Women on boards

As the national agency for sport, sportscotland works closely with our partners to deliver a world class sporting system for Scotland. We work with sport at all levels, from helping young people get more active through Active Schools to working with Scotland’s high performance athletes so they can compete on the world stage. A key partnership we have is with each of the Scottish governing bodies of sport.

All the sports that we directly invest in have a system of governance; a recognised body that works to develop that sport at all levels. At the top of each governing body is a board. Boards give strategic direction to an organisation, and are ultimately responsible for how it operates and if the organisation performs. Crucial to achieving this is the need for boards to have a diverse range of skills, backgrounds and experiences; in short the best boards are balanced boards.

Many historical factors have shaped the reality that we have today where too many boards, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector are dominated by men.

Across the corporate world, companies are also failing to ensure that their boards are balanced, despite the overwhelming evidence that more women on a corporate board means more success.

Why balanced boards work for business

Companies that have at lease one women on their board immediately cut their chances of going bankrupt by 20%. Female board members help to enhance board independence and prevent ‘group-think’ which can easily emerge when most of the board members are of a similar background. The statistics show that the more women on boards, the higher sales and the greater returns on investment will be.

In the UK, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published in February 2011 a review of women on boards, which was led by Lord Davies. This found that 12.5% of the board members of the top 100 British companies are women. One in five of the top British companies do not have a single woman on their boards.

In October 2011, a progress report was published by the Cranfield School of Management, which found that the percentage of women on the boards of the FTSE 100 companies had risen from the 12.5% in the beginning of 2011 to 14.2%. Still short of the 25%  targeted that companies were asked to achieve by 2015. Women accounted for 22.5% of new appointments in this period, fairly well short of the 33% recommended in the Davies report. The Cranfield School of Management will publish progress reports every 6 months.

Much of the problem lies with how boards chose their members. Further research has found that around half of all board members are recruited through friends, only 4% had to go through an interview and just 1% of board members achieved their position by answering an advertisement. If companies are to achieve the 33% target, board members will have to be recruited in a more open and transparent way.

Some countries have implemented a range of policy measures to promote women on corporate boards. Norway passed a law in 2002 which introduced quotas for women on the boards of companies. At that time, 470 companies out of the 611 covered by the law had no female board members, and women made up 7% of the total number of board members. Now, nearly 45% of board members are women. In Spain, companies which have 40% of either sex on their boards will get priority in bidding for government contracts. From when the law was passed in 2007, the proportion on women on Spanish boards has nearly doubled, from around 6% to nearly 12%.

Although the Davies report rejected Norwegian style quotas, the review, led by Lord Davies, promoted many measures which are based on encouraging companies to disclose how many women sit on their boards, what targets they have regarding boardroom diversity and how they expect to achieve these outcomes.

Why balanced boards work for sport

In sport, many boards have been changing to adopt the best practices in governance from the corporate sector. The Government appointed Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport, led by Dame Tammi Grey-Thompson, reported recently in Trophy Women, why a balanced board is good business for sport that despite some progress over the years, sports are still failing to properly represent women in their governance structures.

Some sports have a history of overly male participation, and this has helped to reinforce the view that women were not seen as capable or able to serve in positions that were for many years held by men.

Today, many governing bodies of sport are recognising the need to promote their game more to women, and to remove the barriers that used to prevent women from taking part. Sports which had different governing bodies for their male and female games now understand the need to come together to promote their sport as a whole; and governing bodies understand that it is no longer acceptable to have an entire sport run exclusively by and for men. Sport needs to be open to all.

Even as more women become active and involved as coaches, officials, or just every-day spectators in the sports they love, women are still greatly under-represented in the structures of their sport.

While in the corporate world, board members are still mainly drawn from closed, informal networks, governing bodies of sport tend to have board members who are chosen through a variety of methods. Some use appointments and elections, and more are beginning to bring in open recruitment for at least some board positions to ensure that they have the crucial range of skills that organisations need at their top level.

Yet even with this more mixed approach to board selection, women are still being under-represented on the boards of sports. Many women cite a ‘macho’ culture from club level all the way through to the leadership as a significant barrier to increasing their participation. It can be difficult to rapidly change the culture of the board or organisation. Especially as in so many governing bodies, the board members are mostly volunteers who freely give up their time to help the governance of their sport.

In 2010, the 5th International Working Group on Women and Sport met in Sydney to address head on the barriers that are still preventing women from participating in all aspects of sport. Part of the legacy of that conference was the Sydney Scoreboard, a unique initiative which aims to record the numbers of women sitting on boards of national governing bodies around the world. Countries from America to Zambia have already submitted their information, and international comparisons are an important first step in assessing how far countries have come, and what is still to be done.

sportscotland, along with the national agencies for the other parts of the UK, have recently submitted monitoring data to the Sydney Scoreboard project. Although Scotland can be proud of the highest percentage of women on boards in the UK, there is still much work to be done. In Scotland, our overall high percentage masks an uneven distribution of women on boards; 14 SGBs have no women on their boards, whilst eight have half or more female board members.

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sportscotland is committed to the Equality Standard for Sport, a process managed by all the home country sports councils, which supports governing bodies to develop an understanding for equality, and to promote positive change in their organisation. Through our partnerships of governing bodies of sport, and our commitment to the Equality Standard, we can promote the benefits of balanced boards to SGBs, and help build a world class sporting system for Scotland.