FINAL THE BY JONATHAN GRONER SINCE THE MID-80’S, WOMEN HAVE HEARD ABOUT


A GLASS CEILING—AN UPPER LIMIT TO PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT THAT IS NOT OPENLY ACKNOWLEDGED.


nies. T e fi nal hurdle is a position on the board of directors. It’s been several decades in the making, but women strug-


A MCCA.COM


gling to climb the ladder in corporate America are making dramatic gains. As a White House report pointed out earlier this year, women have closed the education gap with men and are making inroads in salary inequality. Forty-seven percent of the U.S. workforce is female. High-profi le women such as Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and Indira Nooyi at PepsiCo have risen to the top of the corporate world, and inspire and serve as role models for younger women. Yet women account for less than 16 percent of the directors


sitting on boards of publicly traded companies in the United States, according to Catalyst, a group that supports women in business. Why is this the case, and what are women, corpora- tions, and activist groups doing to bring about change? A controversial July 2011 article in T e Economist blames


this persistent situation on—children. “Most women take career breaks to look after them. Many care for elderly relatives, too,” the Economist author


s our Fortune 500 women general counsel survey demonstrates, women have made signifi cant strides as the legal leaders of America’s top compa-


wrote. But as long as board directors are drawn primarily from the ranks of execu- tives with broad experience in public com- panies, the fact that many women take time off from work makes it “harder for women to gain the experience necessary to make it to the very top,” the article said. In other words, as long as women are not


CEOs of major companies in large numbers, they will never be corporate board members in large numbers. And historically, most corporate CEOs have come from positions in operations, marketing, and fi nance, which are heavily male, not from jobs in legal, marketing, or human resources, where women have made more inroads. T e child-rearing explanation doesn’t


convince some observers. American Lawyer legal columnist Vivia Chen, writing in the online “Washington Women’s Weekly” on August 1, 2011, says she is “infuriated” by the Economist piece. She quotes Marissa Wesely, a board member of DirectWomen,


SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 DIVERSITY & THE BAR® 41


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