We Need to Get Younger Women on Boards
Washington Business Journal recently wrote an article about how the progress of women on corporate boards has now hit a wall. After a few years of progress, the past 1-2 years have slowed down dramatically. The article quotes the nonprofit 50/50 Women on Boards as saying that we were on track for gender parity (about 50-50 man/women representation) by 2035. With the latest slowdown, it is now projected to be 2044. Twenty years from now. As a woman in her 40s, this blows my mind.
Study after study after study talks about how performance is better with a more diverse board. There are what seems to be millions of studies around leadership and diversity. About different perspectives and a lack of groupthink, yadda, yadda, yadda. These studies are everywhere, and you’d have to be under a rock to not have read something on the subject.
So why is this still such an issue? And why are companies not moving towards building their boards to be more reflective of their workforces? We now have women leading some of the top GovCons in the industry – SAIC, GDIT, and General Dynamics. Data that suggests when women are leading or there is a woman board chair or further, a woman nominating chair, there is much more parity (though not truly 50-50 yet). This ultimately may serve as a competitive advantage in the field, given how far behind some of the industry is.
Another not-as-surprising but also mind-blowing statistic is how old the boards are. The article cites that the average age for women is 59 and for men is 62. It even quotes that there are 576 directors of public boards who are age 80 or older and that 96% of those 576 directors are men. Older does not necessarily mean wiser. It usually means (with some exceptions) more traditional thinking. As ML, AI, and Space take off in our industry, do we not need folks with non-traditional thinking? Folks who have start-up experience? Folks who have fresher ideas? What holds a board back from offering positions to those in their 30s and 40s?
I have so many extremely capable women in my world. Many of whom would make excellent board members. Many of whom are younger than 59. Women are screaming they are ready and able to serve as board members in GovCon, myself included.
I encourage others to respond proactively by offering advice to those interested in such roles and to companies in terms of dipping their toes into the waters of gender parity.
About BOOST’s CEO, Stephanie Alexander
Stephanie Alexander has spent more decades than she wants to admit supporting high growth government contractors with an eye towards their bottom line. She is the CEO and founder of BOOST LLC which supports back-office functions for government contractors. She is a co-founder and Partner at govmates, a free teaming platform and technology scouting tool to connect business across the federal landscape.
