Women’s Roles on U.S. Fortune 500 Boards: Director Expertise and Committee Memberships

Abstract

This study examines the presence and roles of female directors of U.S. Fortune 500 firms, focusing on committee assignments and director background. Prior work from almost two decades ago concludes that there is a systematic bias against females in assignment to top board committees. Examining a recent data set with a logistic regression model that controls for director and firm characteristics, director resource-dependence roles and interaction between director gender and director characteristics, we find that female directors are less likely than male directors to sit on executive committees and more likely than male directors to sit on public affairs committees. There is little if any evidence of systematic gender bias in director assignment to other board committees. We find some evidence that boards evaluate resource dependence differently for women than men. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007boards of directors, board committees, corporate governance, gender issues, resource dependence,

Multiple Directorships and the Monitoring Role of the Board of Directors: Evidence from Malaysia

“…Further, Mclntyre, Murphy and Mitchell (2007), and Taylor (1975) (2011) using a sample of 100 domestic companies by market capitalisation in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore shows that more than 70% of the boards in these countries, except for Australia, have no female independent directors. Peterson and Philpot (2007) examine the role of female directors of the US Future 500 firms and show that female directors are less likely to sit on the executive committee, and are more likely to sit on the public affairs committee. However, there is no gender bias in director assignment to other board committees.…”

Interlocking directorships and firm performance in highly regulated sectors: the moderating impact of board diversity

“…Number of board committees is construed as an indicator of quality of board task performance and we measure it as a count of the number of board sub-committees (Peterson and Philpot, 2007). Delegating particular board functions into sub-committees enhances the quality with which boards can perform their roles (Ruigrok, Peck, Tacheva, Greve and Hu, 2006): for example, nominating directors and top managers (nomination committee), monitoring internal control and audit processes (audit committee), and providing properly incentivising, executive director pay packages (remuneration committee).…”

Where Are All the Women? Institutional Context and the Prevalence of Women on the Corporate Board of Directors

“…Three notable studies have helped our understanding of women's place on the board and its associated board committees. Kesner (1988) conducted the first study, and Bilimoria and Piderit (1994) and Peterson and Philpot (2007) conducted the second and the third where both studies revisited Kesner's original work. Kesner (1988) conducted an analysis of board committees' composition in terms of gender, tenure and occupational background.…”

“…Conyon and Mallin (1997) in their review of female board participation of FTSE 350 companies found that of the eligible women on the board, 50 percent of them were involved in board committee work. Peterson and Philpot (2007) studied the firms on the Fortune 500 list from 2003. Using a sample of 487 firms, they found that women were represented on the board of 88 percent of the firms in the sample, and further that women were less likely to serve on the executive committee and more likely to be represented on the committees concerned with public affairs.…”

“…Table 4.1 summarises some of the common methodological choices made in this literature. Popular research approaches include logistic regression analysis Westphal and Stern, 2007;Terjesen and Singh, 2008;Bilimoria and Piderit, 1993;Peterson and Philpot, 2007), chi-square (Hillman and Cannella 2002;Kesner, 1988;Zelechowski and Bilimoria, 2004), time series analysis (Francouer et al, 2008;Farrell and Hersch, 2005), survey research (Burke, 1997;Milgate, 2003, 2005;Sheridan, 2001) as well as other less pervasive methods (Adams and Flynn, 2005;. These studies do not represent the sum total of empirical studies on female corporate board directors, but they do represent some of the central works in the field, and, as such, serve as a valid illustration of the methodological avenues pursued to date in research on female corporate board directors.…”