Women go to Harrisburg to urge lawmakers to push for more female board directors

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For decades, the Executive Women’s Council of Greater Pittsburgh has tried to boost the number of women that sit on corporate, government and nonprofit boards of directors.

While the organization has had some success using a database to match interested women with open seats on civic and nonprofit boards, getting women placed on public company boards remains a challenge, said Christine Koebley, president of the nonprofit EWC.

“It’s hard; you need a pathway to get to a public board seat,” said Ms. Koebley, adding that women don’t always have access to male-dominated networks that offer entree to board positions.

That’s why Ms. Koebley and otherfemale business and nonprofit leaders traveled to Harrisburg on Tuesday. They will hold a briefing at the Capitol Rotunda to urge members of the state Senate to pass a resolution that would encourage all firms and organizations in Pennsylvania to work toward a diverse gender mix on their boards and in senior executive roles.

Specifically, the resolution calls for all public, private and nonprofit organizations to have a minimum 30 percent female directors by the end of 2020.

Nationwide, women hold about 20 percent of board seats on large, publicly-held companies. In the Pittsburgh area, women also comprised 20 percent of board seats at publicly-held firms last year, up from 17 percent in 2016.

Sponsored by state Sen. Judith Schwank, D-Berks County, the resolution would be a nonbinding, nonpartisan “memorandum of