How Long Have Women Served on Corporate Boards?

How long have women served on the corporate boards of US large companies?   Twenty years longer than women have had the right to vote.  Well, actually there is only one woman who achieved that milestone, according to research based on a sample of 68 Fortune 250 companies featured in an article in the Stanford Closer Look Series. David Larcker and Brian Tayan, authors of Pioneering Women on Boards: Pathways of the First Female Directors, identified the first woman as Clara Abbott, who served two terms on the board of Abbott Laboratories from 1900 to 1908 and from 1911 to 1924—although the company was not yet publicly listed at the time.

Lettie Pate Whitehead, who was elected to the board of the Coca-Cola Company in 1934, was the second woman they identified. She was the widow of the founder of the first Coca-Cola bottler and she managed the bottler following his death.

Based on their sample of 68 responding firms, they found that the average US large corporation elected its first female director 35 years ago.

Hillary Clinton was also a trailblazer as a corporate director as the first female board member of Wal-Mart — headquartered in her state of Arkansas — in 1986, when her husband was governor.

In the 68 large companies responding, authors found the following backgrounds of the first woman board members:

• 41% had significant business or executive experience prior to assuming their board seats
• 19% had other backgrounds across a diverse array of experiences
• 17%  had primary experience in consulting or legal professions
• 14% had academic or research experience
•  9%  were company founders or members of the founding family
• Plus, 30% of the above had meaningful state or federal government experience around the time of their board appointment.

For more details on the research by Larcker and Tayan, including a list of the first women directors they identified, please read their article.