Abstract

Over the past decade, the ranks of female directors in Fortune 500 companies have increased by only 2.3 percent Recent studies show a relationship between the number of female directors and a variety of corporate characteristics, such as size, type of industry, and length of a boardmember's term. The author analyzes the reasons given by 126 survey respondents of the Fortune 500 for not recruiting more female directors and discusses the perceptions of female boardmembers about their own futures on their boards.