AS a student of corporate governance for the past two decades, I have often found myself mulling over the nexus between governance expectations at the corporate level and at the national level in terms of the standards of accountability, transparency and fairness employed.

Let us take a very simplistic view. If one were to think of a country akin to a corporation, in this case Pakistan Incorporated, and consider the shareholders to be all citizens eligible to vote, what would the prescribed governance structure look like?

As per good corporate practices, the shareholders (voters) elect the board of directors (parliament) at the AGM (general elections) for a period as defined in its articles of association (constitution). The shareholders with the greatest voting power instal majority of their members on the board, but with minority members also elected to safeguard their own interests and to ensure that not all policies of the company are designed to benefit the majority.

Will our policies evolve to be more gender-sensitive?

Now let us put a gender lens to this analogy. While reserved seats for women in parliament has helped to get some representation of the female constituency in the country, it was only last year that the Companies Act, 2017, recognised the need to include women in decision-making. Female representation, it is hoped, will ensure that over time the mindset of the corporation is geared more towards ensuring the alignment of the principles of gender parity across all spheres of its economic activity.

Those in the country who have championed this cause take comfort from a similar evolution in thinking in other countries that have had a much longer experience of female participation in decision-making. At a recently held conference to celebrate gender diversity at INSEAD in France, I had the opportunity to hear the Canadian finance minister of talk about the inspiration behind his country’s latest budget. “We cannot all succeed if half of us are left behind,” he quoted Malala, attributing the motivation behind many of the new initiatives introduced under the new budget to this quote.

He claimed that one-third of the growth in Canada was linked directly to women entering the workforce, and quoted other studies which showed that with a mere one percentage increase in gender representation in the workforce, corporate growth increased by three and a half per cent. So what are some of the initiatives introduced after realising that diversity and inclusion is “not just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do”?

For one, every request for project funding from the government has to include a Gender Results Framework to assess its impact towards achieving the gender equity goals supported by Prime Minister Trudeau. This has resulted in projects being prioritised across all ministries that support this overarching goal. As an example, within the transport ministry, priority was given to proposals to improve lighting in public transport infrastructure based on feedback that poor lighting was one of the prime reasons for security fears expressed by women using public transport.

Many more initiatives revolving around equal pay; networks to encourage female entrepreneurs and provide access to capital through especially earmarked pools have been introduced in recognition of the barriers that prevent women from entering the workforce and starting their own businesses.

Of particular interest were the new sweeteners introduced to encourage parental leave for both men and women to facilitate the sharing of the parental responsibilities. While many of our corporates struggle with allowing more generous maternity leave for working mothers, few of them are evolved enough in their thinking to contemplate a more equitable distribution of household duties between working couples, by suggesting paternity leave as well. This inevitably results in overworked women who are expected to contribute to the household expenses while taking on the entire burden of household duties. If not edged out by other inequitable policies, these women finally succumb to fatigue.

So what hope is there that our own policies, both at the national level and the corporate level will evolve through a more gender sensitive lens? The constitution of the all-male Economic Advisory Council, though comprising of some of the best minds and admittedly some gender champions, sends the wrong signal to the nation.

It is a wrong signal in terms of their inability to identify and recognise many talented Pakistani women, it is the wrong signal in terms of walking the electoral talk and it is certainly the wrong signal that policies which affect half the country’s population can be made with no representation from their constituency. Perceptions matter and, in this case, it may not have been ‘the right or the smart thing to do’.

The writer is a former regulator, educator and practitioner of corporate governance, and author of Corporate Governance Landscape of Pakistan (2017).
sadiakhan_2000@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2018