Editorial | Fix gender imbalance on gov’t boards

It isn’t only the gender balance of their election slates to which Jamaica’s political parties need to pay attention. They have to address the matter of who they appoint to boards – now disproportionately packed with men – when they are in government.

Achieving a better balance need not await Parliament’s approval of legislation on the issue, which has had a roller-coaster ride in the House. The administration that emerges after the September 3 general election should get right to it.

There will be nearly 200 state-owned companies, agencies and advisory bodies to which ministers will have to name boards, requiring the selection of around 2,000 candidates. In the past, criticism of these boards has been mostly about the politics of their composition and their perceived lack of competence for the job. Usually, the appointees are loyalists of the party in power.

Not much attention is paid to the gender composition of boards. That deserves scrutiny, too. Recently, this newspaper did a random review of the gender make-up of 67, or 22.6 per cent, of the 296 boards of QUANGOs currently listed on the website of the Cabinet Office. Of 744 listed board members, 293, or 39.38 per cent, are women.

Eleven of the boards – 16.4 per cent – had majority female membership, while three, that is, 4.47 per cent, had the same number of male and female members. So, there were 14 boards where there were either more women or an equal number of men and women, translating to 20.8 per cent of the sample. Most critically, only 14 of these boards had female chairpersons.

We expect that this trend would continue in an analysis of the entire portfolio of boards. For while the numbers are lopsided in favour of men, the sample group was skewed towards women. For instance, it included many of the perceived ‘soft’ agencies that deal with matters of culture, welfare, children and gender, usually considered the purview of women.

For example, of the 37 members of the Gender Advisory Council, which is captured in this analysis, 31, approximately 84 per cent, are women. The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission – 15 female of 28 commissioners. The Women Outreach Centre Foundation, the Adoption Board and the Child Development Agency all have majority female board members.

These numbers are significant on several fronts, not least of which is how much they highlight the under-representation of women – who account for approximately 51 per cent of Jamaica’s population – in areas where power is exercised, and the gift of appointment is in the hands of political leaders.

Further, they, on the face of it, belie the training and implied competence of Jamaica’s women and seem at odds with their achievement.

A COMMITMENT

In 2015, the International Labour Organization study showed that 59.3 per cent of Jamaica’s managers were women, the highest ratio in the world. Which, of course, makes sense, given that women account for around 70 per cent of enrolment in the island’s tertiary institutions and a similar proportion of university graduates. Women, however, still often collide with the glass ceiling.

Indeed, as we recently noted, a mere 17.5 per cent of the last Parliament were female. Only 30, or 24 per cent, of the candidates for the two big political parties in next month’s general election will be female. But given that in five seats female candidates will face each other, at best, only 25 women, approximately 40 per cent of its membership, have a chance of making it to the House.

We have proposed that parties impose gender-neutral quotas of at least 30 per cent in the election slates, which is similar to what is proposed for government boards in law. The new government should do that, and preferably more. That merely requires a commitment – not a law.