There is still a significant lack of gender diversity at the top of Australia’s biggest companies, despite positive movement further down the chain.

This is reflected in newly released data collated by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) which shows that while more women are now on the board of public Australian companies, nearly nine out of 10 board chairs are still men.

The proportion of women on the boards of ASX 200 companies is now just under 38 per cent, a slight increase from earlier this year.

Despite this improvement, less than 13 per cent of the chairs of these boards are women.

When it comes to newly appointed chairs in the last year, just 15 of the 49 people appointed were women, equating to just over 30 per cent.

The situation is more stark when it comes to the top 20 Australian companies, where women make up an average of 45 per cent of the boards, but not one chair.

For the ASX 100, just under 40 per cent of boards are made up of women, while 14 per cent are chairs of these boards.

Diversity lacking

AICD managing director and CEO Mark Rigotti said more work needs to be done to improve gender diversity at the top of Australia’s biggest companies.

“Australia should be very proud of the progress we have made in gender diversity on ASX boards,” Rigotti said.

“It’s clear from the statistics that the positive momentum continues.

“However, despite some progress in the percentage of women being appointed as chairs of ASX 200 companies, they are still far less likely to chair a company than men.

“We need to understand the reasons for this and look to address them just as we have addressed the diversity of the director pool in general.”

According to 30% Club Australia chair Nicola Wakefield Evans, one of the issues is that the CEOs of these companies are also overwhelmingly men.

“We need to do more to understand why the progress made at the broader board level is not translating to chair appointments,” Evans said.

“One contributing factor is that former CEOs remain a key target for new board positions and particular chair roles.

“Until we address the significant under-representation of women CEOs at our top companies, I am concerned that the chair statistics will continue to significantly lag overall director appointments.”

Tech’s gender problem

Gender diversity is still a significant issue within the tech sector, with just 36 per cent of enrolments in STEM courses being women, and women making up 12 per cent of engineers.

According to a recent report, much of this is down to a lack of government support for diversity in the tech sector, rather than an unwillingness to pursue a career in the industry.

There is also a significant gender pay gap across the Australian economy and in the tech sector.

The ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2024 report found that women are paid $12,600 less annually in the tech sector compared with their male counterparts, and that there has been little change in the past decade in terms of gender diversity in tech.

According to data released earlier this year relating to private companies with more than 100 employees, the overall median gender pay gap for salary is 14.5 per cent, and this increases to 19 per cent when it comes to total remuneration.

Of the 5,000 companies required to report data, 60 per cent had a median employer gender pay gap of more than 5 per cent, in favour of men.

Earlier this year the federal government axed the position of Australia’s Women in STEM Ambassador, a role which was created in late 2018 to “encourage girls and women to study and work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields”.

This decision was made based on a recommendation from an independent report on diversity in STEM commissioned by the Industry Department.