Women Directors in the USA. Women directors are becoming more and more common in the US

Women directors are becoming more and more common in the US.

There was scarcely a handful, mostly female relatives of corporate found-

ers; now the number exceeds 400, and is steadily growing. It is generally

conceded that most of today’s women directors are able women bringing

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expertise and business acumen to their jobs. This is not surprising. Most

women now old enough to serve on boards had to fight their way up the

corporate ladder. They had to be not only equal, but better than their

male colleagues in order to survive.

The advantage of women directors is that they can serve as women’s

representatives. This is important to US companies, which are increas-

ingly sensitive to women’s place in business, and are groping for ways to

deal with it. Nevertheless, not all women directors see their role in this

light. One well-known woman has confessed that she disliked the idea of

‘special interest directors’. ‘I don’t feel I should represent the woman’s

point of view’, she said. She believed she represented the stockholders

and the public.

Yet, even this woman was forced to admit that she played a ‘kind of

consciousness-raising role’ on her boards. She found herself pointing

out to board members, for example, that as more women worked, the

number of valuable people unwilling to uproot themselves would in-

crease. Therefore, corporations would have to change the environment

in which they hired, trained and promoted employees.

Many women agreed that their presence on a board acted as a kind

of pressure on other members and management as a whole. Because a

woman is on the board, it automatically gets reports on women’s issues

and executives know that such reports will receive sharp scrutiny by at

least one board member.

An important advantage of women directors, it is claimed, is that

they can take a different perspective from male directors – an outside

view. Male directors tend to eat at the same club and mingle with other

corporate executives. Women are usually more involved with family re-

lationships, buying for the home, the education of children, volunteer

activities and so on; they can take a different view from men who tend to

become exclusively involved with their work life.

Some women directors are willing to acknowledge that they owe their

directorships to their sex in the sense that there was the initial decision

to include a woman on the board. To this extent they are symbols of

corporate response to social change, as well as being working directors,

of course.

Today, the 400 or so women directors represent only 2.7 per cent of

the 15,000 directorships of major corporations. It may be many years be-

fore women’s presence will make a significant impact upon boardroom

decisions, but that time will surely come.

1. In which countries of the world is it now possible, and increasingly

common, for women to ‘get to the top’ in the business world? Can you

name countries where it is virtually impossible for them to do this?

2. What factors make it easier and more common in some countries

for women to become directors of companies?

3. What qualities can help a woman to reach a top management posi-

tion? Are these qualities the same as those a man would need?

4. Why is it not surprising that women directors in the US are gener-

ally very able?

5. For what reason are many US companies only too glad to have

a woman director on their board?

6. In what sense, according to the text, is it possible that women might

be more ‘objective’ in their business life?

7. Women directors are ‘symbols of corporate response to social

change’. Explain the meaning of this statement.

8. To what extent does the author come to any kind of conclusion

regarding future prospects for women directors in the US?

Text 3

Read the text and identify the problems discussed in it. Be ready to answer the ques-

tions given below.