Lopa Rahman leads corporate governance (CG) advisory services for South Asia. In addition, she provides investment support on CG matters to IFC investment clients originating in the region. She is leading the following IFC projects: Corporate Governance for Women in Sri Lanka which is a three year project initiated in partnership with Government of Australia, aimed at increasing the number of women on boards and in senior management; South Asia Regional Corporate Governance project, covering Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
For IFC, as the world’s largest provider of development finance, gender is a priority. It is aligned with our overall mission to support private sector-led development to create markets and opportunities. For us, promoting gender equality is not only a social and moral imperative, but also an instrument for development. We believe that closing gaps between women and men in leadership is smart business. It not only brings out diversity of thought, skills, and experience to the table, but also makes companies stronger, more efficient and accountable says Lopa Rahman of IFC in an interview with BMD.
She further states as part of their overall work, they help build capacity, raise awareness, and expand the discussion about gender diversity on boards in emerging markets and developing countries.
IFC is also the first development finance institution to require corporate governance analysis for every investment transaction as part of our due diligence process. IFC analyzes the corporate governance structure of each company to evaluate the benefits and risks to our investment and they provide suggestions on how to strengthen diversity and inclusion where required. It is part of our ethos.
Execerpts from the interview.
What about the Sri Lankan context, and how is IFC promoting women’s business leadership in the country?
Sri Lankan women have made a name for themselves globally – be it in the political front as the world’s first female Prime Minister or in setting records for having the first female from a country to climb Mt Everest.
However, despite improved educational and health outcomes, women’s participation in Sri Lanka’s labor force remains low, and what is most alarming is that it has gone further down – from 41 percent in 2010 to 36 percent in 2016.
There is ample evidence supporting the business case for higher gender parity. The latest research by the McKinsey Global Institute says that Sri Lanka could add 14 percent to its GDP by reducing gender gaps. Out of 95 countries included in the study, Sri Lanka ranked as the number two country that stands to gain the most.
When we look at the private sector, women in senior management constitute about 20 percent, and as our latest research highlighted, only 8.5 percent of board members of companies listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) are women – a slight increase from 8.2 percent in 2017.
However, when compared to more developed economies where the range is between 20-25 percent, this rate is low, and certainly lower compared to the potential that exists among Sri Lankan women whose educational attainment at the tertiary level, is not at par, but higher than that of men.
When it comes to IFC’s work, in Sri Lanka, we initiated the ‘Corporate Governance for Women Project,’ which is supported by the Government of Australia under the IFC-DFAT Women in Work program, to help increase the number of women in boards and in senior management.
Under this project, we undertook a study to understand if there is a correlation between financial performance of companies and board diversity in Sri Lanka. We analyzed the relationship between gender diversity in business leadership positions and the financial performance of the top 30 companies by market capital on the CSE during the last three years – from 2015 to 2017.
The findings suggest that companies with higher gender diversity outperformed those with no gender diversity by 20-30 percent in Return on Asset and Return on Equity. This correlation was statistically significant when there were women serving as Independent Directors and women on audit committees of the boards.
This is where our expertise comes in. To promote sound corporate governance practices, we have built training programs and toolkits which include modules that highlight the need for diversity in corporate boards, empower women leaders and build a robust pipeline of female talent, and promoting role models. We launched this toolkit in Sri Lanka last year in partnership with the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors will certainly help towards achieving this goal.
How does Sri Lanka compare to more advanced markets with regards to women on boards and in senior management?
In Sri Lanka, based on an analysis of annual reports of 290 listed companies for 2018– which was conducted for IFC’s directory on women on boards – we found that there are only 8 women that serve as either Chair or Vice Chair, and only 2 out of the 290 companies, were headed by a woman CEO or Managing Director. This is a drastic decline when compared to the 2017 analysis where 17 companies had a female Chair or Vice Chair. Despite immense potential, we lag behind. This is not just a scenario specific to Sri Lanka only, it is happening across the globe.
While global studies support the business case, the fact remains that even the biggest global companies are far from having achieved gender parity on boards.
Yes, women have made a crack in the glass ceiling by rising the corporate ladder, from executives to senior managers and to the board, but many are still being left behind. In more advanced markets, the percentage of women CEOs is low – about 4 percent. The number of women CEOs at S&P500 companies in 2018 is just 25, and for Fortune 500 companies, it dipped to 24 from 32 in 2017. So clearly, there is a drop in the number of women at the helm.
In more advanced economies, countries have introduced mandatory quotas (Germany, France, Belgium, Iceland, Italy) or voluntary goals (Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom) as means of bridging the gender gap. There are also countries who have set no such goals or quotas at all (Australia, Denmark, the United States of America). It is not to say that countries without goals have achieved gender parity on boards – S&P 500 companies have been around 18 percent over the past decade or so – but it seems there is no urgency to close the gender gap.
What is the experience from other countries that mandated quotas for women on boards?
In India, the 2013 Companies Act mandated quotas for women on boards suggesting that all companies listed on stock exchanges must have at least one woman on its board of directors. The impact of this was seen from 2014 onwards where the percentage of women on boards increased from about 6 percent to 13 percent, and 14 percent in 2018. In the initial years many company promoters put their wives and daughters on boards just to meet regulatory compliances. However, as part of the research under the corporate governance scorecard initiated by IFC, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and Institutional Investor Advisory Services, it shows that 88 percent of the top 100 companies on BSE have at least one non-promoter women director. Box ticking is therefore a myth – majority are independent or non-family. Interestingly, 74 percent of 50 newly IPO companies also had non-promoter women directors. Companies are seeing the value in that external perspective and seeing the real benefits of diversity.
Given that the Government of Sri Lanka has announced progressive quotas for women on boards of listed companies, the pace for gender parity on boards will certainly accelerate. The 290 listed companies on CSE have board sizes ranging from 6-16, median board size being 10, to have 20% female representation, we estimate that an additional 200 women at least would need to be “board ready” considering we have about 140 women that are already directors of listed companies. With our continuous commitment towards promoting sound corporate governance, we are hopeful that we can create a stronger pipeline of women business leaders who will undoubtedly impact the country’s way forward.