No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and Law Keep Women Out of the Boardroom

by Douglas M. Branson

Overview

Women are completing MBA and Law degrees in record high numbers, but their struggle to attain director positions in corporate America continues. Although explanations for this disconnect abound, neither career counselors nor scholars have paid enough attention to the role that corporate governance plays in maintaining the gender gap in America's executive quarters.
Mining corporate governance models applied at Fortune 500 companies, hundreds of Title VII discrimination cases, and proxy statements, Douglas M. Branson suggests that women have been ill-advised by experts, who tend to teach females how to act like their male, executive counterparts. Instead, women who aspire to the boardroom should focus on the decision-making processes nominating committees—usually dominated by white men—employ when voting on membership.
Filled with real-life cases, No Seat at the Table opens the closed doors of the boardroom and reveals the dynamics of the corporate governance process and the double standards that often characterize it. Based on empirical evidence, Branson concludes that women have to follow different paths than men in order to gain CEO status, and as such, encourages women to make flexible, conscious, and often frequent shifts in their professional behaviors and work ethics as they climb the corporate ladder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814789643
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2006
Series:	Critical America , #26
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	239
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Douglas Branson is the W. Edward Sell Chair at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of 23 books, including No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and Law Keep Women out of the Boardroom (NYU 2007), and The Last Male Bastion: Gender and the CEO Suite in America’s Public Companies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

Part I: Glass Ceilings, Floors, and Walls 

1. Restraints on Advancement 

2. Glass Ceilings and Floors: The Court Cases 

3. Prices of Motherhood: Stereotyping, Work/Life Issues, and Opting Out

4. In a Different Register: Women in the Governance Model

5. Bully Broads, Iron Maidens, Queen Bees, and Ice Queens

Part II: Climbing the Corporate Ladder: Myths and Realities

1. Routes to the Top: The Advice 

2. The Road to the Top: The Evidence 

3. The 2005 Proxy Data 

4. Women and Minorities in Organizations: The Legacy of Tokenism

Part III: Corporate Governance and the Keeper of the Keys to the Boardroom

1. Corporate Governance in America 

2. Women, Culture, and the U.S. Model of Corporate Governance

3. Women in Corporate Governance: The Numbers versus the Expectations

Part IV: Getting a Seat at the Boardroom Table 

1. Paradigm Shifts: A Tale of Three Women 

2. Prescriptions 

   Appendix A: Fortune 500 Corporations 187 with No Women Directors

   Appendix B: Fortune 500 Corporations 189 with a Single Woman Director

   Notes 

   Bibliography 

   Index  

   About the Author  

Editorial Reviews

"An interesting thesis, and one that makes sense"

The New Republic

"Packed with informative statistics about the presence of women at various levels of corporate governance as CEOs, executive directors, managers, and in the pipeline."

Nancy Levit

"Professor Branson's book makes an important contribution to the study of women's advancement in the corporate hierarchy, combining startling statistics with well-informed insights. Using a rich pool of sources including linguistic theory, studies of group dynamics, and judicial opinions, Branson illustrates the speed-bumps that may impede a woman's rise to the top."

Jayne W. Barnard

"Coming from the pen of a leading thinker in corporate law, this book provides a powerful if disheartening explanation for the lack of women on corporate boards. It is provocative, impeccably researched, and compellingly written."

Kent Greenfield

"This book should be read by anyone interested in advancing to the boardrooms in corporate America. . . . Branson provides interesting discussions on linguistic differences between males and females as well as gender differences in play, along with their implications for success in business. . . . Branson reveals how corporate governance practices hinder womens career advancement and suggests strategies women should adopt to succeed in the corporate world . . . Highly recommended."

Choice