Posts Tagged ‘boardroom’
C This
Corporate boards have grown less diverse over the past six years—but why? Is the recession to blame, or an uptick in African-Americans choosing to retire from boards, or an unintended consequence of U.S. financial legislation? To find out more about the culprits—and what you can do to help reverse the trend—check out today’s C This.
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Dropping the Ball
Last year, white men made up 72.9% of board members at the nation’s 100 largest companies, up from 71.2% in 2004. Why are the numbers going backward? As I suggested to MSNBC, amid the recession many companies took their eye off the ball when it came to diversity. Companies are not actively excluding women—they’re just not making a focused effort to include them.
READ: “Minorities Lose Ground in Big Corporate Boardrooms,” by Allison Linn, MSNBC, 5/3/11
Just Say “No”
Study after study has shown that companies with more women in senior positions outperform those with fewer. Joe Keefe, CEO of Pax World, argues that shareholders should say “no” to all-male corporate boards on annual proxies, and say why. And I agree. If you have a voice as a shareholder—use it!
READ: “Women-Savvy Companies: A Better Investment Bet,” by Linda Tarr-Whelan, The Financial Times, 4/25/11
Messing Up Mentoring?
What are the pitfalls around mentorship programs? At the top of the list: a lack of clear goals. “Without a goal—a reason for the mentoring program—there can be no strategy, and without strategy, you won’t create a mentoring impact, let alone a mentoring culture,” said Ann Tardy, a San Francisco-based management consultant. “Before you do anything else, determine why you want a mentoring program, what goals you have for the program, and what success will look like.”
READ: “How Companies Mess Up Mentoring,” by Harvey Schachter, The Globe and Mail, 5/9/11
Top Earners Mostly Men
A survey of the salaries, bonuses, and long-term incentive awards of CEOs from America’s top 350 companies found that median compensation surged 11% to $9.3 million this past year. Poring over the names of the 350 top earners, I was disappointed to see only a handful of women. Since most top earners are men, it’s no wonder that women lag men in pay throughout the rest of the system.
READ: “CEO Pay in 2010 Jumped 11%” by Joann S. Lublin, The Wall Street Journal, 5/9/11
Macho Men
Bad news for “macho” men: New research has shown that sixty-five-year-old men with macho attitudes are about half as likely as their peers to have gotten basic preventative medical care in the past year. And Catalyst research suggests that dropping a “macho” attitude is a key determinant of whether men support or resist efforts to close gender gaps in the workplace. So, do you still want to be a macho man?
READ: “Machismo Kills Men,” by Christopher Shea, The Wall Street Journal, 4/26/11
C This
An academic paper claiming that women are underrepresented in the sciences because of the lifestyle choices they make is getting a lot of play in the media. The only problem: the authors push aside clear evidence that sexism and institutional biases are to blame. Read more about this controversial study, plus news about the glass ceiling in the UK, the benefits of diverse leadership, gender equality in revolutionary Tunisia, and the lack of paid-parental leave in the United States, in today’s C This.
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Investing in Diversity
Invest in companies that invest in women. That’s the take-away message from a recent article highlighting this year’s Catalyst Award winners: Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, and Time Warner. Noting how female leadership is tied to strong financial performance, the article concludes: “When seeking winners for your portfolio, companies that embrace diversity and empower all their workers are a great place to start.”
READ: “Women Execs Drive Winning Performance,” by Selena Maranjian, MotleyFool/MSNBC, 2/16/11
Show Me the Data
Researchers Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams claim in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that discrimination against women in sciences does not exist. Many disagree. Among the trove of research Ceci and Williams overlook in their paper is a 2007 landmark study, “Beyond Bias and Barriers,” which found that in sciences and engineering people are less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical qualifications, less likely to give a woman credit for identical accomplishments, and will far more often give the benefit of the doubt to a man than to a woman. “The language attributing women’s lower pay to their own lifestyle choices is seductive,” said a critic of the report, Hillary Lips, Director of the Center for Gender Studies at Radford University. According to Lips, a closer look will reveal that “the impact of discrimination is actually deeply embedded in and constrains these choices.”
