The Wall Street Journal just published a new article on this subject. A huge money manager, State Street announced it would vote against corporate Board members who are part of company’s nominating committee and do not add women to their Boards. State Street is also placing a statue of a young girl on Wall Street where she will stare at the famous Bull. (I did not make this up!)
In a review of the Russell 3000 index of companies, a quarter of firms have no female directors and over half of the firms have under 15% of women on their Boards.
In my book, The Business Zoo, I commented on what I called the One Third role of Board members. One third of Board members should not be on Boards at all due to lack of valuable background, age or being too busy on other Boards. The second One Third had the potential to be qualified and contribute but for a number of reasons did not; not reading the Board materials ahead or ever making a worthwhile comment. The final One Third led the Board and did a great job.
In my day we only had one or two women on a typical Board of 10 to 12. The women Directors were always in the best One Third category. Why was this? Did they consider it an honor and a duty to service a firm which was paying them a lot of money? Were they younger and had much more energy and focus? Did they, as women, just work with other people better when given a chance? Of course all of these reasons are true. In fact, State Street’s research shows that in the last five years, Boards with at least three women Directors outperformed those companies with no women Directors. No surprise to me.
So how do we end up with more women on corporate Boards? I am not big on the statue. I do agree that voting pressure on companies and their Boards can help. Boards all have committees to nominate and elect new directors. Most of the committee members are men who nominate other men who they know. The existing women on Boards need to exert some pressure themselves and get on these nominating committees. Then not be shy about suggesting other women. And they can point to studies that show that Boards with more women directors can drive success and higher stock values!
Add on note: I really appreciate everyone who reads this blog and who bought my book on Amazon. I have received some wonderful feedback and am now starting on a second book!
Brad
bradszootales 
Great post!
I agree totally with your post, and that one solution could be that the existing women on Boards
— exert pressure to be part of the nominating committee for new board members
— and then nominate qualified men AND women that they know.
My company’s new CEO said that there are as many talented women as talented men, and 50% of each gender in each job role makes sense to him.
His point is that we all have bright daughters and we all know bright women whom we want to help succeed.
And if we put a young man next to the young woman and both of them confront a bull (and even a bear), the statue is fine with me. Thanks for your wonderful ideas!