The number of women in the workforce has grown over the years and more and more women have assumed leadership position roles be it as a supervisor, head of team, department, or owners of their own businesses to name a few. Malaysia itself has shown support for women becoming leaders and has written down plans as well as initiatives to support women in such positions.
For instance, the Malaysian Budget 2022 outlined that all publicly listed companies (PLC) ought to include female directors on the board. According to the Malaysian Finance Minister at that point in time, states that it was impossible to ignore the contribution of women to society as a whole, which calls for respect and support. Therefore, this initiative was to recognize women’s contribution to the corporate sector.
However, this initiative is not a fresh one as the Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance as of 28 April 2021 (MCCG) has already stipulated that there should be at least 30% women directors on the board. Unfortunately, this code is not mandatory and only serves as a guide of good practice for PLC and other companies to implement in their companies. As of September 2022, the Malaysian Securities Commission (SC) chief states that only 52 out of 100 PLCs have achieved a 30% women presence on the company’s board.
It is prudent to ensure that these forms of initiatives as well as support for women to assume leadership positions would greatly benefit the companies intending to do so. One of the key factors to determine company performance would be employee satisfaction and/or happiness within the organization (Charinia et al., 2012). Although a number of researches have shown that well-diversified company leadership would positively contribute to the company’s performance, very few have actually dived into how women in leadership alone would impact the company.
Generally, women are softer in nature than men and this may be reflected in how they communicate and carry themselves with other people. Given the difference in physical, and emotional aspects between men and women, this study would look into further details to identify how a woman’s engagement skill would affect an employee’s job satisfaction.