We’re Number One?
At least 178 countries have national laws guaranteeing paid leave for new mothers, while more than 50 nations—including most Western countries—also guarantee paid leave for new fathers. The United States has neither. “Despite its enthusiasm about ‘family values,’ the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families,” said Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this.”
READ: “Report Decries Lack of Paid Parental Leave in US,” Associated Press, 2/23/11
Double Up, Or Else
A Parliamentary report on gender disparity in UK boardrooms called for companies to more than double the number of women on their boards by 2015—or face government action. Today, 18 FTSE 100 companies have no women in their boardrooms and nearly half of all FTSE 250 companies do not have female directors. “Radical change is needed in the mindset of the business community if we are to implement the scale of change that is needed,” said former minister Lord Davies of Abersoch, author of the report.
READ: “Davies Report Calls for More Women in Boardroom,” BBC, 2/24/11
Women’s Revolution
Revolutions now sweeping across North Africa and the Arab world had their genesis in the example set by Tunisia. But what drove Tunisia’s successful revolution? The country’s women. “It’s no coincidence that the revolution first started in Tunisia, where we have a high level of education, a sizeable middle class and a greater degree of gender equality,” said Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, a Tunisian-born psychiatrist and author now living in Paris. “We had all the ingredients of democracy but not democracy itself. That just couldn’t last.”
READ: “Women’s Rights a Strong Point in Tunisia,” by Katrin Bennhold, The New York Times, 2/22/11
Be Afraid, Very Afraid
I was never a fan of scary movies because there are enough real scary things already out there! Below is a list of the Top Ten that my colleagues and I are scared about this Halloween. Freddy Krueger’s got nothing on these.
The Catalyst Top Ten Halloween Fears:
#10. That “zombie boards,” homogenous boards of directors that lead to group think and less innovation, will live on.
#9. That the “old guard” who thinks that the system works well and all workplaces are already meritocracies will never retire.
#8. That being captain of the football team will continue to evidence leadership capability for men, while any job that women have held outside of work—being president of their hockey team or founder of a nonprofit—will be seen as less-than-leadership.
#7. That the strong female leader/“wicked witch” stereotype will never go away.
#6. That myths and falsehoods, such as “women are more than half the labor force” or “women get paid more than men,” will continue to spread.
#5. That “analysis paralysis,” the belief that more data are needed before real workplace change can begin, will retain its lock on the workplace.
#4. That the gender pay gap widens and, like in a nightmare, no one will seem to notice or care.
#3. That organizations will continue to promote men based on their potential for leadership, while insisting that women show proof of performance before being considered.
#2. That silly and misleading phrases such as “mancession,” “mengagement” and “woman up!” will continue to poison our lexicon.
#1: That the mantra, “We’ve already got one woman,” will haunt boards, C-suites and executive ranks for decades.
C This
The gender gap receives attention as a serious business issue as more corporate leaders adopt programs and policies to remove barriers to advancement of women. Women are being recognized as a source of talent and future leadership, and progressive business leaders are working toward a truly level playing field. Some recent stories point to research by Catalyst and others to support these actions.
Women in Power Is a Leadership Issue
In a opinion piece in The Globe and Mail’s Time to Lead: Women in Power series, North American Vice President Deborah Gillis uses facts and research to counter the misconceptions that women have made it and that promoting women disadvantages their male colleagues. The fact is that women continue to be underrepresented at senior levels of business and in Parliament. And corporations with women at senior levels are growing their bottom line—and opportunities for all their employees.
READ: “More Women in the Workplace is Good for Business”, by Deborah Gillis, The Globe and Mail, 10/13/10
Women on Boards Correlate to Stronger Financial Performance
Corporate recruiter Janice Ellig, CEO of Chadick Ellig, cites research by McKinsey & Company and Catalyst to demonstrate effect of senior women on financial performance. “It’s not just in the boardroom, it’s at the C-Suite too. Those are the people making the decisions.”
Gender Diversity: Not Just a Woman’s Issue
Gender equality is still an issue at work, but it is not a women’s issue. Gender initiatives have traditionally focused on improving women’s participation in the workplace, but recently (in sociological terms, anyway) there has been a shift towards making “gender-“’ a gender-neutral problem.
