Women hold 1 in 5 board seats in Hong Kong firms for first time, report says

Significant disparities remain in senior-management representation and pay equity, reports show

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People cross a road in Central during lunch hour on January 6, 2025. Photo: Jelly Tse

Published: 7:30am, 5 Mar 2025

The proportion of seats occupied by women on the boards of Hong Kong-based companies has surpassed one in five for the first time, but significant disparities remain in senior-management representation and pay equity, reports show.

Across all Hong Kong-listed companies, 20.8 per cent of board seats were occupied by women as of October, up from 19 per cent a year earlier and 16 per cent in 2022, according to a report published by MSCI, an American financial company known for its indices. Companies with a woman in the CEO’s office increased to 5.6 per cent from 4.4 per cent a year earlier, the report added.

“[Asia-Pacific], a diverse region that encompasses both developed and emerging markets, continued to move towards increased gender diversity, particularly in reducing the number of all-male boards,” said Moeko Porter, APAC corporate governance research lead at MSCI.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), which runs Asia’s third-largest stock market, changed a rule three years ago to require every listed company to have at least one female board member by the end of 2024. As of January, 85 listed companies, or about 3 per cent of the total, had failed to comply, according to HKEX. At the time of the rule change, about 800 firms or 40 per cent of listed companies had all-male boards.

Companies with boards that were at least 30 per cent female achieved 19 per cent higher cumulative returns than those without, MSCI said.

The percentage of companies with a woman in the chief financial officer role fell to 14.8 per cent as of October from 19.1 per cent a year earlier – the second-largest decrease in the Asia-Pacific region, the report said.