believe that for a certain span of time we do need quotas for women until the playing field truly becomes equal and women have the predisposed advantages that men do.”

Egon Zehnder’s report backs up the proposal.

“Countries that have seen the biggest improvements in board diversity are those that operate under some form of quota system,” says Charlie Beasley, a consultant at Egon Zehnder. “They are, however, not perfect as some countries do have quotas, such as Germany, Austria, Israel, and they aren’t meeting them.”

He adds that quotas aren’t the only solution—the UK doesn’t have a formal quota and but has made progress towards its board diversity targets (28% of board positions in the UK are held by women, compared with 20.4% globally).

Shwetasree Majumder, principal at Fidus Law, says: “I don’t think quotas are bad if you want to undo historical wrongs and give a poorly represented demographic a better shot.”