Women on Corporate Boards of Directors: International Research and Practice

I approached this book with some trepidation, expecting to be bored. However, a leaking roof in the building had disabled phones and computers: reading with a biro in hand was the only available level of technology. And, once I started reading, my preconceptions of lists of dreary and depressing statistics, the likelihood of a loose, patchy structure and expectations of a general incoherence and lack of analysis were completely overturned. In fact, after the first two chapters I was so absorbed I was almost reluctant to go to coffee and, as other coffee addicts will know, it is a rare book, especially a rare academic book – that can make one careless in observing the customary coffee break.

But in the first chapter, Burke and Vinnicombe succeed in grasping your attention at once. Instead of launching straight into the usual “string of beads” routine of many international readers on specific subjects;, e.g. this is the situation in Sweden and this is the situation in UK and so on, this book sets up a framework to help you understand the existing context and give you an overview to bring you up to date with both the bad news and good news about women on boards from published research of the last 10 years. Their bullet point overview shows there is a long list of bad news. For example, women face the familiar challenge of the “old boys” network and any increase in the number of women on boards is still extremely small and extremely slow in coming. Yet, on the other hand, there is also a surprisingly long list of positive items in the good news column as well. That amount of good news encourages Burke and Vinnicombe to wonder (and this was the motivation behind the book) whether there is “a ‘tipping point’ in increasing women's representation on boards” (p. 2) and whether we are at that tipping point right now.

To whet your appetite to read on, Burke and Vinnecombe then summarise a list of tantalising points that the international perspectives to be covered the next 10 chapters have made apparent. For example, although the increase in representation of women on boards is low on average and slow to change, comparing and contrasting the situation in different countries shows that there is a lot of variation among them. “Data from the top 50 firms in 29 European countries showed an average of 10 per cent, with a high of over 30 per cent in Norway to a low of 2 per cent in Italy and Malta (p. 3)”. So, an averaged global statistic can mask very positive change in some countries, as well as a lack of change in others. A desire to find out the reasons behind these differences is likely to make a reader with even the most modest interest in the representation of women on boards read on at once into the international perspectives chapters. The editors know how to engage their audience. They take us inside their project, giving us the information and the enthusiasm needed to become co‐researchers in the way we read, looking for clues, attempting to uncover the reasons for the differences among countries.

This international perspectives section of the book covers ten countries, the USA, Canada, UK, France, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Spain and Jordan compared with Tunisia. Each chapter summarises the current state of play for a particular country in terms of women directors along with relevant, current research findings. However, although authors have been well‐briefed about the approach the book is taking and what to include in their chapters, there is a complete lack of that sameness which tends to pervade books that are readers on a topic with chapters by different authors. What often happens is that, in attempting to follow a brief slavishly, chapter authors produce a kind of “fill in the blanks” account which subdues any potentially interesting distinctiveness their subject might have held and each chapter seems much like the others.

As editors, Vinnicombe et al., have achieved an entirely different outcome. These chapters are very brief, about eight pages including notes and references, yet packed with information and interest. The snapshot at the beginning brings you to grips very quickly with the country's recent history and the present situation of women on boards. You are then taken into accounts of the results of specific initiatives and the finding of recent research. As an example, Lois Joy, writing about the USA mentions that Ryan and Haslam (2005) have discussed the “glass cliff” phenomenon, the name given to the fact that women are more likely to be appointed to boards when they are in difficult situations rather than when their corporations are prospering. Joy goes on to explain:

Joy notes the impact the glass cliff is likely to have on both judgements about women's abilities and on their opportunities to demonstrate their effectiveness.

So, by the time you finish each of the chapters in the international perspectives section, you have a picture of the current situation in that country and insights into the most recent research and its implications for women on boards in that country. In the next section on themes, the editors go even further. Having given us the separate country overviews, they now take themes that emerge from that research as in its entirety and explore how each theme relates to past, present and future research and how it helps to explain ways of understanding both research and practice concerning women directors.

The themes include work on the way that women contribute to board meetings by being prepared to champion the discussion of tough issues, the “black box” of board behaviour, the “glass cliff” phenomenon, the bottleneck which slows women's progress, networking, best practice companies and the issue of critical mass – whether the number of women on a corporate board makes a difference.

These eight chapters on research themes are focussed and gripping. In dealing with research related to the theme, the authors tell you what the research has shown as well as what still remains to be explored. This approach gives a sense of knowing something interesting from the research, yet feeling intrigued and curious about the questions the research opens up as remaining to be answered. Reading this book makes you eager to know more in a very stimulating way. The discussion which explains that women directors are prepared to champion issues others shy away from was interesting in just this way. In research by Kramer et al. (2006), both male and female CEOs reported that women were more likely to raise difficult issues such as criticism of management proposals or the need for removal of a CEO. Yet as the authors of this chapter point out there are still issues to explore:

In fact, I found that the way this book is written helped me to reflect on much of the gender research that I am involved in currently because the questions raised are so searching and far‐reaching. Once again, the chapter authors combine brevity with thoroughness and depth in their examination of the themes, which made this a very rewarding book because it takes you so far in your thinking in just 240 pages. Indeed, until the final chapter it seemed this review would comprise unalloyed praise, but then there was a disappointingly thin and patchy treatment of the conclusion which did not match the calibre of the rest of the book and gave the impression that its writing may have been a little rushed.

Apart from this minor quibble, I also felt that the title of the book was a little dreary. This title is just a label, what I would call a “raspberry jam” title. When a book has such a prosaic title and does not hint at the special nature of its content, it is rather relying on a calamity like the flood which cut off our computers and phones to encourage potential readers to open it. I feel energised by the debates that the book has opened up for me. I have done research in this particular area, but I now feel that I have explored different perspectives and new depths and I am grateful to the editors for that – and to the rainstorm and the leaking roof.