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The Golden Skirts and Trousers of the ASX200
The latest percentage of women on ASX 200 boards is 31.3% (31 July 2020). For many years ASX companies have been encouraged to target 30%. But has achieving this figure really made a difference?
The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) regularly releases statistics on how ASX200 boards are tracking, predominantly focusing on this headline metric.
Analysis and discussion diving deeper into this figure has been rare — I’ve only come across a few mainstream media articles. Of particular interest to me was to see how many ‘Golden Skirts’ and ‘Golden Sacks (Trousers)’ there are.
These terms (Golden Skirts and Sacks) were famously coined in Professor Martin Huse’s paper analysing the effects on board composition from the gender quota laws in Norway — describing those who accumulate board seats in bulk.
ANALYSIS: DOES AMPLIFYING THE SAME VOICES ADD VALUE?
Across the ASX200 as at 24 August 2020 there are ~1300 non-executive director (NED) positions and the split between women/men holding these positions is 35/65.
