Women hold considerably less sway in Irish board rooms than in other countries, a report published this evening has shown.
The study published by the International Women's Forum (IWF), Ireland shows that women make up only five per cent of the board members in Ireland's top 100 companies. In the US 12 per cent of corporate directors are women.
The IWF report,
Women and Corporate Governance in Irelandis the first gender audit of private company boards in Ireland. It explores the reasons why women are so under-represented at the highest level of Irish business.
Is shows that 78 per cent of CEOs and chairmen interviewed did not have any policy regarding the appointment of women to their boards and 76 per cent did not intend to introduce any such policy.
The research also reveals a striking divergence of men's and women's views on the reasons for the shortage of women directors. The chief reasons identified by men are that women have not been coming through the ranks for long enough, reluctance on the part of qualified women to announce their interest in board service and a shortage of qualified women.
Women directors on the other hand, laid the responsibility for gender imbalance on companies, with a majority suggesting that boards did not know where to find suitable women.
While they also recognised that suitable women were not coming forward for board service, they identified the persistence of gender role stereotyping in board cultures as an important obstacle to women holding directorships.
The report calls for a deeper investigation into the boardroom culture of Ireland's top companies and the continued monitoring of the presence of women on the boards of the leading Irish companies.