Towards realization of Board Gender Diversity in Deposit Taking SACCOs in Kenya

Abstract

Corporate boards play a critical strategic role in charting the direction and performance of organizations. Such entities ought to embrace diversity since this influences work relations and performance through offering greater perspectives from different lenses on business issues, opportunities as well as wider scope of ideas and solutions. Board gender diversity is ubiquitous as it is the most debated diversity issue in firms. Guidelines and/or mandatory laws have been enacted by several countries including Kenya, to enhance gender diversity on company boards so as to eradicate the existing social and labor grievances that women have been experiencing. Female representation in company boards still remains far from the desired levels despite the enactment of these laws. This study’s main purpose was to recapitulate and critically review literature on board gender diversity. The paper interrogated the importance of board gender diversity, the laws touching on gender diversity issues and empirically reviewed literature on board gender diversity and performance. The study used secondary data. The paper posits that board gender diversity is a driver of organizational performance as well as a way of bolstering inclusivity of both genders on boards thus fulfilling legal expectations. The paper recommends that it is indispensable for Deposit Taking SACCOs to consider gender diversity when electing persons to boards if such entities hope to enrich board decision making, risk management, innovative thinking and competitiveness as well as enhance legal compliance.