Would advertising board jobs open the door to more women?

Of all the people I have ever known, I can think of only one who found a new job by answering an advert in the Economist. It was a shockingly impressive feat. He beat hundreds of people from around the world to nab a post at Interpol’s headquarters in the French gastronomic capital of Lyon.

I thought of him the other day as I was sitting in an overheated London hotel room at a business conference, where there was a lot of indignant griping about the dearth of women on company boards. More board seats than ever before now contain a female bottom, but progress is sluggish.

Women hold 29 per cent of board jobs in the 100 largest UK companies, more than double the share in 2011. But further down the ladder in the Ftse 350, a lot of companies have one lone female, and as recently as June, 10 boards lacked even that. Things are more dismal elsewhere. Worldwide, the share of board seats held by women is a paltry 15 per cent, despite years of prodding by ministers and pressure groups. In the US the number of female chief executives in Fortune 500 companies fell below 30 this year.

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About the Author: DrStefanieKJohnson

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is particularly interested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities, with the goal of finding ways to mitigate those biases. Dr. Johnson brings bias to light with an engaging and humorous approach to advanced scientific research, which has earned her numerous accolades and invitations to present her work at meetings around the world, including the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day, and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal. She has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership-development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice. In recognition of her unique research, Dr. Johnson has been awarded nearly three million dollars in external funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuring her work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, and CNN. Stefanie lives in the Boulder Bubble in Colorado with her Biology Professor husband, two young kiddos, and two old kitties.