Women ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly on­ly one in every five mem­bers of a board of di­rec­tors in this coun­try, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est cor­po­rate di­rec­tors’ com­pen­sa­tion sur­vey.

“The sales, trad­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing & mis­cel­la­neous sec­tor has the high­est fe­male to male pro­por­tion, with fe­males ac­count­ing for 38 per cent of board mem­ber­ship. The bank­ing & hold­ing com­pa­nies sec­tor has the low­est fe­male Board Mem­ber­ship, with women mak­ing up 17 per cent of their boards,” the 2022 Cor­po­rate Di­rec­tors’ Com­pen­sa­tion Sur­vey stat­ed.

The sur­vey was pre­sent­ed in Au­gust by HRC As­so­ciates.

“This re­port is de­signed to pro­vide or­gan­i­sa­tions with key bench­mark in­for­ma­tion on board struc­tures, poli­cies, and com­pen­sa­tion prac­tices. This re­port, rep­re­sent­ing our 12th Edi­tion of the Cor­po­rate Di­rec­tors’ Sur­vey, in­cludes da­ta from a to­tal of 50 lead­ing pri­vate and pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T rep­re­sent­ing four ma­jor in­dus­try sec­tors. This sur­vey ex­er­cise was un­der­tak­en dur­ing the pe­ri­od March to June 2022,” it stat­ed.

HRC As­so­ci­at­ed stat­ed that dur­ing the sur­vey, its con­sul­tants en­gaged sev­er­al chair­per­sons and di­rec­tors who shared their thoughts on the cur­rent cli­mate and di­rec­tion of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance in T&T.

In ad­di­tion to the da­ta re­vealed in the sur­vey, Hol­lick Ra­jku­mar, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of HRC As­so­ciates stat­ed that of the 318 ex­ec­u­tives with­in the 34 promi­nent com­pa­nies in T&T that were analysed, 136 are women.

As such he said women hold 42.8 per cent of lead­er­ship po­si­tions with­in this sam­ple of com­pa­nies.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO), em­ploy­ment-re­lat­ed gen­der gaps are greater than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

“A new in­di­ca­tor de­vel­oped by the ILO, the Jobs Gap, cap­tures all per­sons with­out em­ploy­ment that are in­ter­est­ed in find­ing a job. It paints a much bleak­er pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion of women in the world of work than the more com­mon­ly used un­em­ploy­ment rate. The new da­ta shows that women still have a much hard­er time find­ing a job than men,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the brief, new da­ta shine a light on gen­der gaps in the labour mar­ket, 15 per cent of work­ing-age women glob­al­ly would like to work but do not have a job, com­pared with 10.5 per cent of men.

This gen­der gap has re­mained al­most un­changed for two decades (2005-2022).

“In con­trast, the glob­al un­em­ploy­ment rates for women and men are very sim­i­lar, be­cause the cri­te­ria used to de­fine un­em­ploy­ment tends to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ex­clude women,” the ILO stat­ed.

The jobs gap is par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries where the pro­por­tion of women un­able to find a job reach­es 24.9 per cent in low-in­come coun­tries.

The cor­re­spond­ing rate for men in the same cat­e­go­ry is 16.6 per cent, a wor­ry­ing­ly high lev­el but sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than that for women.

“The gen­der gap in T&T is re­flect­ed at 21 per cent. Women in the labour force is 46.7 per cent ver­sus men in the labour force reg­is­ter­ing at 68 per cent. What we are say­ing is de­spite sig­nif­i­cant progress in fe­male labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion over the past 25 years, per­va­sive and on­go­ing gen­der dif­fer­ences re­main in terms of par­tic­i­pa­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and earn­ings. There is a gap and it re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant gap,” pres­i­dent of the hu­man re­source man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Cavelle Joseph-St Omer stat­ed.

Joseph-St Omer said women are more like­ly to sup­ply few­er hours to the labour mar­ket ver­sus men putting them at risk of be­ing chan­nelled in­to low­er qual­i­ty jobs as well.

‘It is a se­ri­ous fac­tor for us to con­sid­er,” she said.