The future boardroom: 30% female?
Ruth Wilson
Friday, 08 May 2009 07:51 UTC
The Norwegian Companies Act requires publicly owned companies to have boards that are 40% female. There are tough sanctions for any that do not comply – ultimately the threat of dissolution.
We had a vote on this at our recent conference, with a majority (58%) in favour of having a ‘30% female’ legislated requirement for boards in the UK.
Norway has high female engagement in education and low female unemployment. It has prior experience of a quota system for MPs, which has resulted in equal numbers of men and women in government. But in 2002 women in Norway held just 2% of public board positions. After the Companies Act legislation this increased to 36% female participation in 2008.
We were lucky to have a Norwegian speaker (Mari Teigen) at one of our conference workshops. She said there was considerable scepticism amongst men and women when the legislation was first proposed – suggestions that inappropriately qualified women would be pushed into board positions at the expense of better qualified men. It seems that now the legislation has been in place for a few years and 1000 new women are participating on boards, the law is largely accepted as being both fair and beneficial to business and to women.
At the moment in the UK there are targets – these are softer than legislation and seem to have had limited impact so far: only 12% of directors of FTSE100 companies are women (womenomics), and our data at UKRC indicates that 9% of directors of UK FTSE 100 companies in science/engineering/technology sectors are female. In the US, only 3% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women (source: womenomics). The Swedish Government is proposing extending the quota to private companies, and the Spanish Parliament has passed legislation calling for 40 per cent board participation by 2015.
I want to ask NN readers how many women are on the board of your science/engineering/technology employer, or your university or other key body. Would legislation be a good thing? Comments welcome from board rooms and back rooms and rooms with a view :-) Are there NN members in Norway? Do get in touch.
Updated 08 May 2009 14:48 UTC
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Replies
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What a good question! I’m not sure what I think of this practice – on the one hand it is great to provide aspirational opportunities for a group of people, but on the other, being a “woman” or “having one leg” does not qualify you for any particular profession or career.
I look forward to reading what others think, but in the meantime I will have a go for Nature Publishing Group- which is neither a public company nor has a board (as it is an unincoroprated divsion of Macmillan Publishers). It does, however, have an executive committee, which I’ve just checked out and has nine men and two women. That’s pretty poor by these standards. However, if you add in our super-boss, Annette Thomas (chair of Macmillan), you get up to 9 men:3 women. Better, but still not quite good enough by these criteria. -
Good idea Ruth. And Maxine, you have made a valid point. However, if I may take us back to the era of race discrimination and positive “discrimination”, it was felt by many minority groups that there was first a threshold to break before you could even think of acceptance on merit alone. In other words, many in the race relations movement believed that it might be necessary in the beginning to hire a minority candidate who might not quite meet the requirements for a job in order to even begin the process of equal representation. It is not ideal, and it was so recognized as such at the time. But it was felt to be temporary, and so it has been shown to be.
African-Americans, for instance, are now hired as much on merit as anyone else. I am not suggesting for a moment that an incompetent be hired to meet a sex quota, merely suggesting that in order to obtain more equality for women, it may be necessary to relax hiring criteria slightly in order to increase numbers of females in higher positions. After that, if the race relations case is anything to go by, the problem will sort itself out. It may, of course, take some time.
The other thing that was learned from the race relations conflict was that legislation can change minds. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen. What happened in this case was that there was already a grass roots movement toward greater equality and the legislation legitimated it in a quite strong manner. It may well be that the case for a more equitable distribution of women across the work force is already in place and that legislation may legitimate it, thereby making it more difficult for companies to backtrack.
The Norwegian experience mirrors the race relations experience in the US. I see no reason why it should be different in the UK. If there appears to be a significant reason, I would be happy to be informed.
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I believe Larry has made many of the important arguments though he has raised the (unappealing to some) possibility of hiring less qualified people (e.g. women), at least in the short term. In doing so, has he increased the concerns expressed by Maxine that many individual women in SET in the UK also say they feel, that they do not want favours, they want to succeed on merit?
