Obligatory women representation in nonexecutive boardrooms overdue

Given corporate South Africa’s reluctance to increase the number of women in its boardrooms, perhaps it makes sense for government to pass legislation obligation companies to toe the line.
Europeans countries like the Spain, Norway, France and lately Germany have passed legislation obligating companies to allot 30% of seats on nonexecutive boards to women. Prior to that they had not been doing badly either in empowering women in the corporate world.
When pitted against the western countries, statistics of the representation of women at the top end of the corporate ladder or in positions of influence is woefully below par, according to a recent report by Grant Thornton. At the board level  only 15% of directors in listed companies are women; representation of women in senior management is at 27%, over and above 7% of CEO and managing directors position are occupied by women.
There have been sentiments from analyst that enforcing the legislation without the unanimous consent of the corporate world would result in tickbox exercise whereby respective companies would make up the number just to comply. This has been experienced with initiatives like employment equity.