Trinity Speaker Series: Women on Corporate Boards

Trinity College Dublin continues to amaze me with their extensive and thought-provoking speaker events, hosting many intellectuals from around the world. Specifically, the Centre for Social Innovation has been putting on a Business Ethics Speaker Series that discusses social issues facing the country, but also looks at them through the lens of business opportunities. These events have been taking place for the past several months, with many taking place before I arrived in Ireland. Fortunately, they announced that the last event for this speaker series would be taking place this week, so I decided to register for the event. This specific event invited Christine Shropshire from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, whose work has been published in the NYT, WSJ, and many academic journals. She presented her academic research regarding women​s'​ experiences on corporate boards. I knew this discussion would be intriguing because as a male who will be entering the business arena, I will not understand some of the challenges women go through trying to rise through the ranks in business.

Christine started the discussion by mentioning that the world, in general, is greatly improving in gender equality within the workplace, resulting from cultural shifts and government policies promoting diversity and inclusion. However, Christine mentioned that we, as a society, still have a long way to go as many companies still see promoting diversity as just a quota to meet to avoid backlash (tokens v trailblazers), but once these women are in the boardroom, they often times are not fully integrated and involved in the office. Women are simply treated differently, even if they make it to leadership positions through vast experience and knowledge. Christine’s research primarily consisted of a focus group of 10 local women directors and then 49 one-on-one, hour-long interviews with women directors who have worked for 126 unique firms, have over 835 years of board service combined, and an average age of around 60 years old. The women were asked about their background, how they got their first director role, what their experience was like ​if they see other women besides them in the boardroom, and how their interactions with women colleagues differ from their male counterparts.

Despite a few women who were adamant that their gender did not propose any extra obstacles compared to men, the general takeaways were similar. Most women directors showed great interest in adding value and choosing the right boards, rather than status, which men tended to align more with. The majority expressed frustration with the slow progress of diversity, particularly wanting to fit in but also remain their true self. Many also said they carefully calculated a lot of their actions and words in the boardroom to avoid ridicule and passive-aggressiveness. Overall, some of the findings of the research concluded withheld that minority directors who highlight their similarities to majority male board members are more likely to be promoted and receive committee roles, whereas women experienced sanctions for being too different or even too similar to male counterparts. Women are also more likely to display traits of deference or submissiveness in the boardroom, unfortunately. However, while this all paints a pretty bleak picture of today’s boardroom, the research did find a weak, but nonetheless, positive correlation ​between female board representation and accounting​/social performance.

This business speaker was different than ones I am used to ​which are more focused on maximizing success and building your skills, but this is an important conversation to have. We all need to be aware of these differences certain people face, but at the same time, not constantly treat them as victims but instead lift them up and give more opportunities for them to strive.