Women on Board : Survey Indicates Inroads Into the Male-Dominated Business World

Cecily Cannan Selby, the first woman on Avon Products Inc.’s board, says she recalls a tense dinner meeting with male colleagues when one offered her a cigar.

“When I accepted, I could feel them all relax,” said Selby, who in the early 1970s was a pioneer in the clubby and almost exclusively male upper echelons of American business.

About 570 women now serve on the boards of America’s largest companies, and a survey of chief executives released Tuesday shows that many corporate leaders have made the recruitment of female directors a priority.

In the study, conducted by Catalyst, a nonprofit research and consulting group, 85% of CEOs surveyed emphasized what they called the importance of having female directors. Nonetheless, only 52% of the companies have female board members, and women make up less than 7% of total seats.

“With CEOs committed to bringing women into the boardroom, we expect the trend upward to continue,” said Sheila Wellington, Catalyst’s president. “It’s good for business and for the country.”

In the survey, CEOs indicated that the force driving women onto boards is an awareness of the fundamental changes in American society.

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Female directors, the study found, bring new perspectives and help a company stay in touch with the times. Respondents also said boards must reflect a company’s diversity in customers, employees, shareholders and investors. They also said they could not ignore the fact that women now compose about half the work force--more than half of college graduates and about half of business school graduates.

“If there is one thing American business has learned in the last few decades, it is that it must be ahead of the curve on change,” Wellington said. “They can make better decisions when different perspectives are brought to the table.”

At Avon, four of the 10 outside directors are women. Selby, who was recruited to the board from her job as national executive director of Girl Scouts of America, was chosen in 1972.

“The people we are trying to appeal to are women,” said James Preston, chairman and chief executive of the cosmetics company. “You can’t substitute actual feminine perspective and the attitudes they bring to the deliberations.”

But in her early years as a director, Selby said, a big part of her job was making it easier for the men on the board who had never worked with women as peers.

Indeed, one unidentified CEO writing in response to the Catalyst survey acknowledged, “It’s easy for boards to get club-like and ingrown.”

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Another factor holding women back, Catalyst found, was a lack of top-level corporate experience, defined as a chief executive or chief operating officer. In all, 48% of CEOs said female candidates were hard to find.

“We recommend that companies expand the talent pool and reach out,” Wellington said.

Catalyst found that some companies are doing that. Some CEOs said they are including chief financial officers, division presidents and executive and senior vice presidents, as well as female entrepreneurs.

Corporate boards have 12 members on average--typically three directors from inside the company and nine outside directors, according to Catalyst.

Last year, the median annual director’s compensation was about $30,000, according to the Conference Board, a business research group.