Gender Differences in the Boardroom

In a Q&A, Susan Stautberg of Women Corporate Directors discusses a new study about how men and women approach their roles as directors—and why the percentage of female directors remains low

By Beverly Behan

France's recent dictum that boards of directors of native companies must have at least 20 percent of their membership made up of female directors has reignited the debate about the lack of women in U.S. boardrooms. In late 2010 the professional association Women Corporate Directors (WCD), along with the consulting firm Heidrick & Struggles and Boris Groysberg of Harvard Business School, released a telling survey on this very topic. The study of some 300 female and 100 male board members in both public and private companies revealed sharp differences—not only in their perspectives, but also in how they were placed on boards in the first place. To learn more, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Beverly Behan spoke with WCD co-founder and co-chair Susan Stautberg. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Beverly Behan: Susan, France obviously sees merit in imposing quotas for board seats held by women. A similar initiative introduced in Norway some years back required 40 percent female representation on that country's boards. Is this concept of quotas for female board members catching on in the U.S. as well?

Susan Stautberg: No, U.S. directors—both men and women—are opposed to quotas. Our study showed that over 90 percent of the male directors surveyed and nearly 60 percent of the female directors disagreed or strongly disagreed with imposing a required percentage of women on U.S. boards. I'd point out that this is not a situation where U.S. boards have made more significant progress in terms of female representation than French boards have done. The proportion of women on the boards of the Fortune 500 has stayed relatively unchanged, at about 15 percent, for several years.

Your study highlighted the different perspectives between male and female directors on a number of issues, particularly the question of rebuilding trust in boards of directors in the aftermath of the financial crisis:

Susan, in your view, what accounts for these sharp differences of opinion?

I think women generally are a little less vested in the "status quo" and more open to questioning traditional ways of doing things and trying new ideas. Men, on the other hand, seem to have a little more faith in the concept that "this is the way things are done." While it's unfair to generalize entirely across gender lines, I have found men somewhat more resistant to adopting new practices than women [are].

More than one-third of the male and female directors studied indicated that there were skill sets missing on their boards. That suggests that a lot of boards need to do some recruiting. Yet it took the male directors in your study 1.4 years on average to find a board seat, vs. 2.4 years for the women. Why is it taking so long for well-qualified people to get board opportunities—and why is it taking an extra year for the women to do so?

One of the reasons I co-founded WCD and am so proud of our work is that we are committed to providing board opportunities for well-qualified women. Some of the opportunities are surfaced through search firms contacting us for candidates; others are from our own members. For example, one of our members was about to step down from one of her boards. She asked us for a list of 10 well-qualified women that her board could consider as possible candidates and we were able to quickly furnish her with a terrific list.