Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place? with Cathy Tinsley

Despite rhetoric supporting the advancement of women on corporate boards, the evidence of any progress in the last decade is meager (outside countries with mandated gender quotas). Archival board data (approximately 5000 U.S. publicly traded firms) from the past decade (2002-2011) shows that the biggest predictor of whether or not a female is appointed to a corporate board is if a woman just left that board. If a man leaves a board there is a corresponding negative effect (though magnitude of this effect is lower). This “gender matching heuristic” was replicated in follow up lab studies, which also showed that although respondents are selecting candidates based on gender matching, they deny using gender as an important factor. We suggest this gender matching is a subconscious heuristic process stemming from the more general status-quo bias. Speaker: Cathy Tinsley, Professor of Management, Georgetown University