California’s new law requiring companies to include women on their boards of directors may not survive widely expected legal challenges but it has already spotlighted the entrenched practices and barriers that have helped keep women out of boardrooms.
Some of the country’s best-known companies, along with many smaller ones, will have to overcome such obstacles to comply with the new measure, which requires public corporations headquartered in California to have at least one female director on their board by the end of next year. Companies with more than six board members would need three female directors by the end of 2021. Those with fewer than six members would need two women.
Men dominate Chattanooga boards
Among directors of Chattanooga’s publicly traded companies, 87.5 percent are men, including all eight of the CEOs of the local firms. One fourth of the local companies have boards that are all male. In total, 63 directors of the stock-traded companies in the region are men and nine are women.* Astec Industries: 9 men* Miller Industries: 5 men* CBL Properties: 8 men and 1 woman* Mohawk Industries: 7 men and 1 woman* U.S. Xpress: 7 men and 1 woman* The Dixie Group: 7 women and 1 man* Covenant Transport: 11 men and 2 women* Unum: 9 men and 3 womenSource: SEC filings, Morningstar, company annual reports
After years of public and internal pressure to increase gender parity at the top of the corporate ranks, few of the biggest companies have zero female board directors. But men vastly outnumber women on boards across nearly every industry, a landscape that has remained stubbornly unchanged despite years of debate and studies on the subject.
Facebook, Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet are among the several hundred companies headquartered in California that would have to add women to their boards by 2021 to comply with the law.