Still long way to go: Gender diversification in corporate PH

Four years ago, women comprised only over a third of the executive leadership teams across the 286 companies listed on the local bourse, as these firms struggled to make commitments amid a global health crisis.

With investors and the public now putting a premium on board diversity and gender equality, these same companies feel the need to ensure women representation, especially in management roles.

But while there was an improvement in this aspect by 2022, it was only by 2 percentage points—40 percent from 38 percent—Philippine Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (PBCWE) found in its Women in Executive Leadership Teams report.

Likewise, PBCWE, which sifted through the 2020 to 2022 annual reports of the listed companies with WR Numero Research, says women CEOs remained underrepresented at just 13 percent, up by only 3 percentage points from 2020 figures.

Although women are making a slow climb up the corporate ladder, PBCWE points out that the majority of them were assigned functional roles, or positions that “do not have direct profit-and-loss responsibility,” such as human resources and information technology.

Men, on the other hand, tend to take line roles, or those that drive the company’s key commercial outcomes, including CEOs and chief operating officers.

Why the slow speed? According to PBCWE executive director Julia Abad, businesses are finding it hard to set targets simply because they are not confident of meeting such goals.

“These businesses are competitive, so they don’t like to set targets that they don’t believe they can meet,” Abad tells reporters during their report launch.

“When they set a target, it becomes a global imperative. You have to meet that target because when you give a number, then you commit yourself, your whole company, all your executives to that target. It reflects a serious commitment,” she adds.

A drop in the bucket

As a result, PBCWE said only 1 percent of publicly listed companies have set specific gender targets, or increasing the number of women in leadership roles.

What 45 percent of these firms have done so far is declare support for workplace gender equality and diversity. A staggering 38 percent remain without any type of commitment or declaration, the study showed.

Abad notes that as long as a company is not deliberate in its intention to hire women and strengthen their skills through training, underrepresentation will remain an issue.

“There are firms that have a policy, and they want to have women on their boards, but they don’t have a target,” she says. “If you don’t [set a] target and you don’t measure your accomplishment every year, then your accomplishment is incidental rather than intentional.”

Wanted: regulatory support for diversity

Part of the problem is also the lack of clear policies imposed by regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to support diversity.

The corporate watchdog currently requires all companies to disclose gender-related data as part of its sustainability reporting guidelines that were issued in 2019.

But while the SEC has observed a 94-percent compliance rate among the companies, the effort should not end at merely collecting data, says PBCWE governing council chair Aurora Geotina-Garcia.

“Don’t just get data for the sake of getting data,” Garcia says. “What we need to impart on the regulators is to use and analyze the data [and work] toward policy reforms and policy initiatives.”

For its part, the SEC says it is already seeking “tools” that can help it look at the available data and craft supporting policies, such as data analytics services of independent providers.

As of now, SEC Commissioner McJill Bryant Fernandez explains they still go by the “comply-or-explain” method, which, as the name suggests, requires firms to comply with reporting standards or risk having to extensively clarify the missing data.

“That has been our principle embedded in our Code of Corporate Governance … we also have one at the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) level, so these are the [guidelines] that hopefully compel the companies to adopt these practices,” Fernandez says.

Call to make it mandatory

But having these guidelines does not seem to be doing the trick, experts from PBCWE say, especially since the SEC has yet to make gender diversification mandatory by imposing hard targets.

Garcia cites the case of Malaysia, whose own Code of Corporate Governance requires that 30 percent of all corporate boards be composed of female directors.

In the Philippines, PBCWE found that as of 2022, women held 21 percent of seats in the board of directors of listed companies from 18 percent in 2020.

Garcia recognizes that imposing a quota may be flawed, as some companies can resort to just giving seats to their wives, children and other relatives just to comply.

“The understanding should be that you put them in the boards to meet the quota with the assumption that they have the ability to contribute to the board,” she says.

And although the dream is to have these companies voluntarily give opportunities to women, she also admits that this is a slower process.

For now, Garcia points out that both corporations and regulators should make an effort to make diversification a requirement.

“Make it mandatory but do not penalize them immediately,” she says. “Give them time to comply, and then, eventually, it becomes part of their DNA.”