Women should not shy away from serving on corporate boards even if they suspect they have been chosen as a token gesture, a leading American expert said on Tuesday.

I set out to prove I deserved to be there.

Speaking to a mainly female audience at the Chamber of Commerce in Valletta, Mary Dwyer said she understood that some women were uncomfortable with the idea of a quota for women or token promotions to corporate boards, fearing they would not be judged on merit.

“I always felt that even if I was viewed as a token, I didn’t care,” said Dr Dwyer, president and CEO of IES Abroad, one of the US’s largest non-profit study abroad programme providers.

“I set out to prove I deserved to be there. Someone has to step up, take the hit and move the organisation on,” added Dr Dwyer, who has served on four different boards in her lifetime.

Dr Dwyer was speaking on the “Value of Women Serving on Corporate Boards”, a topic that made headlines yesterday when a proposal to force EU-listed companies to allocate at least 40 per cent of their board seats to women was backed by most EU commissioners.

But it is still at an early stage and the plan is opposed by some member states, including Malta.

When asked for her opinion on quotas by US Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, Dr Dwyer said her experience was that quotas disadvantaged women board members, who had to work twice as hard to prove themselves. The real issue was ensuring more women were represented at higher levels across companies and organisations generally, which should automatically lead to more women being chosen for boards because of their expertise, Dr Dwyer said.

For this to happen, measures were needed to allow women to spend more hours at work and less at hours at home, she said.

Chamber of Commerce management officer Andrew Mamo reiterated the Chamber’s “strong stand” against quotas.

He said mandatory quotas for women on boards would mean companies becoming sidetracked from making the right decisions. Instead the focus should be on creating the right conditions for encouraging more women to progress in the workplace.