National Australia Bank chairman Michael Chaney was asked a fairly standard question about the lack of women on his board at the AGM in Brisbane last Thursday and his response was most illuminating:
I’d like to see more women on the board. Peter Duncan left the board 15 months ago now, and I said to the directors ‘let’s see if we can find another female’. We have two, which is a bigger proportion than most, but not enough in my view. I would like to see 50% of the board being women. I actually then carried out a search over what turned out to be about a year, and interviewed quite a few female candidates. During the time our view of the sort of qualifications we needed in a new director mutated a little bit, but I still said that’s fine we will find them in a female, and in the end we have not been able to do that. We are in discussion with somebody else and I think we may well appoint a replacement for Peter Duncan in the new year, if we can finalise that, but is likely to be a male. This is a really topical issue, but a really difficult issue, I think. One of the reasons you don’t see many women on boards, you don’t see many women in senior management jobs in companies. It is necessary, I think, for that to occur first, in practice, before you end up with a lot of women on boards. You do get women, obviously, who are highly qualified in the professions, and we have a couple of women, one of whom has had corporate experience and the other regulatory and legal experience, who are great contributors to our board, but for the qualifications we were looking for, in the end, we said that is the important thing, as far as governing the company is concerned, and we should get a woman if we can, but not otherwise, and so that’s where it has landed. But I can tell you that going forward I will always have a bias toward that, if we can do it.
So there you have it. The chairman of NAB set out to find a woman, interviewed the best available talent around and then decided none of them cut the mustard.
I hit the blokey David Jones board with a similar question last month and Katie Lahey, the lonely female director at this company dominated by female staff and customers, didn’t even hide her contempt for the fact that women still only represent a pathetic 8% of public company directors in Australia.
It is clear that the time for words has passed and there is now a need for legislation, regulation and direct action.
Victorian Attorney-General and deputy premier Rob Hulls has written to the top 200 ASX listed companies asking why female representation is so low and less than 10% even bothered to reply.
As was mentioned during this interview with 774 ABC Melbourne’s Lindy Burns on November 6, maybe we need to employ the tactic of getting some notorious woman such as Pauline Hanson to start nominating for boards.
While out-going BHP-Billiton chairman Don Argus is giving speeches assessing the qualities of the four male CEOs who ran the company on his watch, he is silent on the question of why the boardroom of Australia’s biggest company remains a bloke-only zone.
Hanson, it’s time to run for the BHP board every year until they appoint at least one woman, preferably two. Let’s shame them into action. After all, it’s only been nine long years since Margaret Jackson, the first and only female director in BHP’s history, departed the scene.
It is interesting that he does not specify his critera except maybe an assumption that they must have similar experiences to the others, ie by virtually cloning the current crop. I have long suspected that Boards show their change aversion by not risking bringing in someone who doesn’t fit their model. Who says their model is optimum? These are the assumptions that need to be challenged because senior management and boards have not discinguished themselves in decisions they have made in the last couple of years. Before they were carried by a growth spurt, not necessarily their skills. Reproducing the dominant mode is not good leadership or even management.
Ms Jackson shamed herself with Dixon by pretending to act in QANTAS shareholder’s interest whilst actively endorsing the US private equity play (on the promise of a big success fee). Having said that my wife, after years of experience analysing Asian and Australian businesses (run by men) for a top corporate agency, completed the company directors course but cannot get a look in to any boards. As an analyst she sat there and watched men *^%ck up good companies with male ego plays yet still get paid huge separation bonuses (remember AMP’s foray into the UK market? BHP’s USA copper play -both of which eventually cost shareholders a couple of billion!). The routine goes like this
1. new CEO joins on huge $ tightens the belt by slashing jobs and looks for takeover target that will be HIS legacy and satiate his male ego.
2. makes purchase at too high a price but congratulated by media for ‘ballsy’ acquisition that must hold good long term value because……well because why else would he buy it.
3. takeover play fails and goes broke costing shareholders billions.
4. CEO gets away with ‘mistake’ or quietly moves on with golden handshake.
It should make us sick it is so common. I welcome a dose of female sensibility and common sense on more Australian company boards. Unfortunately it is a boys club out there with so many dills holding sway and nothing appears to be changing.
Norway has recently enacted a law requiring all public companies to have 40% female representation or face being deregistered.
(see link http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/06/women.discriminationatwork)
My recollection is that they are just through the transition period and are now at the point where they are starting to prosecute the recalcitrants. There were many predictions of dire consequences by the “blokes club” but now, as the ladies start filling the ranks, it seems by most reports that the outcomes both objective and subjective, have been positive.
As much as the free marketeers might not like regulation, a bit of a legislative push may be needed here as the gatekeepers seem to be predominantly male and the market is definitely not “free”.