Social campaigns driving the Change for Women Directors Appointment
Recognizing the value of gender-diverse boards, the role of female leaders in corporate America is increasing. In a recent study, the author discovered that there is an increase in female directorships coincided with a cascade of gender-diversity influence campaigns as powerful financial institutions 'Big Three' initiated various campaigns, for instance, they supported its campaign with a threat: it would vote against directors at any firms that failed to appoint more women to their boards.
In accordance with this research, another researcher examined whether a company follows 'Big Three' norms on two fronts: first, how much of a stake each Big Three investor held in each of the firms, and second, the gender composition of each firm's board of directors. One of the researcher's arguments is that involving women in the nominating committee will result in more female membership in the future? The study found that institutional investors' campaigns are more effective than legislators' regulations. One of the researchers also questioned, "Why weren’t corporations doing this on their own?" The study concluded that nominating committees commonly make decisions based on personal connections to screen possible candidates, and when those committees are male dominated, so are their networks.
