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FIGURES THAT SHOW that more women are taking up company directorships since the start of the recession have been described as “encouraging”.
Analysis of company records from Vision-net show that there are now 104, 971 women in director roles in Irish companies. There were 92,281 in those roles in 2008 – and just 48,571 in 2003. That constitutes a hike of 14 per cent in the number of women in director roles since the economic crash. As there are 494,571 directors in Ireland in total, one in five are now women.
Most of the female directors are in their 40s and 50s – only 4 per cent are in their 20s – and are more likely to operate in the professional, social and personal services, as well as in the construction sector.
In an aside, the most common first name for a female director in Ireland is Mary, followed by Margaret, Anne and Catherine.
However, it also emerged yesterday that only 8 per cent of board members in Irish public limited companies are women. Over half of all PLCs (57 per cent) have no women on their board at all. These figures, compiled by research firm Accreate ahead of today’s International Women’s Day, found that Ireland is “lagging behind” our nearest neighbours, the UK, where 17.3 per cent of all PLC board members are women. In Norway, the figure is 35.9 per cent representation.
There had been some good news for businesses in the end of February figures released from company records, which showed that the number of businesses collapsing had slowed down considerably over 12 months. Although 140 businesses had dropped the shutters between 1 and 25 February, this was a 32 per cent decrease on the same period in 2012. Most of the insolvencies had been in Dublin (44 per cent) and Cork and Kildare had 10 per cent and 8 per cent of the cases respectively.
On the other side of the coin, 3,418 new companies started up in February – that was up 7 per cent on the same period last year. Something to note though: of these, 2,277 were simply registered business names and 1,141 were the incorporation of new companies.
There was less satisfying news, however, in the hospitality and construction sectors – over 66 per cent of businesses in hospitality, and 58 per cent of those in construction, were deemed ‘high risk’.
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I’m not saying it’s the only reason but this increase in women as directors seemed to really increase from 2008………. and we’ve been in an awful recession since around the same time……
You don’t get it: they needed women to get out of the recession.
What’s your point Ted? That women are somehow responsible for the recession? Women are generally more risk-averse in their decision making, so I imagine if there were a few more women at the top in the banks instead of the lying cheating chest-thumping boys club in the golden circle, this country might not be on its knees right now. Move along.
Women are more risk averse??!! How dare you make such a sexist remark and sweeping generalisation of male risk profiling. I am grossly offended.
Wow my bad, I did not see that getting taken seriously, we need a couple of sense of humour transplants ASAP!
Sarcasm is in short supply with women Ted (am I allowed say that?)
I’m all for sarcasm and a good laugh. It was just pretty well buried in your comment though! Consider yourself forgiven ;-)
Alan your not allowed be offended, your a man , taking offence is a woman only thing apparantly
So it would seem Stephen. Happy friday to you
If you meant it to be funny or even ironic then a smiley or a couple of exclamation marks would have come in handy.
In all fairness zeda…greed is one trait that men and women share an equal stake in.
Quick, we need to introduce quotas for women who aren’t called Mary.
A mere 2% of workplace fatalities are women. End the discrimination.
I think international women’s day is patronising to women.
@susanna – There are lots of women in the world who are explicitly second class citizens (esp. in Muslim countries), and many others who are commonly regarded as that (large parts of Africa). Stuff about TD quotas and board of public companies are an embarrassing distraction from these issues, & I wouldn’t disagree with “patronising”.
If women in the 3rd world had time to be offended then they should be offended at the sight of all these pampered western women piggy-backing on their misery to get “equality” in carefully selected areas
Is it international women’s day again, another great idea started by communists. End discrimination by introducing sexism seems to be the jist of this article.
What’s the most common Male name I wonder? John?
“Step it out Mary……”. What is it with Irish plc’s in this day and age?
What is the actual point of this survey? Anyone can be a director of a company. You can form your own company for about €100.
Well when I say anyone, anyone who hasn’t been restricted for company law breaches
have your say