NEW DELHI (AP) – As Indian companies scramble to meet a deadline to appoint women to their boards, some wealthy business owners have a solution that meets the letter if not the intention of the law: appointing their wives.
India’s market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, has set a final deadline of April 1 for all of the country’s listed companies to name at least one female director. In the 12 months after the SEBI order was first announced in February 2014, only 580 companies out of thousands had appointed women as directors, according to local reports. More than 80 appointments were family of company owners.
India’s wealthiest are setting a high profile example of applying the letter of the law. Mukesh Ambani, the second richest Indian who heads the petrochemicals to telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., appointed his wife Nita Ambani to the company’s board.
Industrialist Gautam Singhania named his wife Nawaz Singhania as a non-executive director of his company, Raymond Group, one of the world’s largest textile manufacturing conglomerates. Both women have business experience though not directly applicable to overseeing a conglomerate.
Globally, women lag far behind men in making their way to top management positions and corporate boards. But the situation is dire in Asia where among the leading economies China tops the list with women making up 8 percent of corporate board directors. Japan with 2 percent and South Korea with 1 percent are at the bottom of the heap. In India, women are 5 percent of directors.