No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and law Keep Women out of the Boardroom

Women are completing professional and advanced degrees in record high numbers, but their struggle to attain director positions in corporate America continues. Although explanations for this disconnect abound, neither career counselors nor scholars have paid enough attention to the role that corporate governance plays in maintaining the gender gap in America’s executive quarters. Mining corporate governance models applied at Fortune 500 companies, hundreds of Title VII discrimination cases, and proxy statements, Douglas, M. Branson suggests that women have been ill-advised by experts, who tend to teach females how to act like their male counterparts. Instead, Branson suggests, women who aspire to the boardroom should focus on the decision-making processes that nominating committees À“ usually dominated by men À“ employ when voting on membership. Branson concludes that women have to follow different paths than men in order to gain CEO status and as such encourages women to make flexible conscious and often frequent shifts in their professional behaviours and work ethics as they climb the corporate ladder.

ISBN: 978-0-8147-9973-4
Publisher: New York University Press
Year of Publication: 2007