Sunday, April 25, 2010

Women in corporate Boards

Noelle Lenoir, a former French Minister of European Affairs is quoted in Time magazine as saying, "One of the ways women are different from men is that we are more inclined to factor in social responsibilities and objectives along with business objectives and bottom lines. More women will alter the myopic financier thinking now dominating boards." This opinion is in fact commonplace. We are led to wonder if nature has endowed women with a responsibility gene that men apparently lack.

Though India is justifiably proud to have had women as prime minister, president, speaker of Lok Sabha, vice chairperson of Rajya Sabha, judges of the Supreme Court etc., Indian companies lag far behind many foreign companies in electing women to the board. Norway has legislated that atleast 40% of any company's directors must be female. In France and Netherlands, female representation in boards must be 40% and 30% by 2016. It is debatable if such quota-system is the way forward; but if male chauvinism continues to be so deep-rooted as it is today, there is perhaps no other option available to ensure that society is not denied the benefit arising from altruistically proactive conscience of women.

A moot question remains however asto whether women might shed the responsibility gene on joining the board. Is pressure of competition so intense that ruthless firebrands like Carly Fiorina (a former CEO of Hewlett Packard and now a probable Republican Senator) are not gender-dependent ?

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