More women are taking up board seats in Singapore

Growth in women-led board roles is seen across all sectors.

Women held 25.1% of board seats at the top 100 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX), more than triple from a decade ago and higher than the global average of 23.3%, according to a report by the Council for Board Diversity (CBD).

Across all 615 SGX-listed companies, women made up 18.1% of board members in 2024, compared to just 8.1% a decade earlier.

Meanwhile, the government’s 64 statutory boards reported 34.3% female board participation by the end of 2024, an increase of 1.6 percentage points (pp) from the previous year.

In all, statutory boards made a near 50% increase in the number of women-held directorships over the last six years, up from 23.3% at the end of 2018, when CBD’s public-private-people approach was met with deepened guidance on board appointments by the Public Service Division (PSD).

Moreover, amongst the largest 100 institutions of a public character (IPC), women held 31.8% of board seats in 2024.

This was on the back of a 1.7 pp increase the group made in 2023, which was driven by new guidance provided by the Code of Governance for Charities and IPCs after years of slow progress.

Overall, all IPCs averaged a higher 34.3%.

A five-year review of directorship data found that companies, particularly smaller publicly listed ones, tend to have more gender-diverse boards when women hold roles on nominating committees.