Corporate boards need gender equity

Female perspective leads to better decisions, Joan L. Rush writes.

In 1988, I wrote to the late Peter Lusztig, dean of what was then called the UBC Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, to complain that there were no women on his faculty advisory committee. I had graduated in 1982 from the combined UBC Commerce and Law program and had become a corporate lawyer. Nearly 40 per cent of Canadian undergraduate business students were female at that time, but few women sat on Canadian corporate boards. I argued that women advisers and role models at the UBC Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration might encourage Canadian companies to appoint more women to their boards.

Lusztig replied with the lament that there were no qualified women in B.C. to appoint to the committee. Typically, he explained, the faculty recruited people with the title of CEO or, if in government, deputy minister. Few women held these titles in 1988. The dean was willing to consider recommendations for his advisory committee if I could provide the names of women who possessed the required credentials.

The UBC Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration is now known as the Sauder School of Business. Despite this rebranding, it seems that Sauder continues to struggle to appoint women to its advisory boards and committees. The large faculty advisory board to the Sauder School of Business, described on the Sauder website as including “some of Canada’s top business minds,” has 36 members. Only eight of the members, or 22 per cent, are women.

The Sauder Management Information Systems program is supported by a 12-person advisory board. Only two members, or 16 per cent, are women.

The Ch’nook program at Sauder is designed to encourage business, management and entrepreneurship as career opportunities for Aboriginal students. The Ch’nook program is supported by an advisory board of 17 members. Only two of the board members are women and one of these women is the chief administrative officer to the dean of Sauder. Twelve per cent of the board is female, if we count the faculty chief administrative officer. Otherwise, six per cent of the Ch’nook advisory board is female. In either event, Aboriginal students may conclude that business advisers are typically male.

The most gender-equal Sauder advisory board, with 40 per cent female representation, is located at the Philips Hager and North Centre for Financial Research. However, this board includes only seven members, of which three are women.

There are seven “mentors” to the Sauder Creative Destruction Lab. Only one mentor is a woman. The executive committee of the Phelps Centre for the study of government and business at Sauder includes three members, all of whom are men.

According to a 2016 article by Jennifer Lewington: “Women are a growing presence at business schools globally … ( but are) … underrepresented in top leadership positions.” That statement holds true for Sauder leader- ship. Although Sauder hiring committees now receive training on equity and diversity, the dean is a man and only one of the five Sauder associate deans is a woman.

Darren Dahl, senior associate dean, faculty, and director of the Robert H. Lee Graduate School at Sauder is quoted in Lewington’s article regarding gender equity. “There’s lots of research to show that in business having a female perspective or a board that has diversity is going to lead to better decisions,” says Dahl. “And the business school is a microcosm of that.”

Corporate governance research confirms that corporate boards perform better when they embrace gender equity. Sauder advertises the business school as a worldclass institution that is producing the business leaders of tomorrow. Sauder will teach these future business leaders the benefits of gender equity in all board rooms if it models gender-equal faculty advisory boards and committees for its students.