Mittwoch, 21. Januar 2015

Women needed on boards


Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015, 9:00 p.m.

Legendary business investor Warren Buffett hinted once that keeping women out of the corporate game causes an uneven playing field. Now, with three female directors, he explained that one reason for his success was that he was competing with only half the population.

Workplace equality is increasingly important. Gender equity and diversity in corporate governance have become issues of increasing concern. Adding a female perspective to boards of directors is an important business policy issue.

A book titled “Women on Board: Insider Secrets to Getting Women on a Board and Succeeding as a Director” was recently released. It was co-authored by Nancy Calderon, a global lead partner at KPMG, LLP and Susan Stautberg, CEO, co-founder and co-chair of WomenCorporateDirectors.

Spencer Stuart, the leading executive search company, has been involved in the recruitment of board directors for more than 20 years. Recognized for its rigorous evaluation process, Spencer Stuart has joined WCD in driving initiatives to boost diversity in board rooms, not just on the supply side but based on corporate demand.

Tribune-Review staff writer Natasha Lindstrom reported Oct. 5 that 80 percent of the 50 publicly traded companies in the Pittsburgh area have female board members. However, she noted, “Nearly half of law school graduates are women, yet women make up 15 percent of equity partners and 5 percent of managing partners in law firms.”

An article by Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell of Harvard Business School, based on a joint survey with WCD that asked why there are so few women directors, said that one female director responded: “Women are not thought of first as candidates unless a board is looking for gender diversity specifically.”

Another female director lamented: “Boards prefer pale, stale and male.”

Credit Suisse AG Research Institute found companies in industries closer to final consumer contact, including retail, health care and finance have more women on boards. Conversely, heavy industry and IT companies have a much lower proportion, with half of them having no female board members.

The institute pointed to cultural differences. About 72 percent of companies in Asia had no female board members and the number of companies with three or more female board directors was miniscule in Asia and Latin America.

Credit Suisse found that larger companies with a bigger talent pool are much more likely to have women on their boards than are smaller companies.

Julie Hembrock, a board member at Spencer Stuart, said “Moving the needle ... takes incredible amounts of action on all sides of the equation.”

Stautberg said her organization wants “to accelerate corporate governance globally, and one of the best ways is to recruit more women. Study after study shows women make boards more effective.”

Having more women on boards can only enhance the competitiveness of American companies, particularly internationally. Achieving this may require more investor activism.

Quelle: 
http://triblive.com


Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen