The following post comes to us from Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. and is based on an ISS publication by Albertine d’Hoop-Azar, Katryna Martens, Peter Papolis, and Eduardo Sancho.
Perhaps no major issue in governance has risen up as ubiquitously across the globe as that of gender diversity in the boardroom. Board diversification has been embraced in principle by members of the issuer and investor communities alike—but in many countries, we’re clearly living in a “do as I say, not as I do” regime. The annual PwC director survey found 43 percent of directors surveyed believed that there should be equality or near-equality (41-50 percent women), and another 43 percent believed it should be 21-40 percent women. However, taking the United States as an example, ISS QualityScore data shows that among the Russell 3000, only 28 percent of boards have at least one-fifth of their respective seats held by women—and only 1.7 percent have at least two-fifths held by women.