I interviewed Banyan Tree's independent director, Mrs Elizabeth Sam recently for a story I did. While she may not be the head honcho of the group, it was thrilling to talk to a woman who have achieved so much over the years and still have time to sit down at the hairdresser's to get her hair coloured and done.

So I wonder if I'll be like her one day.

I'm sure many other girls think about it too.

But when you look through the list of board members in Singapore's listed companies, you can hardly find anybody like Mrs Elizabeth Sam.

No I don't think this is a case of sexism where gender is used as a prerequisite to get to the top of the corporate ladder.

I believe it's more a case of qualifications. See a lot of women drop off the corporate ladder to care for their families at the peak of their careers.

So women may not be as qualified as the rest ie. the men who go on to gain more experience as they work.

Obviously, there's no point putting someone in the boardroom just because she's a woman but not qualified enough to make meaningful opinions.

Or are they? The issue lies in the qualifications required to get into the boardroom. Mrs Sam has 40 over years of experience in the financial sector including being Chairman of SIMEX – what SGX was previously known as.

What if we changed the qualifications to the amount of time and effort spent on nurturing her household members? If she can care for her family, she jolly can do the same for a company

If we want more diversity of opinions in a boardroom, we want different experiences, not someone with the same set of skills with the only difference in skin or gender.

Labels: career, Elizabeth Sam, Oestrogen, sexism, SGX, women