Mentorship programmes not enough to improve gender parity, board diversity

April 14th, 2022 | Letters and op-eds, News, Women in Leadership

This letter was originally published in The Straits Times on 14 April 2022.

Career mentorship programmes were one of the proposed action plans in the recently endorsed White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development to support gender diversity on boards (Mentoring aspiring women directors to be board-ready, April 7).

Mentorship can certainly support aspiring female directors in better understanding their path to directorship and having increased networking opportunities.

Those who are mentored may also go on to become mentors themselves, effectively creating a pipeline of female directors.

But we must also recognise mentorship’s limits as a means of improving gender representation. Mentorship is hardly the only, or the most expedient, strategy we can adopt to improve gender parity on boards.

First, companies should use fairer methods such as board matching services to recruit directors.

Currently, companies rely heavily on personal networks, a process that tends to be highly biased.

Given that most boards are male-dominated, this recruitment process creates a feedback loop that contributes to skewed gender representation.

Also, many women face challenges when it comes to networking, as they may shoulder more family and caregiving responsibilities and thus have less time to spare than their male counterparts.

Formal search and nomination processes should be implemented to source strong candidates for boards.

In addition, boards in Singapore tend to be relatively entrenched.

For instance, the 2016 average tenure for board members in Singapore (9.4 years for male directors and 7.4 years for female directors) was longer than the regional average, which ranged from 3.1 to 8.7 years for male directors and from 2.4 to 5.8 years for female directors.

Renewing boards more often can give female aspirants more opportunities.

Lastly, we should remember to contextualise our low female board representation within the larger landscape of gender inequality at work.

Women don’t face a single glass ceiling at the pinnacle of their careers – they face obstacles at every stage of the professional pipeline. For instance, occupations and management functions tend to be gender-segregated.

Consequently, women do not have sufficient opportunities to gain the varied experiences required to move further up the path towards directorship.

Tackling systemic biases that hinder women at lower rungs will ultimately pay dividends at the board level.

Apoorva Shukla

Executive, Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory

Association of Women for Action and Research