The Australian Corporations Act refers to those appointed to chair meetings. It does not specify a title for those appointed to chair a board meeting, or any specific duties.

Guerdon Associates analysed ASX 100 board chair position titles in association with the board fee analyses published last month (see HERE).

Position titles were recorded as per summary and statutory tables within Annual Reports.

Table 1: ASX 100 names of Chairs of the Board

 

In the ASX 100, it has become more common for companies to elect more gender-neutral names such as “Chair” over the long-standing position title of “Chairman”.

From Table 1, there is a close to even split between the position title “Chair” and “Chairman” for overall and across genders. The traditional “Chairman” position title remains the most used.

Position titles are independent of incumbent gender, given a position’s duties and accountabilities do not change with gender. It appears that in this respect, the application of chair titles retain their integrity. That is, it does not appear that titles are amended to match the gender of the incumbent. That is, chairwoman was not used as a title, even by the 10 female incumbents. However, this assumes that companies using the term “Chairman” with a male incumbent were not using the title to denote their incumbent’s gender. This may not be a valid assumption – see the next paragraph.

Of the 43 companies that used “Chair” as the official position title, five referred to the “Chairman” elsewhere in the Annual Report. The five incumbents were male. The converse was not true of female incumbents with the chair title. That is, there was consistent use of the chair title throughout the disclosures.

For the position titled “Chair” there were five female incumbents. The position title “Chairman” also had five female incumbents.

Block (SQ2) was the only company in the ASX 100 to identify the position title as “Chairperson”.

Does a title or gender have an impact on pay? Table 2 suggests no significant fee differences observed when differentiating between gender and position titles. However, no clear conclusions can be drawn given the small sample size of female chairs within the ASX 100.

Table 2: ASX 100 statutory outcomes of Board Chairs

 

A more in depth analysis of non-executive directors fees can be found HERE.

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