Is ‘Pale, Male and Stale’ Good for Corporate Boardrooms?

They're "pale, male and stale." That's the phrase I have heard on more than one occasion to describe the majority of corporate boardrooms. Whether it spoken by a speaker at a Governance Center Crash Course or written in an article by Nell Minow of The Corporate Library (TCL), the words seem to ring true when you look at the recent statistics. The plain truth is most corporate boards in the U.S. and in most of the developed world are being run by older white men.

In these times of change in the marketplace and political upheaval, one has to wonder if it is such a good thing to keep the status quo in the composition of corporate boards. Consider the research unveiled last month by GovernanceMetrics International, the global corporate governance and environmental, social and governance (ESG) research firm that merged with TCL earlier this year:

• Twenty-three global companies have no women on their boards.
• Forty percent of the world's largest 4,000 companies have not appointed one female member to their boards. (Of that, only one board has a board with a female majority.)
• Women hold only 12 percent of board seats at major U.S. companies.
• One-third of European companies do not have women on their boards.

Those are pretty sobering figures, especially when you consider that it has been 100 years since the first International Women's Day (March 8). That is a celebration where women throughout the world celebrate the progress that has been made in gender equality. Somehow I don't see that celebration taking place in corporate boardrooms.

Read the rest of this article on the Corporate Governance Blog, a blog by Gary Larkin

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