Men Join Corporate Boards With Less Experience Than Women
- Board rookies are disproportionately likely to be men
- Companies are ‘putting on blinders in search for talent’
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More than three out of four new male company directors are rookies, appointed without any prior corporate board experience, according to a new study of the world’s biggest publicly traded companies.
First-time female board members are less common. When a woman fills a board seat, there’s a 32 percent chance she’s already served as a director at another company, the study found. When a man does, there’s a 23 percent chance he’s already held a seat. The gap suggests that women disproportionately face the old Catch-22: To get chosen to be on a board, they already have to be on a board.