University Times

The number of women seeking high-powered careers in the past several decades has grown — women fill a significant number of seats in law school and MBA classrooms — but when it comes to finding a seat in the CEO suite or on the boards of America’s largest companies, their numbers are few.

In his book, “No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and Law Keep Women out of the Boardroom,” Pitt law professor Douglas M. Branson states, “For 30 years, corporate organizations have told women that places at the top exist for those women willing to build up the necessary educational and occupational experience. The numbers in this book alone show the untruth of what has been said. Even today nearly 40 years after women began to enter higher echelons in business only 1.6 percent of corporations in the Fortune 500 and 1.3 percent in the Fortune 1000 have female CEOs. It is time to speak straight and set matters right.”

In his book, Branson drew from existing research to outline how differences between men and women can work to keep the corporate glass ceiling in place. He reviewed discrimination cases to find patterns that continue to impact women and examined Fortune 500 companies’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings to determine exactly how many women hold top positions at America’s largest companies.

Branson was drawn into the issue while researching CEO removal cases from the 1990s. As the father of two daughters, he was more than a dispassionate observer. In writing the book, Branson sought to find a credible explanation for the situation — examining possible causes” and, to some degree, solutions,” he said.

In his book, Branson finds male biases remain implicit in the structure of corporate governance, albeit in more subtle forms than decades ago.

He concludes that the advice women in business typically receive on how to make it to the top “is all wrong.” Being aggressive might get a woman her first promotion, but at higher levels, can be a hindrance.

“Women have to follow pathways different from men in order to reach the boardroom or the CEO suite,” he writes. “An aspiring woman manager may have to be aggressive early in her career, be more strategic in her behavior later on then morph into a statesperson, and finally become somewhat aggressive again, in her climb up the ladder to a leadership position.”

Rather than ascending the corporate ladder within one company, “sidestepping” into a board position elsewhere can be a strategy for women who rise in sectors such as academia, government or nonprofits, where the glass ceiling tends to be less firmly entrenched.

In the SEC data, Branson found women filled only 11.6 percent of the companies’ director seats — 678 out of 5,821 positions. Because 30 women were so-called “trophy” directors, with positions on four or more boards (collectively representing 151 seats, or 22.3 percent of the total), Branson found there actually were only 480 different women sitting on the boards of Fortune 500 companies in 2001 — roughly the size of some high school graduating classes.

“Corporate America is lazy. They choose the same women over and over,” Branson said, criticizing the trophy practice as a way of denying opportunities to other women who also might make good directors or CEOs.

By 2005, the number of female board members had grown from 480 to 568, with the ranks of trophy directors rising to 79. Still, more than half the nation’s Fortune 500 companies had one or no women on their boards. “Women have been in the pipeline for more than 30 years, but there are a lot of leaks in the pipe,” said Branson, Pitt’s W. Edward Sell Chair in Business Law.

“In large part, it is an old boys’ club that keeps replicating itself,” he said, explaining that the nominating committees of corporate boards tend to be made up of members who have the most time on their hands — often retired CEOs, who consciously or subconsciously seek people who look like them.

Branson notes that diversity on corporate boards is no guarantee of a properly functioning board, but that having the variety of viewpoints that results from a diversity of race and gender “is essential to the task of monitoring senior managers’ behavior.”

Diversity can also help an organization avoid “groupthink’” in appointing CEOs and CFOs and in strategic planning, he said.

The presence of women and minorities on boards also helps negate stereotypes, not only at the top but throughout an organization, and can enhance cooperation among races and sexes, he said.

In addition to offering advice to women, Branson offers advice to corporations.

Strides can be made by the presence of a diversity director who keeps tabs on the numbers. “Have someone who’s counting,” he wrote. Branson also advises that companies shed the concept of work that rewards long hours and face time — biases that work against women, who often have more responsibility for child-rearing.

Treating employees equally is essential, except in the case where biology dictates an inequality, he said. “Equality gives way when there exists a universal and defined biological trait that requires equality to assume a secondary role. Childbearing is exclusively females’ role,” he said, arguing that women shouldn’t be penalized in their careers for taking time on the “mommy track.”

He cited research that shows women who take one year off for child-rearing will still earn 99 percent of what their male counterparts make, but for women who take two years off, their earnings will drop to only 60 percent of comparable men’s. “The difference to the corporate endeavor is statistically insignificant,” he pointed out. A woman might have a 37-year career compared to a man’s 39-year career.

He argued for better “alumni programs” for women who’ve opted out of the workforce and improved “welcome back” programs when they seek to return. “There’s a tremendous brain drain that’s occurring” as women opt out of the workplace, he noted.

Failing to respect the importance of taking time to raise children is shortsighted, Branson argues. “It fails to recognize that childbearing replenishes the genetic stock essential for the perpetration of the economic and social systems upon which we all depend,” he said.

Biology will help guarantee that there never will be parity in the numbers of men and women at the top, Branson said. Progress is being made, but significant changes will take time. He predicted that substantial representation of women in the boardroom and CEO suites is decades away — likely 30, 40 or even 50 years, he said.

—Kimberly K. Barlow