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PHILADELPHIA - The key to getting more women on corporate boards is getting more women on board-nominating committees, according to a study released Thursday on diversity in corporate governance.
Success depends on "who makes the lists," said Vicki Kramer, a Philadelphia management consultant who is chairwoman of a national network of female executives.
Although more boards are adding female directors, boards are still dominated by men, according to the report by the InterOrganization Network, a group of seven organizations of female executives.
"The snail's pace at which women are making their way into corporate boardrooms is simply not acceptable," Kramer said in a statement announcing the report.
The percentage of major public companies without any female board members has increased in Philadelphia, Chicago and Georgia, among the seven states and regions surveyed, according to the study.
The study represents a group effort by organizations of female executives from Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. All advocate the advancement of women to positions of power in the business world, particularly as top executives and board members.
Each of these groups does its own study. Philadelphia's Forum has been conducting a study for the last five years. But a few years ago, the groups formed a network to standardize their reports so a better national picture would emerge. In 2004, the network released its first study.
This year, for the first time, five out of seven network members measured the number of women on the board-nominating committees of major companies in their states or regions.
"Because of the critical role that these committees play in the identification and recruitment of new directors, the presence of women on them has the potential to accelerate the process of change," the study said.
Just more than a quarter of the 536 companies examined by the five groups have women on the nominating committees. Women head the nominating committees in about 5 percent of those companies.
Kramer likes to quote Shirley Tilghman's remarks when she became the first female president of Princeton University, in 2001.
"The world works on lists," Tilghman was quoted in the New York Times as having said. "If a woman is involved in constructing those lists, the likelihood of selecting really terrific women goes way up."
Philadelphia and four other network members also collected information about female directors of color. The five groups report that minority women continue to hold few board seats, from 0.1 percent to 1.9 percent in companies included in their studies.
Kramer said the network had yielded more than a consistent set of study guidelines. Leaders from the groups meet once a month by phone. "We're swapping what is working and what is not working," Kramer said.
For example, at their leadership breakfast last fall, Philadelphia's Forum for Executive Women honored area companies with three or more female board members - an idea borrowed from the Boston Club, one of the seven network members.
They also have referred female board candidates to each other.
"I think it is really important that there is a network around the country," Kramer said. "You are not a voice crying alone in the wilderness."
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
