这12家美国500强还没有女董事

今年4月，珍妮弗·特哈达和珍妮弗·海曼在加入雅诗兰黛董事会时，两人都已习惯收到各种董事会的邀请了。“不少公司跟我联系过。”衣柜租赁创业公司Rent the Runway首席执行官海曼表示。担任云计算公司PagerDuty首席执行官的特哈达也回想起，之前一个月都能收到好几次邀请。“有时一个星期就有好几次。”她表示。

也难怪合格的女性董事变成香饽饽。现在全男性的董事会受到越来越多指责，因为投资者纷纷要求多元化，而#MeToo运动也促使人们重新看待女性在商业世界里的位置。

但并非所有公司都积极响应增加女性董事的呼声。现成就有例子：2018年《财富》美国500强公司里有12家一位女性董事都没有。

首先要说清楚，这些全男性董事会只是少数情况，总体情况在向好的方向发展。五年前《财富》美国500强里还有42家没有女性董事；10年前有69家。

我们想从这群固守不化的公司里找共同点，但没发现什么规律。其中四家在能源行业，两家是金融公司，两家在食品和饮料领域。三家总部在纽约市，三家在得州，其他分布在美国各地。雇员人数多的有89000人（伊坎集团），也有规模比较小只有1607人的（福四通集团）。

不过这些公司也确实有共同点：管理层里女性都极少。据提交给美国证券交易委员会的文件，12家公司里一共只有三位女性高管。

By the time Jennifer Tejada and ¬Jennifer Hyman joined the board of Estée Lauder in April, both were accustomed to being deluged with opportunities to claim a seat at the boardroom table. “Quite a few ¬companies have approached me,” says Hyman, CEO of wardrobe-¬rental startup Rent the Runway. Tejada, CEO of cloud-computing company PagerDuty, recalls fielding inbound inquiries multiple times a month. “Sometimes multiple times a week,” she says.

It’s no wonder qualified female director candidates are being hounded. The all-male board is entering endangered species territory, as investors ratchet up demands that companies diversify and the #MeToo movement prompts a reexamination of women’s place in the business hierarchy.

But not all corporate ears are attuned to the cries for more female directors. Case in point: Twelve companies on the 2018 Fortune 500 lack a single female board member.

To be clear, these all-male bastions are outliers, with the trend going in the right direction. Five years ago there were 42 Fortune 500 companies without women directors; 10 years ago, 69.

It’s natural to look for commonalities among the holdouts, but few jump out. Four are in the energy sector, two are financial companies, and two operate in the food and beverage world. Three are based in New York City, three in Texas, and the rest are scattered around the country. Their employee headcounts range from 89,000 (Icahn) to a modest 1,607 (INTL FCStone).

The companies do, however, share one thing: a dearth of women in other top jobs. Among the 12 firms, there are just three women among the executives identified in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

相关公司没有提供解释。12家公司里有11家没有回复《财富》杂志的置评请求。只有农业合作企业CHS公司回复了。一位发言人表示，CHS董事会“完全由农场主”提名选出。

从某种意义上说，《财富》在此列出这些公司也是一种呼吁。但我们并不是第一个提醒的。2017年3月，指数基金巨头道富环球投资管理公司就采取相当特别的方式指出问题，当时，其将著名的“无畏女孩”雕像放在华尔街公牛雕像对面，呼吁公司聘请更多女性加入董事会。普华永道管理洞见中心主管宝拉·卢普称，此举“非常重要”，部分原因也是后来发生的一些事。

2017年8月，被动投资者先锋基金在要求美国公司改善公司治理时就提出，应增加性别多样性。5个月后，全球最大的基金管理公司贝莱德也提出类似警告，第一次公开宣布被投公司董事会应有至少两名女性董事。卢普表示，在美国，主要是投资者施加压力，而在法国、德国和意大利等国，主要是通过限制董事会成员人数，女性一定要达到联邦规定比例才可以。

投资者表示，董事会多元化是商业成功的关键。道富和先锋引用研究称，女性董事人数较多的公司业绩往往高过人数较少的公司。贝莱德称多元化公司决策更加明智，该说法也有相关研究支持，研究称多元团队更可能重新审视事实从而保持客观性。

沃顿商学院教授凯瑟琳·克莱恩表示，通过综合分析可看出董事会多元化与业绩之间存在“微小但正面”的联系，但她也担心此类研究会对女性造成负担。她指出，研究的目的不是想让男性证明只要聘请女性就能提升业绩。

说到这里，过去五年里，12家公司中确实有7家的总回报率低于《财富》美国500强平均水平。（CHS公司目前是私有状态，Plains GP于2013年上市，其他三家的回报率高于平均水平。）

对某些人来说，该问题也有道德层面考虑。纽约州审计官托马斯·迪纳波利于3月宣布，该州共同退休基金将根据公司董事会性别构成投票，他表示有些公司仍然没有女性董事“不合情理”。

但《财富》美国500强里的其他488家公司也不应占据道德高地。2018年榜单里的公司总市值高达21.6万亿美元，美国人口里51%是女性。然而据薪酬调查公司Equilar统计，截至3月31日，今年榜单里只有三家公司董事会男女比例与人口比例相符。即便加上特哈达和海曼，雅诗兰黛公司董事会里的女性也只占到47%。（财富中文网）

本文首发于2018年6月1日出版的《财富》杂志。

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

The businesses themselves offer few explanations. Eleven of the 12 did not reply to Fortune’s requests for comment. Only CHS responded. A spokesperson said that the board of the agricultural cooperative is nominated and elected “exclusively by our farmer-owners.”

Fortune is, in a sense, calling out these companies by listing them here. But we are far from the first to blow the whistle. In March 2017 index-fund giant State Street Global Advisors re-upped the issue in dramatic fashion, planting its now famous Fearless Girl statue across from Wall Street’s Charging Bull as it demanded that companies add more women to their boards. Paula Loop, head of PwC’s Governance Insights Center, says that move was “a really big deal”—in part because of what happened next.

In August 2017 passive investor Vanguard cited gender diversity in its demand that U.S. companies improve their governance. BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, issued a similar warning five months later, stating publicly for the first time that the companies it invests in should have at least two female directors. In the U.S., says Loop, such investor pressure is now assuming a similar role to the one played by quotas in countries like France, Germany, and Italy, where women must account for a federally mandated share of board seats.

According to the investors, diverse boards are key to business success. State Street and Vanguard cite studies that show companies with more women directors outperform rivals without them. BlackRock argues that diverse groups make better decisions, a stance backed by research that finds that nonhomogenous teams are more likely to reexamine facts and maintain objectivity.

Katherine Klein, a Wharton professor, says meta-analysis shows a “tiny but positive” association between board diversity and financial performance, but she takes issue with the burden such studies foist on women. We don’t ask men to prove that simply adding them to a company’s board will boost its performance, she notes.

In this case, seven of the companies underperformed the Fortune 500 in total returns over the past five years. (CHS is private, Plains GP went public in 2013, and the remaining three had better returns.)

For some, the issue also has an ethical dimension. When New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced in March that the state’s common retirement fund would vote on directors based on their boards’ gender makeup, he called it “unconscionable” that some companies still have no female directors.

But the 488 Fortune 500 companies not mentioned here should not necessarily assume moral high ground. Firms on the 2018 ranking control a combined $21.6 trillion in market value in a nation that’s 51% female. Yet as of March 31, just three boards on this year’s list had reached gender parity or better, according to Equilar. Estée Lauder’s board is nearing that esteemed territory. With Tejada and Hyman, its female representation reached 47%.

This article originally appeared in the June 1, 2018 issue of Fortune.