There is need for a national debate on what initiatives we have made over the years towards bringing more women into the boardrooms of our leading corporations and companies. And here we are not in any way talking about affirmative action. Neither are talking about the regular temptation to tilt towards tokenism at the cost of recognizing real talent.
There is no question that a few women have been appointed to some executive positions ÔÇô especially in a number of state owned parastatals and some government owned companies. But that is far from being enough. A lot still needs to be done. What we need if there is to be any meaningful impact and a true access to a bigger pool of skills is a more diversified base of people rather than having one woman occupy multiple positions in the boards of our country’s blue chip companies. That cannot be achieved if we continue to leave out such a large part of our population. The fact of the matter is that the economy and indeed the country is losing out on a very large scale by not utilizing skills and competencies of such a big size of its population that is women. Many countries have since passed the 30% mandatory reservation mark. And there is no evidence to suggest as Botswana we have plans much less will to achieving the same. Even more disheartening is the lack of evidence to suggest that companies with more women in their leadership positions have fared worse as to make it a plausible reason for leaving them out.
All of it is a result of structural inhibitions ÔÇô often consciously implemented, but also done unconsciously. Companies that have women on their boards have been seen to be more compliant on such matters as regulatory observance, tax adherence and indeed have proved to be more cautious in their assessment of risks. Also companies with women on their boards have been found to be much more sensitive to environmental concerns as well as coming up with sustainable corporate responsibility initiatives and programmes aimed at helping vulnerable members of the community. In other words companies with women in positions of power have often proved themselves as good corporate citizens, well awake of the true state of the environment in which they operate and make money. It would be interesting to see how many of our Botswana Stock Exchange listed companies have women in their boards ÔÇô at both the executive and non-executive levels. And once again we cannot emphasise strong enough that tokenism, where women are appointed for public relations purposes while not giving them power and instruments of responsibility is actually much worse than not having them at all. In other jurisdictions, like in the United Kingdom, companies, especially those in the FTSE 100, were forced to commit themselves years ago that they will move towards putting more women in the boardrooms.
While only a few years ago there were many companies that did not have a single female voice on their board, research shows that today such an anomaly has not only been reversed but almost entirely eradicated. What few companies remain without women directors are either actively searching or have put upon themselves target dates by which time that will be reversed. That, we think is what we need to do with our companies that are listed with Botswana Stock exchange. And because our economy is also dominated by privately owned companies, it will also be more important that moral persuasion is brought to bear also on privately owned companies to appreciate the fact that by sidelining women they are themselves losing out. This therefore is not a matter of altruism or sympathy. Rather it is matter of good corporate governance. It is a social crime that in the 21st century we still have business leaders that treat women the same way like was the situation in the 18th and 19th centuries. While families, households and governments have often been taken to task on their gender policies and attitudes towards women – or lack thereof, the same rules, we contend should be applied to the boardrooms.
