In this final installment of a three-part series, I promised you that I would provide statistics associated with companies that have a greater percentage of women on the board of directors. To do this I would like to share an article that I read in the Financial Times Limited that was published on July 23rd. I will print the article in its entirety:

Women crack glass ceiling from above

By Francesco Guerrera in New York

Published: July 23 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 23 2008 03:00

Women have a much better chance of breaking through the US corporate glass ceiling if they work for companies that have several female board directors, according to research to be published on Wednesday.

A study of Fortune 500 companies between 2001 and 2006 showed that companies with a high percentage of female board directors ended up with more women in senior managerial positions than rivals with male-dominated boards.

The research was carried out by Catalyst, an organisation that is focused on women in the workplace.

It comes after similar studies showed that companies that had more female directors and managers performed better financially.

“This is a road map for companies,” Ilene Lang, Catalyst’s president, said in an interview.

“We are showing that if a company has a significant number of women on the board it is very likely that it will increase the number of women in senior leadership and do better financially.

“It doesn’t happen by dumb luck.”

The new road map, she said, “shows companies that once they start on this path, they will get very significant results”.

If Catalyst’s findings hold true, companies where a large number of directors are female – such as AT&T, the telecommunications group, office supply maker Xerox, and Sara Lee, the food group – should outperform their rivals in the next few years.

On average, women hold one in seven board positions in Fortune 500 companies and about the same proportion of senior managerial -positions.

But the study found that companies where the percentage of female directors was highest – where women made up about a quarter of the board – ended up with a third more women corporate officers than rivals that have fewer female directors.

“Women board directors are a predictor of women corporate officers,” the study’s authors said. “The more women board directors a company has [had] in the past, the more women corporate officers it will have in the future.”

Ms Lang said the reason for the stark difference was that female directors acted as powerful role models for more junior colleagues and helped them defuse stereotypes about women in the workplace.

“Women can crack the glass ceiling from both the top and the bottom,” she said. “It matters a lot who is at the top. People feel it. When diversity and inclusion are embraced by the senior-most level of the company, it really does filter down.”

The research found that female board directors had a greater impact on the growth in the number of women corporate officers in frontline businesses such as manufacturing, marketing and sales than in back-office functions such as human resources.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

In Part One, I discussed the relatively low representation of women at upper management levels in Fortune 500 companies. I ended with this question: what could companies do to help attract successful women entrepreneurs back to the large corporations or, better yet, how can they keep them from leaving in the first place?

The Catalyst/NFWBO research report asked women entrepreneurs who had prior corporate experience what would cause them to return to corporations, and over half said that nothing could get them to go back. This group obviously had been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug; however 48% of the group left in the first place due to negative factors in corporations, such as lack of flexibility, the glass ceiling or feeling unchallenged.

Corporations would be better served if they provided the type of work environment for their high-potential female employees so that they would not have to lose them in the first place, particularly since most of the women who do leave end up doing almost the same type of work they were doing on the “inside”.

So, what can companies do to attract and retain high-achieving women?

• Provide flexibility. Companies should consider offering employees, more control over their schedules so that they can create their own customized balance between work and personal life. Additionally, employees need to feel that they can make the choice to slow down their career progress at certain points in their lives without jeopardizing their futures.
• Increase opportunities within organizations to utilize women’s entrepreneurial skills. The same skills: no fear of risk, translating innovative vision into actionable plans, and the ability to lead are just as essential within large companies as they are in the world of the entrepreneur. Corporations need to foster these skills, empowering entrepreneurially-spirited women to become “intrapreneurs” within the organization.
• Identify high-performing women earlier in their careers. By developing formalized mentoring programs, promising female employees would obtain essential feedback and coaching, exposing these women to executive roles and fostering the development of the necessary attributes that would allow them to be considered for these roles in the future. Mentoring and coaching programs, I believe, are essential components of an effective succession planning strategy.
• Recruit qualified female candidates to corporate boards and senior line positions. This requires a conscious decision on the part of large corporations to recognize and support entrepreneurial women at the highest ranks within the organization. Studies have indicated that companies which demonstrate the commitment to fostering female talent reap the rewards in increased financial performance.

In Part Three, I will look at some of the statistics associated with companies that have a greater percentage of women on the board of directors.