Women Gain Numbers, Respect in Board Rooms
Jewel Plummer Cobb is a woman very much in demand.
Not only is she president of California State University at Fullerton, a campus with 23,700 students, she also serves on the corporate boards of First Interstate Bancorp, Allied-Signal, CPC International and Travelers Corp.
“It keeps me pushed psychologically,” Cobb said. “When I do fly to the East Coast, I do it on a 24-hour turnaround.”
But board room contacts have led directly to corporate sponsorship of several campus projects, she said. “One of the important things about boards is that one is able to do networking that is very valuable to one’s institution.”
Educators such as Cobb continue to predominate as women play a growing role in the board rooms of America’s largest companies. A survey released Wednesday by Korn/Ferry International, an executive search firm, reported a startling jump in the number of major U.S. corporations with one or more women on their boards of directors.
Even so, corporate boards in America remain overwhelmingly a male preserve. Women fill just 3.5% of the directorships at the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations, according to Directorship, a Westport, Conn.-based newsletter for directors.
According to Directorship, two women each serve on 11 boards of directors. They are Juanita Kreps, a Duke University economics professor and secretary of commerce in the Carter Administration, and Claudine B. Malone, a McLean, Va., financial and management consultant.
Third, with nine directorships, is Joan T. Bok, a Boston utility executive.
The Korn/Ferry survey found 52.8% of the businesses with a woman board member last year, up from 42.9% in 1986. Experts say that although the survey may exaggerate the extent of the increase, women directors continue to both increase in numbers and in the respect they command from other directors.
“The days of token women on boards are over, and I think they were over by the time I first got on a corporate board,” said management consultant Barbara H. Franklin, who joined the board of Aetna Life & Casualty in 1979 and has since joined the boards of Automatic Data Processing, Black & Decker, Dow Chemical, Nordstrom and Westinghouse Electric.
Corporations that do hire women as tokens seldom find them willing to play that role, said Nancy C. Reynolds, a Washington lobbyist who sits on the boards of Wackenhut Corp. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. “Lots of times I think corporations who think they’re bringing in a token have been surprised.”
Financial Savvy
In six years of sitting on up to four corporate boards at a time, Reynolds said she has never encountered overt sexism or chauvinism, nor has she been treated as a token. “I’ve been a working woman for so long--I’m sure it all exists, but it’s just something I’ve never run into. . . . If things were ever set aside when I came in, I never knew it.”
The Korn/Ferry survey, based on 504 responses to a questionnaire sent to 1,000 big U.S. businesses, may exaggerate the growth in the number of women directors but is indicative of a trend, said Felice N. Schwartz, founder and president of New York-based Catalyst, a non-profit consulting firm specializing in women’s issues. “I don’t think they are either stagnating or moving up as precipitously as the Korn/Ferry survey would indicate.”
The significant change over the last six years has come not in how many women are selected for corporate boards, but in which women are chosen, Schwartz said. Some of the first women selected to join corporate boards were known for their contributions in other fields but barely knew how to read a balance sheet. Now chief executive officers increasingly look for women who can contribute to board discussions, especially the bright businesswoman who reaches senior management positions fairly early in her career.
“She’s younger than the average age, and they’re still taking her.”
The trend brings recognition for young women executives and improves their chances of being offered top-level jobs, she said. When one such woman joins a board with a dozen men, half of whom may be well-connected chief executive officers, then “Suddenly 100 CEOs are thinking about that woman.”
Varied Backgrounds
Overall, however, women are still more likely to come to a corporation’s board from academia than from other companies, according to the Korn/Ferry study. Although 31.7% of women directors come from education, just 14.6% are chief executives or chief operating officers of other companies and 16.7% are senior executives of other firms. By comparison, 30% of all directors are CEOs, Korn/Ferry said.
Backgrounds of women directors vary. An English major at Goucher College in Towson, Md., Reynolds worked as a political reporter and news anchor for KPIX, a television station in San Francisco, and as an assistant press secretary and special assistant for Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California.
She has spent six years working in as a lobbyist for Bendix and Boise-Cascade before becoming president and partner of Wexler, Reynolds, Harrison & Schule, a lobbying and consulting firm. She also is a personal friend of the Reagans.
Corporations ask her to join their boards because of her experience in dealing with Congress and regulatory issues, not because she is a woman, Reynolds said.
A Harvard business school graduate, Franklin said that “There’s a lot of kidding and good-natured stuff like that, but that’s just the way it is. . . . My approach to those is to answer with humor.”
Men on several boards initially would apologize to her after swearing, but this too is disappearing, she said. “The men don’t treat me like a powderpuff.”
Joining Aetna’s board in 1979 made Franklin one of the early directors of a large corporation. Catherine B. Cleary became the first woman director of a Fortune 1,000 firm when she joined the board of General Motors in 1972, said Elsa Nad, editor of Directorship.
