Numbers and Positions Of Women Elected to Corporate Boards

Abstract

The article presents a study which investigated the number and positions of women elected to corporate boards in the United States from the period 1971 to 1980. The author investigated the composition of boards of directors for 112 publicly traded firms using a questionnaire mailed to 200 firms based in a single metropolitan area. The complex organizations that responded listed and ranked as many as five Standard Industrial Codes as comprising their principal sources of revenue. The questionnaires showed that just under 80 percent of the firms in the sample had no women directors on their board.