The point surely is that there are many, many women who despite much merit do not succeed, perhaps do not even try, because of the “barriers”: prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, gender based divisions of labour in the home, lack of work life balance, lack of quality part time jobs etc. etc. The point of quotas and other positive action is to get those women of merit to come forward, to get appointed, to take their place. Positive action foregrounds our prejudices and expectations, it makes us look again and think again, about our small and our big decisions. It helps make gender equality part of the warp and the weft of our work.
Women on boards, women in positions of leadership, women’s representation in scientific endeavour – some of the themes are the same:
In an EU research report called Gender and Excellence in the Making (2003) there is a fascinating record of a workshop on evaluating research excellence which examines the gender dimension in so called objective scientific assessment. All the original papers from the workshop are included in the report but read the rapporteurs’ summary and analysis for an overview. Here are two extracts:
“The presentations in the workshop showed that the environment in which scientific inquiry takes place is not yet free of bias against women, and that this is linked to the subtle persistence of gender stereotypes. Persistence of these stereotypes generates many ‘double standards’: women are repeatedly requested to prove themselves worthy, as stricter criteria to assess competence are used in judging them.This may prevent some of the best scientific minds from growing to their full potential, and some innovative and very productive scientists from participating fully in scientific governance. It also creates persistent stress for those female scientists who keep working, often achieving excellent results.”
“Several aspects of possible gender bias in the production and evaluation of scientific excellence were discussed in the workshop. Gender bias can occur (1) in the characterisation of scientific excellence, (2) in the criteria used to assess it, (3) in the choice of the explicit and implicit indicators for scientific excellence,(4) in the way the criteria applied to men and women, (5) in the failure to integrate women in scientific networks, and (6) in the procedures through which criteria are applied to people.”
Their recommendations or solutions are to be found at pages 29-31
I think we need positive action to let talent out, and quota seem to be one way to do this.
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HI Maxine, Larry and Marion,
Thanks for all the input! I heard UK Minister for Women and Equality Harriet Harman speak last week at the Fawcett Society event on the recession. Women earn on average 22% less than men. “Are women 22% less intelligent?” asked Harriet. “Are we 22% less committed, less able, less hard-working?” Its clear we are not, and so I think it is clear that overall having more women on boards would not drag down their performance.
I have also heard (through a speech made by Lynda Gratton) a useful strategy for where you have several spaces on a board. You promote the most qualified, experienced woman, and alongside her a woman who is nearly there. This is because ‘the only woman on the board’ needs to be very confident. Two women on the board removes the glare of attention, and enables the able but perhaps less confident board member to come up to speed. Men benefit from this all the time as they already have security in numbers.
Larry: you have links to the University of Leeds. What is the situation at the top there, and across academia in general?
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Hi Ruth,
Well, the universities have a checkered record. They are doing rather well in certain fields though this may be the consequence of a selection bias on the part of those entering the fields. Another question is how well they are doing in obtaining administrative posts and, here again, the record is mixed. For example, how many female Vice Chancellors are there around the country? I don’t believe for a single moment that a woman can’t do that job as well, if not better, than a man. In fact, many women might do it a lot better. You can find women as heads of the Human Resources departments. It oculd be argued that this is the sort of job a woman is suited to. But what about this? How many women do you find heading university staff counseling centres?
In the university in question, 3 women out of 12 people hold the top positions, ignoring the position of chancellor. That looks bad. But if you convert it to 1 out of 4, it looks a little better doesn’t it – the difference seems smaller psychologically. But if you then present the difference as being 25%, it looks bad again. I think that the original way I presented the discrepancy is one that highlights the difference the best. The ratio is better than some, but by no means as good as it could get.
The way a statistic is presented will influence the way we think about it. And those who present them know this.
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