Only one board of 63 publicly-listed companies in Malta is chaired by a woman, research to mark International Women’s Day has revealed.
Carried out by Seed, a consultancy firm, the research sheds light onto Malta’s boardrooms and who is in them.
“The numbers speak for themselves. Only one Board is chaired by a female and only eleven per cent of directors are female,” the report reads.
A look at who the director of the listed companies are revealed that while 89 are men, only 11 are women.
And half of the companies – 32 – are made up of only men. There are 31 companies with at least one female on the board.
JP Fabri, co-founding partner of Seed said: “By looking at positions on these boards, there is no doubt that both the walls and ceilings are of glass. Although close to half of the companies have at least one female director, there is no gender balance.”
The firm also puts forward give recommendations it believes should contribute to “breaking the glass in Malta’s boardrooms.
These include:
- Setting out percentage targets of women on boards in 2025 and 2030;
- Disclosing the proportion of women in boards and senior management in the Annual Reports;
- Issuing of a policy on board diversity by the listing authority,
- Reporting on gender balance matters in listed companies’ Annual Report;
- Advertising of non-executive directorship positions by companies to enhance diversity.
“Glass walls and ceilings are unfortunately not a thing of the past. They remain very much in the present. And unless action is taken, they will remain in the future too.
“The boardroom remains a glass house. It is up to us to break the walls and ceilings,” the firm asserts in the report.