Support for Complementarity

My colleague Elizabeth Brown brought the following study my attention. This seems so self-evident to me that it's difficult for me to understand why (as Elizabeth pointed out) most corporate boards today still only have one woman on them.   I've often wondered if the Church might have handled the sex abuse allegations differently if there had been more women in higher administrative positions in the Church (whether or not they were ordained priests) hearing these stories.  I wonder if the perspectives of people who might have been able to more easily identify with the victims than the alleged perpetrators might have contributed to a different institutional approach to the problem.

Board Composition Study Finds Enhanced Governance With Three or More Women on Board

A fundamental change in the boardroom and enhanced corporate governance can result from three or more women serving on a corporate board, according to a report released Oct. 25 by the Wellesley Centers for Women. 

The report, "Critical Mass on Corporate Boards: Why Three or More Women Enhance Governance" is based on interviews with 12 chief executive officers, 50 women directors, and seven corporate secretaries at Fortune 1000 companies. It finds that corporations with three or more women on their boards tend to benefit most from the women's contributions, which include: 

providing different perspectives, 

raising issues that pertain to multiple stakeholders, 

expanding the content of board discussion, and 

raising difficult issues, which results in "better decision-making."

The report notes that a woman's presence on a board "can and often does" result in "substantial contributions ... [but the] magic seems to occur when three or more women serve on a board together." It concludes that "having three or more women on a board can create a critical mass where women are no longer seen as outsiders and are able to influence the content and process of board discussions more substantially." According to Vicki Kramer, one of the study's authors, "This study strengthens [women's] case for the importance of moving beyond tokenism." 

The report authors conclude that "diversity is an issue of governance and that increasing the representation of women on every board is a good governance issue." 

The study, funded by the TIAA-CREF Institute as well as several foundations and individual contributors, is the first research study that tries to determine whether it makes a difference how many women served on a board. 

More information on the report is on the WCW Web site at http://www.wcwonline.org/n-pr.html#womenonboard.

Lisa