KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 11): Women hold just 16.9% of board seats globally, says Deloitte Global's latest edition of Women in the Boardroom report, noting that this is an increase of 1.9% from the report's previous edition published in 2017.

"If the global trend continues at its current rate of an approximately 1% increase of women on boards per year, we will be waiting more than 30 years to achieve global gender parity at the board level," said Deloitte Global chairperson Sharon Thorne.

"Even then, actual parity is likely to be concentrated to the few countries that are currently making concerted efforts to overcome this issue, leaving several regions lagging behind," she said in a statement today.

In Asia, women hold 9.3% of board seats, a 1.5% increase from 2016, albeit behind the trend of 16.9% women in board seats worldwide, the statement noted.

Women also fill 4.2% of board chair positions in Asia, a 1.6% increase from 2016, but trails 5.3% of board chair positions held by women globally, it added.

"In Malaysia, certain biases are still prevalent in the organisations and one real example is the assumption that men and women have the same career trajectories and opportunities," said Deloitte Malaysia corporate governance leader Cheryl Khor.

"In the past, women in Malaysia were expected to focus on their families, instead of being a member of the business community. Hence, when considering the talent pipeline, there is a higher fallout rate for women in business and the talent pool is generally skewed to men.

"We see some shifting of trends in the direction which supports women and we should work together to make sure women stay connected and contribute their unique talents to the business community," said Khor.

The statement said there are encouraging signs, however, that businesses in Asia value the benefits of having women on their boards.

It noted that the average tenure of women as board members in Asia is 5.6 years (global: 5.5 years) while women holding board chairs in Asia average a tenure of eight years (global: 5.4 years).

"The average age of women serving as board members and chairs in Asia are 57 and 57.1 respectively, on par with the global average of 57 years for board members and below the global average of 59.4 years for board chairs," it added.

The statement noted that in Malaysia, the government has adopted a 30% target for women in company leadership and decision-making positions in 2011, calling for 30% representation of women on board by 2020.

"While the progress to hit 30% is still ongoing amongst public-listed companies in Malaysia, it is great to see consistent efforts being made by the government through the Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance," Khor said.

She hoped that within a year, the majority of women holding senior leadership or management roles will "break the glass ceiling".

The statement said Malaysia was among the nations that increased their boardroom gender diversity by 5% to 7% since the report's last edition.

Malaysia, it said, saw a 6.9% increase after implementing a series of targets for women in leadership positions, as well as through corporate governance code recommendations.