Paper recommends board quotas for Jamaican women
Published:Wednesday | October 26, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Avia Collinder, Business Writer
A position paper on women in governance is contending that policies designed to give critical support to that gender will enhance economic growth at all levels.
Developed by the Women's Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC), the paper calls for quota appointments for women on public-sector boards as a special but temporary measure, ostensibly to create room for more female leaders to emerge.
Government boards, it suggests, should have no less than 40 per cent female representation.
Women account for 43.2 per cent of Jamaica's labour force, but the jobs they do are concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors of the economy.
"Most of the thousands of household workers are among the working poor, earning a minimum wage of $4,500 — approximately US$52 per week — and are without any form of social protection such as health insurance or support of labour unions," said the WROC paper titled 'Women's Participation: Wellspring for Transformation in Jamaica Towards an Advocacy Programme to Increase Women's Participation in Leadership and Governance'.
The document was published in June 2011, but was released publicly on October 18. Its production was funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) as part of a larger project that included training of 100 women in leadership skills and the development of a database used to track their progress.
The document points to other research which, it says, reveals that "women are not only an important catalyst for economic growth", but are also "the single biggest force for world economic growth".
Better than men
And, women are better than men in risk assessment in respect of investments, the paper claims, international studies have also found.
"Countries desiring to stimulate economic growth should promote a greater participation of women in the workforce and reduce the inequalities they suffer," said the World Bank's 2012 Development Report on Gender and Equality and Development.
For example, research done on stock market companies that make up France's CAC 40 index found that "the more women there were in a company's management, the less the share price fell in 2008".
The UNDEF group has sponsored the Strengthening Women's Leadership in Jamaica project implemented by the WROC with the support of the Association of Women's Organisations in Jamaica, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies Mona Unit, the Jamaica Women's Political Caucus and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ).
The WROC position paper produced under this project applauds the PSOJ Corporate Governance Committee's creation of principles and a code for good governance drawing on international best practice.
Research findings
However, research done in 2008 by WROC, in collaboration with Canadian International Development Agency, showed that while women have made significant strides in educational and professional development, they represent only 16 per cent membership of private-sector boards and 33 per cent on public sector boards.
The WROC paper proposes the institution of quotas for appointments to public-sector boards, including school boards and commissions - requiring that board composition be no more than 60 per cent or less than 40 per cent of either gender.
Data from a 2008 discussion on such quotas revealed that of nearly 70 countries with either legislated quotas, voluntary party quotas or reserved seats, the overall representation of women stands at around 22 per cent. For countries with no quotas, the average is 14 per cent.
In elections held in 2007, countries with quotas elected 19.3 per cent women on average, compared to 14.7 per cent for non-quota countries.