If women are the answer, what is the problem?

Dr Barnali Choudhury has kindly sent me a copy of her paper "New Rationales for Women on Boards", recently published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. The paper is one of a very small number questioning the "business case" for women on boards and suggests not only an extended rationale but also possible ways forward to increase the number of women appointed. Dr Choudhury usefully draws on strategic management literature to consider the contribution of women to board decision-making effectiveness, demonstrating that this depends on task performance and cohesiveness.

With regard to the latter, she acknowledges the potential problem of groupthink but I think this deserves much deeper analysis. The level of constructive challenge that is most useful for a board is likely to change with changing circumstances both internally and external to the company and the contribution of board diversity to constructive challenge is far from clear. Further, discussions of board effectiveness rarely address the criteria for assessing effectiveness in the context of board objectives.

Dr Choudhury proposes legislation along the lines of the US football Rooney Rule, which would ensure that women were interviewed for every board position. She addresses the issue of enforcement with the proposal of an annual "audit" for companies with few women on the board, with financial sanctions. This could prompt a new strand in the board consultancy business, but it would, in my view, be better than quotas, as women appointed in this way would have the opportunity to compete equally without the fear that they have been favoured because of their gender, reflected in the "golden skirts" phenomenon. However, she also highlights the supply issue in business leadership, particularly the existing "job success model":

"Positions of leadership in business tend to be achieved through a model in which unfailing availability and total geographical mobility at all times is required in addition to a linear
career path with no breaks."

This is an interesting paper and a thoughtful and important contribution to the debate about board gender diversity, the type of approach I called for in my blog post a year ago. But I am still not convinced about the fundamental nature of the issue. Is there really a problem with corporate board composition that can be solved by appointing more women?

In setting out the "equality rationale", Dr Choudhury asserts that

"... even if a correlation cannot be found between women on boards and shareholder maximization, an equality rationale still justifies measures to promote women on boards. In this light, an equality rationale can be seen as emphasizing women’s rights—as opposed to business reform—as the focus of the government’s measures. In short, increased female representation on boards is valued in its own right."

While agreeing that the factors in our social and institutional environment which inhibit female participation in leadership of all types need to be addressed, I'm still not convinced that getting more women onto corporate boards is a good way of doing this. There is much discussion of the "pipeline", through which female senior managers can achieve board level posts, but I have yet to see much evidence of a trickle down effect resulting in better opportunities for women after such appointments are made. Governmental action would be more usefully directed towards measures to offer all women (and other diverse groups) opportunities for achievement within our social system, rather than focusing on the relatively small group who aspire to board appointments.

There is little evidence that prescribing board composition has positive effects.  The process by which directors are appointed to boards depends on shareholders and nomination committees: let them get on with it as they see fit.