A SEAT AT THE TABLE IS NOT THE SAME AS POWER
Women are becoming more visible on corporate boards. The deeper test is whether that visibility is changing who makes the most important decisions.
A headline number can create the impression of progress.
Women now hold roughly 40% of non-executive director positions across the 50 largest companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Across all director roles, their representation is closer to 37%.
Those figures matter. They show that the boardroom is no longer as exclusively male as it once was. But another number changes the meaning of the progress: women occupy only about 22% of executive director roles.
That gap separates oversight from operational control.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRESENCE AND AUTHORITY
Non-executive directors help guide strategy, scrutinise performance and hold management accountable. Executive directors carry responsibility for running the organisation. They are more likely to control budgets, lead teams, shape products and determine how strategy becomes action.
Representation in either category is valuable. The problem begins when progress in one is used to disguise stagnation in the other.
A company can point to a more diverse board while its most powerful operational roles remain largely unchanged. Women may be present in the room without holding equal influence over what the organisation does next.
Melissa Tighy captures the tension directly:
“I think we do have seats at the table. I do think we do have representation. But I think it’s about what we do with that representation.”
The question is not simply whether women have been invited into leadership structures. It is whether those structures allow them to shape outcomes.
THE EXAMPLES THAT YOUNG WOMEN CAN SEE
Gareth Edwards asks what young girls are meant to learn from the leadership landscape around them.
Every Women’s Month, they are told that no career is beyond their reach. Yet aspiration depends partly on evidence. People imagine themselves in positions they have seen others occupy.
A lack of women in chief executive, financial and technology leadership roles does not prove that those ambitions are impossible. It does make the promise feel less tangible.
This is especially important in emerging industries. Melissa challenges Gareth to name a major woman chief executive in artificial intelligence. He cannot immediately do so.
That brief exchange reveals the problem more effectively than a slogan. Future industries are being built now. The leadership patterns established during their formative years could shape who holds power for decades.
WHEN TECHNOLOGY REPEATS THE SYSTEM
The episode raises a further warning: artificial intelligence may not remove human bias simply because decisions become automated.
AI systems learn from existing information, institutions and patterns. When the world reflected in that data is unequal, technology can reproduce parts of that inequality rather than correct it.
The concern is therefore bigger than hiring statistics. If women remain underrepresented in the rooms where technology, finance and corporate policy are shaped, the future may inherit the same blind spots as the present.
This is why annual awareness is not enough.
The conversation cannot peak in August and disappear in September. Progress should be measured through appointments, succession plans, influence, budgets and decision-making power throughout the year.
A seat at the table is meaningful.
The real test is what happens when the decisions begin.