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Abstract
Global discourse is focusing on how business is governed. As a measure to ensure good governance, increasing gender diversity in board is gaining investors’ attention and is global agenda. Various countries brought-in prescriptive, voluntary or mandatory measures. Keeping alignment, India brought regulatory intervention through The Companies Act 2013, Listing Agreement of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) requiring listed companies to have at least one women director by March 2015. Effectiveness of regulation depend upon implementation and called for impact assessment.Addressing this, in-depth study on representation of women in BSE listed companies of India was done using secondary data of 45 companies covering 21 sectors for a period five years 2012-13 to 2016-17. Using descriptivestatistics the study analysed four aspects (i) representation of women directors in boards (ii) type of directorship positions held by women (iii) attendance of women directors in board meeting and (iv) directorship positions held by women in other Boards. Finding that percentage of women in board barely reached two digits, sharp increase in trend post 2015and no women directorsin many listed companies in 2019, it advocates for regulation. Active research on how to align corporate India with international agenda is suggested.