As a hard-core feminist, so I think it’s a great idea to pressure companies to include more female on boards of directors. It’s not the 50s anymore. It is 2018, this needs to happen. Women should have the rights as men to be top bosses which includes being on boards of directors. After all, the MSCI study showed that female representation was associated with higher financial performance. That would be great for our economy. According to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Publish Health, “Having a diverse board can help you better understand purchasing and usage decisions, particularly as studies have found that women drive 70-80 percent of purchasing in the United States. Even for B2B businesses, having a diverse board can help you better understand your customers. In hospitals, for example, women make up 83 percent of the general workforce, 65 percent of directors, and executives. Without women on your board, you are missing a valuable opportunity to bring in voices that represent this broad swath of potential and actual customers and clients. As the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington DC nonprofit policy organization, said in their report “Fulfilling the Promise: How More Women on Corporate Boards Would Make America and American Companies More Competitive,” “no company will remain competitive for long if it ignores half of its available labor pool”. With that said, I do believe without the competition factor our economy would plummet.
We need to pressure companies into including more female on boards of directors so the idea that females are too emotional or sensitive to be top bosses can be erased. Just because females are “emotional human-beings doesn’t mean they can’t do their job. Females are capable of being professional in the workplace. Besides being emotional in the workplace isn’t necessary a bad thing like it’s portrayed to be in our society. ‘The Inc. life’, writer Paul Grossinger mentions that, 10 characteristics of people with high emotional intelligence include embracing work-life balance, empowering their partner, focus, creativity, good listening, embracing dynamism and positive volatility, aren’t trying to be perfectionist, being able to identify multi-layered solutions, can move past mistakes, and channel anger very well. I believe those characteristics are more needed in the workplace since it seems males find it difficult to be emotionally available in the workplace. In the workplace there needs to more empathy and sympathy. There is no way that can happen if there is no or enough workers or staff members who aren’t willing to be emotionally intelligent.
According to the MSCI, “Firms were less likely to have corporate scandals when women were members of the board”. Maybe it’s because most women condemn sexual harassment, assault, and sexual abuse. Because of that they don’t want it to occur in the workplace. I think it’s also that way because statistics have shown that women are most likely to experience being sexually assaulted than to commit the assault on someone else. So, in the board, female directors take the matter very seriously. Writer, Jennifer Koza from the article ‘FairyGodBoss’ states that, “Let that sink in. At least one in four women experience sexual harassment in the workplace. And the EEOC’s study found that, in some reports, that number is as high as 85 percent. The difference in the range of percentages comes from differences in types of sampling and how respondents and/or researchers define the term sexual harassment. Whether it is 25 percent or 85 percent of women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace, however, it is still a disturbingly high percentage that we can’t ignore.” Having females as members of the board can help prevent more sexual abuse or assault cases from continuing in the working environment.