Women’s Progress In Garnering Directorships Slows Most Companies With A Woman On The Board Have Just One
The Fortune 500 is finding that a woman or two in the boardroom will due just nicely, thank you very much.
After winning seat after seat on big company boards in the early 1990s, women’s progress in garnering directorships has slowed to a trickle, an annual count by a research group found Wednesday.
Although 84 percent of the Fortune 500 have a woman on the board, the majority of those companies have just one. The number of companies with more than one woman on the board grew from 146 in 1994 to 181 this year.
“They name a woman and then they say they’ve got their woman,” said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a nonprofit group that studies women in business. “The companies that really value women’s talents are naming multiple women to their boards.”
Women board members notice the slowing progress as well.
“When there’s one woman on the board, you can easily lapse into less eagerness for the second or the third,” said Reatha Clark King, head of the General Mills Foundation and a member of four major corporate boards, including Exxon Corp.
“It’s slow bringing people around to recognizing the advantages of broadening the diversity of the board,” she added.
With the appointment of King in June, Exxon has two women on its board. But spokesman Ed Burwell said he couldn’t comment on whether the company planned to add more.
Since Catalyst began its survey in 1993, the number of companies with women directors has risen 21 percent. Women now make up just under 11 percent of the Fortune 500’s 6,081 board seats.
Yet the number of companies with women directors rose less than 3 percent this year and 3 percent last year, following jumps of 9 percent from 1993 to 1994 and 7 percent from 1994 to 1995. Only two more Fortune 500 companies than last year have a woman on their board of directors, raising the total to 419, said Catalyst.
“There are a group of companies that really appreciate the business case for having women on their boards, that really understand that it’s bottom-line smart,” said Wellington. But most of the 81 companies with all-male boards “are not committed to the talents women bring.”
She noted that last year Catalyst found a link between women’s presence on boards and their advancement within a company. Every company last year that lacked women corporate officers had no women on its board either, Catalyst found.
Until recently, companies often sought chief executive officers as board members. “That knocks out women, because they haven’t been there yet,” said Paula Stern, an international consultant and member of the boards of Avon Products, Wal-Mart Stores, Westinghouse Electric and Harcourt General.
That’s changing, as Stern’s directorships attest. To halt cronyism and members who are spread too thin, directors are under increasing pressure to sit on just one or two boards.
As a result, just as women are moving into more senior positions, companies are more often searching for candidates who are “up and comers,” said Theodore Dysart, vice president of Directorship, a Greenwich, Conn.-based consulting firm.
Women on boards also often help pull other women on board. Nearly half of women directors recommended women as candidates, according to a survey released Wednesday by Korn-Ferry International recruiters.
Yet progress may remain slow.
Boards are shrinking - to an average 11 directors from 14 a decade ago among Fortune 1,000 companies - and turnover is low among members. On average, directors serve nearly four terms of 4.1 years each, according to Korn-Ferry.
“It takes time to change a board. You have to make it a priority,” said Marion Sandler, chief executive of Oakland, Calif.-based Golden West Financial. xxxx LEADING THE PACK Here are the Fortune 500 companies with the most women directors, according to the Catalyst research group. Companies with five women directors: College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF) Golden West Financial Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association
Companies with four women directors: Aetna Inc. Avon Products Fannie Mae Gannett Co. Hasbro Inc. Principal Financial Group