Opinion | Tech experience may help women gain entry to the boardroom

It’s no secret that boardrooms need more women. Only one in five board members of companies in the S&P 500, a leading stock market index, are women, according to a 2015 study by Catalyst, a non-profit organisation focused on accelerating women’s progress in the workplace.

But new Accenture research points to an opportunity: many women who have succeeded in getting on boards have professional technology experience to help propel them. In fact, female directors are nearly twice as likely as their male counterparts to have professional technology experience.

The purpose of the research – in which Accenture examined women’s representation on the boards of more than 500 Forbes Global 2000 companies in 39 countries across five continents – was to understand the gender composition of corporate boards and the role technology plays in the careers of female board members. The research found that 16 per cent of female directors, compared with 9 per cent of male directors, have professional technology experience.

Of the 10 most-represented countries in the study, only Spain, Canada and China had more male directors than female directors with professional technology experience, which suggests even more opportunities in greater China for women with tech expertise to gain board seats.

There’s no doubt that more and more jobs, up to and including the board level, will require technology skills. Our global technology report found that 86 per cent of the more than 3,100 IT and business executives surveyed anticipate that the pace of technology change will increase rapidly or at an unprecedented rate in their industry over the next three years.