[SINGAPORE] Of the 30 companies on the Straits Times Index (STI), just two are chaired by women.

This begs the question: Is Singapore falling behind when it comes to gender diversity in the upper echelons of leadership?

To be sure, such under-representation is not unique to the Republic, industry watchers tell The Business Times.

Sacha Tong, head of secretariat at the Council for Board Diversity, said that the percentage of women board chairs is “disproportionately low”, hovering between 8 and 10 per cent globally.

Mak Yuen Teen, accounting professor at the National University of Singapore Business School, sees the under-representation of women as a broad global trend.

The corporate governance advocate noted that the percentage of female chairs among Australia’s ASX100 is 14 per cent, and the rate among companies on the UK’s FTSE350 is also under 20 per cent.

Singapore’s blue-chip barometer comes in at about 7 per cent, but this is across a relatively smaller pool of firms compared with the larger global benchmarks.

The two women chairs of STI companies are Koh Choon Fah of Frasers Centrepoint Trust ( FCT ) and Teo Swee Lian of CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust ( CICT ); both are chairpersons of the trusts’ managers.

Koh is a notable figure in real estate, joining FCT as a non-executive independent director on Oct 1, 2019. She was later nominated chairperson in late 2023.

Teo spent over 27 years at the Monetary Authority of Singapore until 2015. She was then appointed independent chairperson of the board in 2019 of CapitaLand Mall Trust, and continued as chair after its merger with CapitaLand Commercial Trust to form CICT...