For the past 23 years, U.S. women ages 25 to 29 have outpaced their male counterparts in completing college degrees, according to data from the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau.
And yet, fewer than 15 percent of the board director positions at Wisconsin’s top 50 public companies are held by women.
Through this severe gender gap in corporate leadership, companies are not only missing out on a significant pipeline of talent, but they are also hindering their ability to compete in the global marketplace, according to Phyllis King, chair of Milwaukee Women inc, a nonprofit organization that advocates for gender diversity in corporate leadership in Wisconsin.
“We know that companies with one or more women on their corporate boards outperform those that have no women on their boards,” King said. “So if we want to be competitive and (if) we want to have an economic advantage, then it would behoove us to take a look at diversity on our boards.”
“More women in leadership positions can only help to enhance our region,” said Peggy Williams-Smith, president of Tempo Milwaukee, a professional development organization specific to women. “It can only help to bring more leaders into our area, to keep people here. The more we can do to have a voice in our community, the more successful the community will be.”
Corporate America is facing a crucial generational turning point, as a wave of baby boomer board directors prepare to retire, opening up board seats that could be filled by women, King said. According to a 2013 Ernst & Young LLP report on gender diversity in the boardrooms and C-suites of S&P 1500 companies, around 27 percent of current board seats could turn over in the next five years.
And, as King cites from the same report, “Men account for 94 percent of these board seats held by directors age 68 and over.”
Disappointing pace
While the push for change and the conversation on elevating more women into corporate leadership has gained traction, the surge of energy fueling this conversation has not transferred rapidly into boardroom progress.
To gauge the gender diversity of leadership at publicly-held companies throughout the state, Milwaukee Women inc publishes research twice a year on the percentage of board roles and executive positions held by women. The advocacy group’s research, focused on the 50 largest Wisconsin-based public companies in terms of total revenues, started in 2007 as a way to track strides toward its original goal set in 2002. That goal aimed for public companies to have 25 percent of Wisconsin board director seats filled by women by 2014.
However, just over 14 percent of board seats are currently held by women among the companies measured, a figure that has remained stagnant since 2011. The data points to progress, as only 9 percent of board seats in these companies were held by women in 2003, but the pace of that progress has been disappointing, King said.
Women account for 11.8 percent of executive positions at those same companies.
Despite the disappointment about board roles, MWi continues to hope that momentum surrounding this issue will pick up. While the initial 25 percent goal is an important one, the organization is not fixated solely on the percentage. In a broader sense, it is determined to connect more women to board positions according to what is logical for each company.
“Our thinking now and our thinking all along has been, ‘We’re not going to let it go,'” King said. “We’re going to message, we’re going to advocate, we’re going to keep putting it in the forefront of our corporate board nominating committees and the leadership minds that diversity is important.”
MWi has armed itself with six strategies to try to expedite change. Among them is a new approach to research that steps beyond the boundaries of publicly held companies and into the realm of privately held companies and nonprofit organizations.
Overcoming barriers
Also included in MWi’s six strategies is an intention to continue assessing the barriers women routinely face in gaining access to boards and executive positions.
While those barriers are deep-seated and multi-dimensional, one of the firmest barriers has been the nature of how boards of directors recruit new members.
“Traditionally, corporate boards have been established a great deal on male networking,” King said. “In fact, if you look at how corporate directors are chosen it’s either through networking or it’s through demonstrated past experience as a CEO or a leader of another company. So you’re perpetuating a pipeline of males, if that’s the case.”
Compounding this barrier is the fact that many companies do not impose board term limits. Today, 45 percent of board seats are held by leaders who have served in those seats for 10 or more years, and 88 percent of these seats are filled by men, according to Ernst & Young’s 2013 report.
Apathy is another factor, said Malli Gero, co-founder and executive director of 2020 Women on Boards, a national nonprofit and campaign that advocates for gender equity in the boardroom.
“I think that for a lot of companies, this isn’t the foremost issue in their minds,” Gero said. “And so if things are working, they don’t look to fix it. They know that they probably need to do more to recruit women to these senior level positions, but they’ve got other things on their minds and they’re just not doing it.”
Milwaukee-based ManpowerGroup, however, has put gender diversity top of mind, particularly in its boardroom, where four of the 13 seats are currently held by women. The corporation is very purposeful in rounding out the diversity of its board so that it has greater diversity of thought, said Jeffrey Joerres, chairman and CEO of ManpowerGroup.
“At the end of the day, a board needs to have a diverse mindset and that means somebody from outside the industry and inside the industry, somebody with accounting (experience) and somebody with marketing (experience) and the list goes on,” said Joerres, who was recently honored with the Mary Ellen Stanek Award for his commitment to workplace diversity. “And to be able to have that diverse thought and perspective coming from gender diversity helps boards make better decisions (and) helps them be aware of blind spots they can have without that kind of diversity on that board.”
To leave women out of the boardroom is neglectful, Joerres said.
“Other than some timing issues, there really is no good excuse to not have good representation on your board,” he said.
Self-advocacy
Women also bear some of the fault for the stall in progress, according to Gero.
“Women don’t advocate for themselves and were not taught to do that,” Gero said. “We sit back, and we wait to be asked. And so you have a lot of women who are rising leaders who don’t really voice that but sit back and wait to be asked.”
Any woman who is eager to ascend to a board position must let that be known, Gero said.
“No one’s going to ask that woman if they don’t know she’s interested in sitting on a board,” she said.
In 2013, the percentage of board seats held by women in Fortune 500 companies nationwide jumped to 18 percent in 2013 from 17.1 percent in 2012 and 16.4 percent in 2011, according to 2020 Women on Boards.
Gero acknowledges that the growth is slow, but she is confident that if the trajectory will continue over the next six years.
And once companies can hit the 20 percent mark, meeting higher percentages won’t be as challenging, Gero said, as companies become more comfortable having more women in the boardroom.
“They’ll understand the benefits that women bring to the table, and this hopefully will become a non-issue,” Gero said.
What will it take?
To accelerate the pace of change moving forward, continued dialogue, visibility and mentorship will be needed, as well as intentionality on the part of companies and organizations to prioritize diversity when building their boards, King said.
On top of continuing to spotlight the need for more women in corporate leadership spheres, King, Gero and Dan Horton, dean of the School of Business at Alverno College, tout sponsorship as a powerful agent of change.
“A sponsor does more than just coach,” Horton said. “A sponsor is someone who will help you move into a role by sometimes standing up for you or offering your name or making sure you get on the right task force. And I think that the strong leaders are already doing those kinds of things.”
Under its new strategic direction, MWi also plans to personally meet with companies to ask them what they need to bring more women into their leadership roles as positions open up following board retirements.
“I think this is an opportunity,” King said. “I think there’s momentum.”
Others, such as Debbie Seeger, senior vice president and co-founder of Brookfield-based Patina Solutions, anticipate change accelerating a little more naturally.
As outgoing board directors look for their daughters and granddaughters to have equal leadership opportunities as their sons and grandsons, and younger generations move in with a new age of openness, she believes the pace of change will pick up dramatically.
“It won’t look anything like the pace of progress in the last decade,” Seeger said.
