Women on boards demonstrably help a company’s overall performance. Here are companies that have no women on their boards: Samsung, Nintendo, Nissan and Kia Motors have exactly zero female board members.
State Farm, Chipotle, Costco, CBS, and even make-up brand Revlon are just a few of the companies with no female executives.
LedBetter (a nod to fair pay activist Lilly Ledbetter) is tracking gender equality on boards and in the executive ranks of 2,000 big consumer brands.
The hope is that with this information readily available, consumers can make purchasing decisions that better align with their values, according to cofounder and CEO Iris Kuo.
“People need to be educated on this topic and understand where their money is going,” said Kuo, who said the idea came from a 2013 interview with Sallie Krawcheck. Krawcheck noted that women told her they’d buy differently if they just knew the company’s gender makeup.
Women hold the vast majority of purchasing power, roughly 80%.
The data underlines Catalyst’s latest findings on the representation of women at S&P 500 companies.
Women hold just 19.9% of board seats at S&P 500 companies, and only 14% of companies are even approaching gender parity on their boards.
Gender equality was a hot topic at the first-ever United State of Women Summit on Tuesday. To coincide with the event, the Obama administration, companies and foundations pledged $50 million to support women around the world. That includes 28 companies that signed onto the White House’s Equal Pay Pledge, like Amazon, American Airlines, L’Oreal, Gap and Staples.
“We should shop and frequent those companies that are doing the right thing,” said President Barack Obama during a speech at the summit.
Of the 230 parent companies in LedBetter’s database, only 6% — just 14 — had female CEOs.
Personal care, apparel and retail are the best industries for women on in leadership roles. H&M’s board is 58% women and 41% of its top leadership are female; Gap’s board is 36% female and its executive team is 57% female.
Energy and transportation, on the other hand, are the worst industries for gender equity by LedBetter’s measures.
But gender representation on the board and the executive team don’t always go hand-in-hand.
Revlon has no female executives but an above average female board, 33%. Mattel, which makes Barbie, similarly has no women on its executive team, but its board is 30% female.
