How does Hawaii measure up when it comes to having women serve on the boards of its biggest companies? PBN editor-in-chief A. Kam Napier has more.
Pacific Business News’ home office has conducted nationwide research, finding that at the end of 2017, the average U.S. public company had nine boards seats, of which 1.3 were held by women. This representation varied by industry and company size.
For example, women have the greatest representation on the boards of companies in such industries as energy, apparel and diversified manufacturing. Women had the least representation on boards in drug research, pharmaceuticals and pipelines.
Women were better represented on the boards of some of America’s biggest publicly traded companies, those with market capitalizations of $50 billion or more. For companies of that scale, 22 percent of board members are women. That drops to nine percent for companies with a market cap of $100 to $500 million.
Overall, Hawaii’s public companies have a greater than average number of women serving on boards. Seven out of 10 such companies here have women board directors, ranging from 9 percent of Hawaiian Holding’s board to 36 percent of Central Pacific Financial’ s board. Three companies, First Hawaiian Inc., Maui Land & Pineapple and Territorial Bancorp, have no women board directors. One caveat there: First Hawaiian has two boards, one for its parent company, one for the day-to-day bank operations, the latter board does have women directors.
UH professor Shirley Daniel is co-chair of the Hawaii chapter of Women Corporate Directors tells PBN that while there are still improvements to be made, Hawaii businesses over the past 15 years have made significant progress toward promoting women into senior leadership positions.
