The corporate boardroom is seen as the bastion of power and authority. The difficulty women face is accessing the boardroom with the same legitimate power men seem to possess. Recently, studies on gender diversity on at the corporate board level have proliferated in different parts of the world. No one is surprised to find that with few exceptions, not many women have attained board appointments in the countries covered in these reports.

The debate on a boardroom for women has gained a new momentum as several countries and companies consider measures for improving gender equality and economic performance.

Women's aspiration to the boardroom is a symbol and a measure of organisational change. It reflects the current mood today. It also shows how women are not just trying to achieve their goals for the feminist movement but rather for their own self-satisfaction and ambitions. Despite this, the case for getting more women on company boards has never been stronger. As boardrooms are predominantly occupied by men, this means there’s a very small pipeline of women feeding into the C-suite and board roles.

According to recent statistics from the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners released recently, organisations that actively battle the stagnation of the last several years by advancing talented women could indeed provide businesses with an enormous competitive advantage.

Catalyst’s latest global study, Mentoring: Necessary But Insufficient for Advancement, demonstrates that men with mentors are promoted more and compensated at a higher rate, while women with mentors are far less likely to be promoted or paid more as a result of being mentored. Sponsors—mentors who advocate for promotions and high-profile development opportunities—could help narrow the gender leadership gap.

Despite years of progress in the workforce, only six percent of women hold titles such as chairman, president, chief executive officer and chief operating officer in Corporate America’s Fortune 500 companies, and only fifteen percent of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women.

Moving over to India and the top 100 corporations listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, we find that women comprise merely 5.3% of the 1,112 directorships on board.

The survey released recently by Standard Chartered Bank in association with the UK based Cranfield School of Management and Community Business, found that more than half of these companies don’t even have a single woman director. On the positive side, two companies Jindal Steel & Power Ltd and JSW Steel Ltd have female chairs. Two of the country’s largest banks have female chief executive officers—Chanda Kochhar at ICICI Bank and Shikha Sharma at Axis Bank Ltd.

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Natashaa Kaul is a PhD student in the peultimate stage of the degree. She possesses an MBA in HR and OB from the Gujarat State University. Natashaa freelances as a Corporate Trainer and part-time Faculty Member. Her areas of interest include organisational development, psychological contract and performance management.