According to an article in the New York Times, many young female executives of start-ups and other technology firms are being pursued as candidates to join the boards of other tech firms. The cause is growing pressure on the tech industry to diversify their leadership.
The article, “Join Our Board: Companies Hotly Pursue New Wave of Women in Tech,” by Pui-Wing Tui, points out that among the 150 largest technology companies, “only 15 percent of board seats were filled by women in 2016, compared with 21 percent for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.”
Based on interviews, the author concludes that even though there is growing interest in female board members, some obstacles remain. These include current directors looking to their old networks to fill vacancies and boards preferring candidates who have previous board experience.
Efforts to expand board membership across all industries is the subject of AWESOME’s recent coverage of Paradigm for Parity, a coalition of CEOs, senior executives, founders, board members and business academics working to achieve gender parity by 2030.