The vast majority of Americans, regardless of gender, are never going to serve on a Fortune 500 company's board of directors. Consequently the gross gender imbalance in board seats is not necessarily something that the woman on the street spends a lot of time fuming about. Nonetheless, the imbalance is...
"The key criteria for serving on a corporate board is to seem like the kind of person who would serve on a corporate board—which is to say a white man of a certain age. But there are no actual job qualifications or performance criteria for nonexecutive directors....A company that can't manage to have half its board seats filled with women simply isn't trying...Most other corporate staffing decisions are a good deal more complicated, and the barriers to gender inclusion may be more real or more robust. But when you see a corporate board that's not even close to half women—and nine times out of 10 that's what you'll see—you shouldn't trust any assurances you receive about anything else the company is doing." - Slate.com
