Jun 25, 2026 – 5.00amFor more than a decade, one word has all but dominated the conversation around Australian boardrooms: diversity.As major shareholders have demanded that boards consider “sufficient cognitive diversity” when putting together a cohort of directors, the proportion of women sitting on the country’s top 50 company boards surged to 42 per cent in March this year, up from 29 per cent in 2018.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Sally PattenBOSS editorSally Patten edits BOSS, and writes about workplace issues. She was the financial services editor and personal finance editor of the AFR, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. She edited business news for The Times of London.Fetching latest articles