Saying "No" to All-Male Corporate Boards

Later this afternoon, NCRW President Linda Basch will giving remarks at the Women's Funding Network conference, The Power of Global Networks, on the importance of investing with a gender lens. She'll be sharing the stage with Jacki Zehner (youngest woman, and first female trader, to be become a partner at Goldman Sachs) and Joe Keefe (President and CEO of Pax World Funds), along with other stars of the philanthropy and investment world. For a preview of what is sure to be an amazing conversation, check out this op-ed Jacki and Joe published in The Huffington Post earlier this week, "Saying 'No' to All-Male Corporate Boards": 

When women are at the table, the discussion is richer, the decision-making process is better, management is more innovative and collaborative, and the organization is stronger. This is particularly the case with a critical mass of women in leadership roles. 

Moreover, the persistence of male-dominated boardrooms takes place against a backdrop of abysmal failures in corporate governance. The recent financial crisis is only the latest reminder that many boards of directors are simply not doing their job. And if this is true, then the old canard that "there aren't enough qualified women" to fill more board seats can be turned on its head: After all, the (mostly) men who led so many of our largest financial institutions to ruin turn out not to have been very "qualified" either.