The number of women holding Fortune 1,000 directorships rose to 323 last year from 227 in 1985, Nad said. The average woman director held positions on two boards, compared to 2.24 for the average man. Altogether, women held just 652 of the 18,660 Fortune 1,000 directorships.
Directorships offer a woman both strong business contacts and a chance to meet interesting peers from other cities, said Franklin, who is president and chief executive of her own management consulting firm in Washington.
A Merger Made
For Franklin, board membership also yielded another dividend: marriage. She met Wallace Barnes, chairman and chief executive of Bristol, Conn.-based Barnes Group, when she joined Aetna’s board in 1979. Several years ago he called her, said he was desperate for an escort to a corporate function, and asked her to come along. She did, and called him the next time she needed an escort.
“I didn’t go to board meetings to meet anyone. I played it very straight. . . . And then I began to think this was kind of interesting, and so did he. And one thing led to another.”
Their marriage in November, 1986, offended no one on the Aetna board, which both continue to serve, Franklin said.
The best quip about the marriage came from Chairman and President James T. Lynn, Franklin said. “He thought that Aetna was entitled to a finder’s fee for this or maybe two finder’s fees.”
TOP WOMEN DIRECTORS Juanita Kreps is on 11 boards: Allegis, Armco, AT&T;, Chrysler, Citibank, Citicorp, John Deere, Eastman Kodak, J. C. Penney, RJR Nabisco, Zurn Industries.
Claudine B. Malone is on 11 boards: Boston Co., Boston Safe Deposit Trust, Campbell Soup, Dart Group, Dart Financial, Houghton Mifflin, the Limited, Penn Mutual Life Insurance, MTV Networks, Scott Paper, Supermarkets General.
Joan T. Bok is on 9 boards: Bank of New England, Dennison Manufacturing, Massachusetts Electric, Monsanto, Narragansett Electric, New England Electric, New England Power, Norton, Stop & Shop
On 8 boards: Jean H. Sisco, Gertrude G. Michaelson, Barbara D. Hauptfuhrer, Ruth M. Davis.
On 7 boards: Virginia A. Dwyer, Carla A. Hills.
On 6 boards: Norma T. Pace, Barbara H. Franklin, Mary Garst, Barbara S. Preiskel, Patricia C. Stewart, Marietta Tree.
On 5 boards: Lilyan H. Affinito, Evelyn Berezin, Jill K. Conway, Margaret S. Henson, Leslie L. Luttgens, Joan D. Manley, Patricia S. Longe, Sybil C. Mobley.
On 4 boards: Anne L. Armstrong, Jewel P. Cobb, Joan Ganz Cooney, Rhoda M. Dorsey, Robin C. Duke, Grace J. Fippinger, Lucille G. Ford, Luella G. Goldberg, Hannah H. Gray, Marion S. Heiskell, Elizabeth T. Kennan, Marilyn S. Lewis, Mary S. Metz, Martha R. Wallace, Dolores C. Wharton, and Patricia K. Woolf.
Source: Directorship.
Los Angeles Times
TOP WOMEN DIRECTORSJuanita Kreps is on 11 boards: Allegis, Armco, AT&T;, Chrysler, Citibank, Citicorp, John Deere, Eastman Kodak, J. C. Penney, RJR Nabisco, Zurn Industries.
Claudine B. Malone is on 11: Boston Co., Boston Safe Deposit Trust, Campbell Soup, Dart Group, Dart Financial, Houghton Mifflin, the Limited, Penn Mutual Life Insurance, MTV Networks, Scott Paper, Supermarkets General.
Joan T. Bok is on 9: Bank of New England, Dennison Manufacturing, Massachusetts Electric, Monsanto, Narragansett Electric, New England Electric, New England Power, Norton, Stop & Shop
On 8: Jean H. Sisco, Gertrude G. Michaelson, Barbara D. Hauptfuhrer, Ruth M. Davis.
On 7: Virginia A. Dwyer, Carla A. Hills.
On 6: Norma T. Pace, Barbara H. Franklin, Mary Garst, Barbara S. Preiskel, Patricia C. Stewart, Marietta Tree.
On 5: Lilyan H. Affinito, Evelyn Berezin, Jill K. Conway, Margaret S. Henson, Leslie L. Luttgens, Joan D. Manley, Patricia S. Longe, Sybil C. Mobley.
On 4: Anne L. Armstrong, Jewel Plummer Cobb, Joan Ganz Cooney, Rhoda M. Dorsey, Robin C. Duke, Grace J. Fippinger, Lucille G. Ford, Luella G. Goldberg, Hannah H. Gray, Marion S. Heiskell, Elizabeth T. Kennan, Marilyn S. Lewis, Mary S. Metz, Martha R. Wallace, Dolores C. Wharton and Patricia Woolf.
Source: Directorship.
Los Angeles Times