Powerful Women Make Mistakes—and Make the Most of Them
Moira Forbes blogs about the similarities between an effervescent seven-year- old’s “awesome” pink cast and the lessons some powerful women have learned from apparent setbacks.
READ: “What Do Highly Successful Women and 7-Year-Olds Have in Common? by Moira Forbes, Forbes, 10/12/10
Lessons From Norway
Guest blog by Morten Huse, Professor of Organization and Management, BI Norwegian School of Management and President of the European Academy of Management
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In Norway, 40% of the board members of publicly traded companies are women. That’s because they must be—by law.
Norway’s approach is considered progressive. Indeed, many call the country’s initiative the boldest move anywhere to address an issue that one author has flagged as “one of the most durable barriers to gender equality.” Not surprisingly, other countries are thinking about following in Norway’s footsteps. However, business leaders, politicians and women in these countries are first asking whether or not the legislative solution has in fact made a difference in Norway.
Several studies, including one that I recently undertook with co-author Sabina Nielsen, have been conducted to explore the following factors:
- The societal impact of power balance, democracy and culture
- The business impact relating to diversity, competence and critical mass
- The individual impact focusing on the glass ceiling, careers and tokenism
Simple answers about the law’s effectiveness are not yet possible. Before drawing conclusions, we need to understand and define aspects of value creation, including the tasks boards are to perform, plus the identities and behaviors of women board members compared with those of men board members. We also need to understand the effect of board processes, working styles and leadership.
In our study—based on responses to a questionnaire from 392 board members in 120 firms—my co-author and I did not find differences between women’s and men’s responses. We found that women directors may impact board involvement in strategic decision-making, but that the degree of impact depended upon the diverse values and professional experiences the women brought to board service as well as the perception of equality among the women and men board directors. Furthermore, we found that the degree of impact depended upon how the women used their knowledge and skills in the boardroom. Knowledge and diversity matter only if they are used, and many boards do not have processes or a leadership style that encourage the use of knowledge and skills.
That said, our study did show that the Norwegian law mandating a quota for women on boards has had a significant effect on how boards achieve their objectives. Members and their leaders have started to pay attention, not only to board composition, but also to the inner workings of boards. Moreover, we found that tokenism did not seem to be important for newly elected women who feel they are as influential as their male counterparts and considered as equals.
Finally, our research revealed the importance of critical mass on decision-making. As we noted in our study, “If women with similar (traditional) professional experiences but different values are selected, they may be able to enrich board decision-making.” The impact was considerably greater on boards with at least three women.
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Morten Huse is Professor of Organization and Management at BI Norwegian School of Management and President of the European Academy of Management. He has written, edited or co-authored more than one hundred scientific articles and 15 books, including Boards, Governance and Value Creation: The Human Side of Corporate Governance (Cambridge 2007) and The Value Creating Board (Routledge 2009).
Women on Board?
Canadian and American women dominate the ice— but not the boardroom.
Our new Canadian Census reveals that women make up 47% of the labor force in Canada, but only 14% of board directors in FP500 companies. In the United States, the numbers are also low. Women comprise 47% of the U.S. labor force, but occupy just 15% of the board seats. What’s worse, these numbers have remained virtually unchanged the last few years.
You may think board directors are so high in the org-chart stratosphere that they couldn’t possibly affect you or your job path. But they do. That’s why it’s important to look for diversity when deciding where to work.
The boardroom sets the tone for the organization. The more women on a corporate board, the higher the percentage— five years later— of women in senior positions, especially senior line positions.
Companies with more women board directors, on average, financially outperform those with the fewest. In fact, the more women on board, the better the performance. And companies with three or more women on their boards, on average, perform even better! Chances are that these more successful companies afford women greater opportunity for advancement and development.
So when you are looking for a job, first check that annual report. Skip the pretty pictures, and head for the board listing. If it doesn’t include at least one woman— and preferably three or more—your odds of developing a satisfying career and rising to leadership have just taken a serious hit.
Choose an organization that invests in women. Vote with your feet.
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