Only about six of every 100 B.C.-based directors of large Canadian public companies are women. Women fare better on government boards, where they comprise about 40 per cent of the approximately 2,000 directorships at Crown corporation boards, tribunals, advisory bodies and university and college boards, according to Elizabeth Watson, managing director of board resourcing and development in Premier Gordon Campbell's office.

A Patrick O'Callaghan and Associates study indicates that six per cent of all B.C.-based directors who sat on large Canadian public company corporate boards in 2003 were women. The consulting firm's data show that women's representation on large public company boards actually rose compared with 2002, when only four per cent of B.C.-based directors who sat on such boards were women.

The number of women on B.C. Crown corporation boards, university boards and tribunals is "growing marginally," said Watson.

"When you recruit women, you have to look harder because they're more difficult to find. They're not on the establishment's radar screen," she said.

"Canada's corporate boards are made up of a certain segment of society who tend to be senior businessmen. Their personal networks do not necessarily include bright young CFOs who are 40 or 45 years old," she said.

When Watson asks B.C.'s business movers and shakers to name the top five financial people qualified to sit on boards, they frequently name only men, she said.

"It's not because they're purposely trying to exclude women. Women just aren't the people who pop into their minds," she said. As a result, she does more research to find qualified women.

A total of 12 B.C. women sat on 18 of 293 Canadian corporate boards that Patrick O'Callaghan and Associates studied for the calendar year 2003. So, some women sat on more than one board.

At 11 of those 18 directorships, women sat on either audit, compensation or governance committees, though none chaired those committees.

Two B.C.-based directors chaired committees: Margot Northey chaired the environment committee at Toronto's Norbord Inc. and Barbara Hislop chaired the pension committee at the Hudson Bay Co.

The study said four B.C.-based female directors were deemed "financially literate" enough to sit on audit committees: Ida Goodreau, Alice Laberge, Carole Taylor and IWIB finalist Eva Lee Kwok.

About 29 per cent of B.C.-based companies in the study had at least one female director. That's the same percentage as in 2002, but it is higher than the 2003 national average of 29 per cent, said Patrick O'Callaghan and Associates' director of research Monique Steensma.