Women are completing MBA and Law degrees in record high numbers, but their struggle to attain director positions in corporate America continues. Although explanations for this disconnect abound, neither career counselors nor scholars have paid enough attention to the role that corporate governance plays in maintaining the gender gap in America's executive quarters. Mining corporate governance models applied at Fortune 500 companies, hundreds of Title VII discrimination cases, and proxy statements, Douglas M. Branson suggests that women have been ill-advised by experts, who tend to teach females how to act like their male, executive counterparts. Instead, women who aspire to the boardroom should focus on the decision-making processes nominating committees-usually dominated by white men-employ when voting on membership. Filled with real-life cases, No Seat at the Table opens the closed doors of the boardroom and reveals the dynamics of the corporate governance process and the double standards that often characterize it. Based on empirical evidence, Branson concludes that women have to follow different paths than men in order to gain CEO status, and as such, encourages women to make flexible, conscious, and often frequent shifts in their professional behaviors and work ethics as they climb the corporate ladder.
Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Glass Ceilings, Floors, and Walls * Restraints on Advancement * Glass Ceilings and Floors: The Court Cases * Prices of Motherhood: Stereotyping, Work/Life Issues, and Opting Out * In a Different Register: Women in the Governance Model * Bully Broads, Iron Maidens, Queen Bees, and Ice Queens Part II: Climbing the Corporate Ladder: Myths and Realities * Routes to the Top: The Advice * The Road to the Top: The Evidence * The 2005 Proxy Data * Women and Minorities in Organizations: The Legacy of Tokenism Part III: Corporate Governance and the Keeper of the Keys to the Boardroom * Corporate Governance in America * Women, Culture, and the U.S. Model of Corporate Governance * Women in Corporate Governance: The Numbers versus the Expectations Part IV: Getting a Seat at the Boardroom Table * Paradigm Shifts: A Tale of Three Women * Prescriptions Appendix A: Fortune 500 Corporations 187 with No Women Directors Appendix B: Fortune 500 Corporations 189 with a Single Woman Director Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
